Rethinking Ambedkar’s Dharma

The idea of ‘conversion’ is deeply wounding to the Hindu psyche, it conveys deep rejection and inversion, and a kind of spiritual violence. Ambedkar made it clear in so many words what exactly was he rejecting. The ‘radical’ part of the act is obvious. But where is the ‘continuity’?

Buddhism and Jainism are Indian in their inception. And I do not mean ‘Indian’ in the bare territorial sense either. These religion-philosophies are Indian in cultural and spiritual sense too, since their presuppositions, the raw philosophical material of aatma, dharma, dukkha, the texture of their thinking about the human life, all Indian philosophies share the same base matter. Judaism, Christianity, both atheism and secularism of the Western variety, and even the hippy spiritualism, all of these phenomenon even with all of their fundamental differences still spring from and find their fulfillment in the fount of ‘Western’ Civilization.

Plato, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Hegel, Nietzsche, Martin Luther King, all ‘Western’ in the deep sense of the term. This should help us appreciate the deep ‘Indianness’ of Ambedkar. What is the best way to live? How should an individual order his life in a society? What system provides the best framework for an ethical life? Buddha and Mahavira in their times were concerned with a similar set of questions and the process did not end there. All Hindu sects that privilege different social norms were born out of this same dialogue in the past. Ambedkar, through his Buddhism, adds another act in this continuous dialogue on ethics within Indian civilization. His Buddhism is an extension of a deeply civilizational ethical quest. I disagree completely with his essentialist reading of Hindu social order and the lack of potential therein, and even this disagreement is part of the same dialogue and moves it forward.

The Perfection of Society

Why is Indian historically characterized as ‘strong society, weak state’? What are all of our Smritis so obsessed with adjudicating the social behaviour of individuals? Why does Dharma in its this-worldly sense emphasize social context over the political?

The answer to all of this is in ‘social’ realm being the most foundational, society becoming the locus of moral and ethical regulation, and a civilization seeking its ultimate end in the perfection of its society. In its social sense, Dharma is an internal moral compass leading to a self-regulating society. When Dharma is perfect in Satyuga, the state does not exist. In Mahabharata, the epic set literally in the thick of political life, we find that the conflicts are all relational and social in nature. When the epic decries the decay in Dharma, it is not concerned with state capacity but in moral order as it relates to social decay. The social fabric is the seed while the state is the fruit that grows out of it. Political structures are ephemeral and can be disrupted (Indians experienced this frequently) and therefore civilization endures through self-regulation even in the absence of strong political structures.

Ambedkar privileges the social realm with the same intensity.

Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy… a way of life which recognizes… fraternity as the principle of life…. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things.

Democracy is not merely a form of Government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellow men.

Ambedkar longs for the perfection of social dharma and for him this dharma takes the form of social democracy. This is literally true because even his conception of nirvana is not supernatural or psychological but socio-political in nature, he believed nirvana was a society based on peace, justice, and freedom from poverty and social discrimination.

Ambedkar does not desire a weak state, but for him too the ultimate perfection of life is in a strong society enabling individuals through liberty and equality, and binding them together through fraternity. This social-seeking is an Indian impulse in Ambedkar and as a source of continuity hides in plain sight behind Ambedkar’s radicalism.

Savarkar-Ambedkar Study Circle (SASC) is a digital initiative dedicated to developing a deeper, more empathetic understanding of Savarkar’s and Ambedkar’s thought together, to uncover and build on the truly transformative potential in their work.

The Horizon Lecture Series is being organized by SASC to generate new conversations and push fresh ideas to the frontier of Indian civilizational thought. The philosophy of these conversations is inspired by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s idea of ‘Fusion of Horizons’. In this idea, ‘Horizon’ is that which expands, that which we can see beyond with a little effort, that which points toward something more. Horizons might function as a limit at a particular time, but they are always also gateways to something beyond.

The first Horizon Lecture was delivered by Shri Sreejit Datta on the theme ‘Tagore: On the Hindutva Horizon’. Shri Sreejit Datta is an educator, researcher, and social commentator, who writes/speaks on subjects critical to rekindling the Indic consciousness in a postmodern, neoliberal world. This post contains a transcript of the lecture followed by a summary of the SASC comments presented on the material.

Transcript

When I begin to contemplate Rabindranath Tagore’s ideas on the Hindutva horizon, which began visible quite early in his life and continued to develop in one form or another until its very conclusion on the physical plane, I am immediately reminded of two works. One of these is Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Dharmatattva (1888), and the other is an anthology of Bengali essays, titled Atmashakti (1905), written by none other than Rabindranath. The first of these two works, Bankim’s Dharmatattva, is a brilliant dialogic exposition of the Bhagavata dharma in the Bengali language, presented with a cosmopolitan approach under the new name ‘Anushilan Tattva’. It is often characterised as a religious or theological work from the late Bankim era, when Bankim was supposed to have taken an ultra-conservative or orthodox turn in his sphere of ideas. But anyone who cares to read the Dharmatattva would scarcely fail to observe its dizzyingly wide scope, in terms of both the Indian and western sources it draws upon as well as its in-depth treatment of the human individual and the human society. Indeed, it can be described, borrowing the words of H.T. Hansen, as a treatise in anthropology in the sense of a complete knowledge of man in body, soul, and spirit. But what is most remarkable about Dharmatattva is its deployment of the term ‘Hindutva’ and its detailed elucidation of the idea that this term signifies. In fact, this was the second time when Bankim had used this term, after he coined it in his much more well-known work, the novel Anandamath (1882).

The other work that comes to my mind in this connection, namely, Rabindranath’s Atmashakti, is remarkable for multiple reasons, not least because its publication coincided with the commencement of the Swadeshi Movement in 1905. In this anthology of essays, Rabindranath included an essay which he had originally written in the year 1901 for the Bangadarshan, nava-paryāya. This was the second life of an immensely popular Bengali journal, which was started in its first spell in 1872 by none other than Bankim as its founding editor. The journal had left a great impact on Rabindranath and his contemporaries. In his autobiographical work Jibansmriti, Rabindranath reminisces that “Bangadarshan came and straightaway stole the hearts of Bengalis”. In an essay titled “Bankimchandra”, Rabindranath remarks: “Like the first spell of monsoons in the month of Ashadha, Bangadarshan was, as it were, “samāgato rājavadunnatadhvaniḥ”. And due to an incessant downpour of bhāva-varṣaṇa [rains of literary or aesthetic feelings and themes], now all the rivers and waterfalls of Bengali literature, whether they flowed eastward or westward previously, got filled to their brink and started rushing with a joy of the approaching youth.” It was in Bangadarshan’s first spell that Bankim’s Anandamath was serialised. This first spell of Bangadarshan came to an end in the year 1884. Nearly a decade after, Bankim passed away untimely. Almost seven years after his passing, it was revived in 1901 with Rabindranath as the editor. Rabindranath edited the nava-paryāya or second spell of Bangadarshan for five years and, in this journal, his popular novel Chokher Bali came out as a serialised publication.

Coming back to Rabindranath’s essay anthology Atmashakti, I have already mentioned that the poet included in it an essay that he originally published in the second spell of Bangadarshan, under the title “Hindutva”. When Rabindranath included this essay in the anthology Atmashakti, its title was changed to Bharatavarshiya Samaj. Notably, during the years 1901 to 1905, when Rabindranath was editor of the revived Bangadarshan, he also wrote certain other essays which got published in other essay anthologies, or as forewords to notable publications by his contemporary scholars. In all these essays, Rabindranath returns repeatedly to the theme of Hindutva – sometimes using the term, and sometimes without using it. Around the same time, he almost single-handedly started the project of running a gurukul in Bolpur, where his father Maharshi Devendranath had previously acquired some land and built a house named Santiniketan, with the intention of undertaking his Sadhana in the quietness of a scarcely inhabited hamlet. Rabindranath called this gurukul the Brahmacharya Ashram. Here, he gathered some young children, including his own, and began to teach them following the ideal of the ashramas of yore. When he began this project, he received direct help and participation from only one individual – Brahmabandhav Upadhyay. Brahmabandhav was a childhood friend of Narendranath Datta or Vivekananda, and as editor of the journal Sandhya, he acted as one of the main propagators of the idea of revolutionary nationalism on the eve of the Swadeshi Movement.

Anyway, in those years when Rabindranath was editing the second spell of Bangadarshan and also simultaneously running his fledgling gurukul at Bolpur, far away from the metropolis of Calcutta, we find Rabindranath as a champion of the idea of Hindutva as given by Bankim and his friend, Chandranath Basu. After Bankim coined the term Hindutva and expounded on the ideas he meant by it in Dharmatattva using the analytic mode and in the three novels Anandamath, Devi Chaudhurani, and Sitaram using the narrative-aesthetic mode, his friend Chandranath gave it a socio-historical foundation in Hindutva: Hindu-r Prokrito Itihas (1892). Immediately after them, we find Rabindranath taking up the idea and interpreting its social, political, historical and theological contours following the ideals laid more or less by his two predecessors, who were also his close acquaintances. Rabindranath knew both Bankim and Chandranath well, he frequently met and corresponded with them by mail, and often concurred with them, while equally often disagreed with them, in private and sometimes in public, in the then raging debate over the limits and nature of reform that Hinduism and the Hindu Samaj should be allowed to undergo. At this juncture, it should be mentioned, unless it has already become apparent, that none of these three personalities understood by the term ‘Hindutva’ a solely political idea or ideology. In fact, the very ground of their agreement regarding the term and its signification was that Hindutva was an integration of Hindu sociology, politics, history, economy, theology and morality. In short, for Bankim, Chandranath, and Rabindranath, Hindutva was Hinduness and Hindu weltanshauung.

Now, coming to Rabindranath’s exposition of Hindutva in particular, I see three specific and interrelated strands in his interpretation of the idea and the ideal. The first of these is Rabindranath’s emphasis on knowing and preserving the national distinction of the Hindu nation. Again, by nation, both Bankim and Rabindranath understood and meant the Hindu samaj, rather than a nation-state. Though both agreed that the nation-state or rājya was an important institution, they both saw its only value lying in furthering the cohesiveness of the samaj. The rājya, in other words, is subordinate to the samaj in this view. Therefore, the first strand in Rabindranath’s exposition of Hindutva, so far as my reading of Rabindranath is concerned, is a strong insistence on the knowledge of the distinct national character of the Hindus and the preservation or continuation of that knowledge in religious, moral, cultural, economic, and political expressions. This distinct character, according to Rabindranath, can be found in various European nations in their predilection for political formations and political unity as the supreme end or parama-purushartha of their respective nations. Rabindranath gives a clear expression of this idea in his essay “Hindutva” or “Bharatavarshiya Samaj”, when he asserts that the Hindu civilisation has devoted its best efforts at building a samaj out of diverse ethnicities by assimilating and arranging them in a system that offered those ethnicities a path for social and moral upliftment.

The second strand that I find in Rabindranath’s exposition of Hindutva is based on his radically new approach to historiography. Please note that I use the term ‘radical’ here keeping in mind the specific era in which Rabindranath thought, experimented, and wrote on Hindutva. This is at least twenty-two years before Savarkar gave us his Essentials of Hindutva (1922). In this radically new approach to historiography, Rabindranath prioritised art, handicrafts, traditional and popular performative modes such as songs, dances, and theatre, along with the storytelling traditions associated with the tellings and retellings of India’s two great Mahakavyas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as not merely sources but as living history. He encouraged, in an essay titled “Bharatavarsher Itihas”, again written in the same period between 1901 and 1905, an almost phenomenological approach to read and understand history using these sources, to quote his words from this essay:

From time to time even the educated people of our country ask, like bewildered fools: who do you call the country, what is the distinctive spirit of our country, where does it reside, where has it been all along? Answers to these cannot be obtained by simply asking questions. Because the matter is so subtle, so vast, that it cannot be apprehended by reason alone. Be it the English, or the French, no one from any country can express in one word what his national spirit is, where the core essence of his country resides – it is as directly perceivable a truth as the life that resides in the body, yet as elusive to definition and conception as life itself. It enters into our knowledge, into our love, into our imagination, through various invisible paths in various forms, right from our childhood. In inscrutable ways it shapes us through its wonderful power; it does not allow a rift to occur between our past and our present; and it is by its grace that we become great, that we are not isolated. How can we explain this wonderfully invigorated, mysterious, and ancient energy to the sceptical questioner by means of a definition in just a few words?

This very approach brings us to the third and final strand in Rabindranath’s exposition of Hindutva as I see it. I like to call this third strand the metaphysical basis of Hindutva. It is there in Bankim in a big way, when Bankim gives us the ideas of universal love and love of one’s country. Perhaps due to Bankim’s influence of Rabindranath, we get to see a continuity of this idea in his essays included in anthologies like Atmashakti and Bharatavarsha. Let me mention that, in these and other publications, Rabindranath uses the term ‘Hindutva’ at least 22 times in seven different pieces of his writings. The metaphysical strand can be best glimpsed from Rabindranath’s utterance in the essay “Hindutva” or “Bharatavarshiya Samaj”, when he says:

If we establish the spirit of mangala or welfare inherited from our forefathers vividly in our hearts and apply it everywhere in the society, only then will we regain the vast Hindu civilization. Teaching the samaj, offering it food, wealth, and means to attain good health – this is our own work; herein lies our happiness – not looking at it as an exchange, expecting nothing but punya and kalyana in return, this is yajna, this is Yoga or union with Brahman through karma, and never allowing ourselves to forget it, this is Hindutva. Not placing the ideology of self-interest at the centre of the human society, but observing the human society in Brahman, this is Hindutva. In this, beneficence pervades everyone, from animals to humans, and avoiding self-interest becomes as easy as breathing. To bind all in unity, from the bottom of the society to the very top, in one great unselfish bond of kalyana or universal welfare, is the greatest endeavour of all our endeavours. It is in this unity that the Hindu community has to unite the past with the present and the present with the past. This is the only way to gain our humanity. It is not that there is no utility in political efforts; But how far that effort can help us in advancing our social cohesion, therein lies its main glory.

Horizon Commentary

1. Reviving the Renaissance Landscape: The most important aspect of studying Tagore’s engagement with the idea and vocabulary of Hindutva is in its potential to revisit India’s original renaissance landscape. This is more than a historical perspective, since our objective is to make something strikingly contemporary out of this dialogue with the past, to see how our greatest national luminaries perceived Hinduism, its civilization, and the trajectory of its cultural evolution. In so far as the greatest question before Hindutva is the question of the future, Tagore’s contemplation sheds light on the logic and the objective of India’s ongoing transformation. If we are committed in trying to understand Hindutva in all its diversity and complexity, we must explore its life-giving origins wherever they took root, including in Tagore. Hindutva is thought of today as a political praxis; its social and cultural thought is not absent but the most concrete manifestation is definitely in politics, i.e. it comes closest to be a paradigm in the field of politics. These new explorations help us understand its latent possibilities and work towards visualizing Hindutva as a complete paradigm - political, social, cultural.

2. Networked Approach: The phenomenon of nationalism and Hindutva cannot be understood in isolation; rather, it necessitates an exploration of the interconnected web of ideas and influences that shaped their evolution. Tagore's engagement with Hindutva, alongside stalwarts like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Chandranath Basu, underscores the collaborative nature of intellectual discourse in India's history. Each figure contributed distinct perspectives, building upon and refining the concepts that would come to define the cultural and ideological landscape of the nation. This networked approach, in which we understand individuals not in silos but as nodes of relationality, through their associations with other individuals as well as with institutions, gives us a a deeper appreciation for the multifaceted nature of nationalism and Hindutva. On a macro level, this idea gives us epochal thinking - that groups of people carry the fears, hopes, and aspirations of a whole age together.

3. Savarkar’s Great Intuitions: At SASC, we have focused on generating new readings of Savarkar and Ambedkar that do not reduce them to their historicities but raise them to a monumentalism of ideas. In this sense, Savarkar’s identification with the ideology of Hindu nationalism even if not exactly absolute (Hindu nationalism has been evolutionary), occupies the centermost space. Even as we explore the prehistory of contemporary Hindutva, the idea is never to reduce ourselves to textualist tourism around the origins of this concept. Rather we believe that Savarkar's idea of Hindutva already represents a watershed moment in the evolution of Hindu nationalism. In considering the already accomplished history of Hindutva to be firmly established, we mean that our concern with the present exploration is not to look for new histories of Hindutva but to look for new futures and new potential.

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Tagore delivered this lecture on Indian history at YMCA Overton Hall on March 16, 1912. It was later published in the April, 1912 issue of ‘Prabasi’. It is the first essay in the Volume 32 of Tagore’s Collected Works published in Hindi by Sasta Sahitya Mandal (Translator: Vishwanath Nirvane). I have not been able to find this essay in English translation.

The reason I am translating it and making it available for wide reading is because it illuminates my own idea and theory of history. In the Abhinav spirit, I am interested in history as a subject not merely as content for identity, but as a meaningful dialogue with the past. The reason I have turned to Tagore is because he brings the life-giving sensibility of the poet to his reading of this subject. Tagore’s reading strikes at all dead matter with a piercing gaze, establishing history as a dynamic, something to be created not just to be consumed. In this way, he captures history as a ‘vision’ and not as a factative account of the past. This ‘vision’ is like a flash of lightning in terrible darkness, it illuminates everything around you for a brief second and then everything is back to black again. What you see in that brief second is all that matters. Before you step into the world of this essay, take a step back, forget all historical details you have gathered for a moment and read it in its original spirit of seeing in the dark. Read it in a spirit of science mixed with poetry.

||श्री||

History as Rhythm

Tagore, in a characteristically romanticist poetic fashion does not directly plunge into history. He starts out by meditating on time, how all the dualities that exist in nature - light and darkness, movement and rest, only exist to continuously create a rhythm of nature, like the cycle of inhalation and exhalation. It is only after pointing out the effortlessness of this rhythm in nature that he moves to the problem of man -

The way this rhythm is so clear and unobstructed in the natural world, not so in the human world. The elements of expansion and contraction are present here too, but we are not able to protect this harmony easily. The rhythm of nature’s song is effortless, but for the human song, it a matter of extensive meditation. Often we lean so much on the either side of dualities, that it is too late to return to the other side. We shatter the harmony so much that we get drenched in sweat trying with all our might to correct it. ‘Self’ vs ‘other’, ‘acquisition’ vs ‘taboo’, ‘conduct’ vs ‘idea’, all of them keep pulling the human being to one side or the other. Learning to reach equanimity while balancing the rhythm of duality is the true education of humanity. The history of this rhythm-exercise is its true history. This is what we clearly seen in India’s history.

The strong exaltation of nature is linked to Tagore’s romanticist ideals that influenced not just his poetry but his entire worldview, but far more interesting here is the idea of latent human greatness which is exercised in synthesizing the complex dualities of existence. History for Tagore has a direction and humans play an active role in driving it.

Aryans vs Non-Aryans and the synthesis of Indian history

The moment Tagore steps into Indian history, he faces the question of Aryan/non-Aryan conflict and he quickly reconciles it into becoming the very bedrock of Indian nationhood (reminiscent of Savarkar). This conflict becomes an ideal source for his notion of historical synthesis.

The moment we lift up the curtain of Indian history, we look at the intense group-conflict between the Aryans and non-Aryans. The hostility generated among the Aryans for the non-Aryans by the first fierce wave of this conflict, led to a cohesion and unity among them as a group.

In a way this was essential. The entry of Aryans into India did not happen all at once - they came over time in small groups. They did not all share the same gotras, devatas, and mantras. If not faced with external aggression, the Aryan colonies would have naturally devolved into smaller scattered branches. They would never have considered themselves as one, instead preferring to focus on their superficial differences. That they were in conflict with others is what made Aryans available (as one whole).

Like all other things in the world, conflict also has two sides - on its one side there is severance, and on the other side coming together. In the first stage of this conflict, Aryans had a tendency towards insularity for the protection of their social self, but it would have been impossible for history to have stopped there. Following the law of rhythm, one day history had to move along the path of self-propagation on the way to intermingling.

The Kshatriya force in Indian history

For me, the most fertile part of Tagore’s reading of Indian history is definitely this very fresh reading of the role of a warrior in Arya society. ‘Kshatriya’ and ‘Brahmins’ here are not reducible to caste constructs, but are historical forces whose creative conflict moved history forward, externally towards unity with the non-Arya populations in the Indian subcontinent, and internally towards a more wholesome, more perfected form of religion. For Tagore, it is the Kshatriya mindset that led this drive towards dynamism. It is obvious that Tagore’s historical reading here is telescopic, he rises above specificities of history, focusing his vision instead on the human element we see unfolding in the Indian epics - which preserve the deep national consciousness of Indian people. He devotes an entire section in this essay to the triumvirate of Kshatriyas in the Ramayana - Janaka, Vishwamitra, and Ramchandra, only the most exact part of which has been translated here.

In Bhagavata history, a person gradually acquires the form of an emotion. In British legends, King Arthur is the model of a person who discards personhood to acquire emotion-hood in the national consciousness. Similarly, Janaka and Vishwamitra have become symbols of a special expression borne out of Arya history. King Arthur would face his enemies rooted in inspiration from that special Christian ideal that Kshatriyas had in the European middle ages. Similarly we get a glimpse of a long and protracted struggle in Indian history to which Kshatriyas dedicated themselves drawing on their particular code of religion and ethics. It is evident that Brahmins were their chief adversaries in this battle.

The battle he refers to here is a battle of ideals and direction fought on the bedrock of civilizational unity. His idea of Arya society is about an expanding civilization faced with questions of how to ritually orient itself with respect to internal differences, and how to assimilate people that were not a part of it then. Both questions essentially boil down to questions concerning change.

The knowledge of sacrificial rituals was clan-centric. This specialized knowledge was tied to specific methods, and the burden of their practice naturally fell to a special category of people. Those engaged in the work of defense, war, and conquest could not accept this role, as it required long durations of study and practice. If a particular category of people had not accepted for themselves the duty of protecting these practices, they would have withered away and the chain of continuity with ancestors would be lost. This is why while one section was engaged in the pursuit of war and administration, another section was specially inclined to keep the ancient religion and values pure and unbroken.

But when the burden of such work falls on a particular limited section, the unison in development of national consciousness and religion gets hampered. This particular section limits rituals of religion to a narrow strip, it loses harmony with the expanding mode of the national psyche. Gradually with loss of realization this destruction of harmony reaches a point where in the end revolution is the only way left to restore coordination. In this way, when Brahmins were encroaching their rights on the traditional customs of the Aryans and gradually turning all levers of activity more complicated, at that time Kshatriyas on the other hand were overcoming all kinds of natural and human obstacles to advance forth ever victorious.

At that time Kshatriya society was the main meeting ground of the Aryan people. The kind of union that was possible among people who were ready to die together in the battlefield was impossible for any other section of society because people who are united in death do not give great weight to superficial differences. Observing and separately protecting the trivial differences of mantras, devatas, and yajnas was not the work of Kshatriyas, they were raised in the thick of assaults and counter-assaults on the hard and uneven terrain of life. This is why externally-oriented ritual differences rooted in fidelity to the past never took firm root in the Kshatriya heart. In the context of self-defense and expansion the accord binding the Arya society together rested upon the Kshatriyas. Eventually the innermost truth-element underlying all varieties of difference became available to them, and hence Brahma-vidya became the exclusive domain of the Kshatriyas.

For Tagore, this creative competitive conflict born out of differences concerning the nature of divinity and reality clearly shows that the ancient-modern divide existed in India even then.

The idea of Vishnu

The fundamental difference that arose between Brahmin-Kshatriya on the social and normative question manifested itself in two deities - Brahma is the God of the old, the ways of the Vedic hymns and ritual, and Vishnu is the God of the new class. The four heads of Brahma represent the four Vedas. He sits in meditation, forever static. The four arms of Vishnu are ever active, proclaiming fortune across all new frontiers, establishing the drive for unity, developing beauty and projecting political order in all directions.

When Vedic Gods were distant from man, they were definitely offered worship. But its is when Parmatma (Supreme soul) and Jivatma (individual soul) become ‘two’ despite being ‘one’, and yet ‘one’ in the infinite mystery of bliss, it is only then that the ultimate innermost God is worshipped. Therefore, the religion of love and Bhakti in India started in India as a subsidiary form of Brahm-vidya. The God of this Bhakti-religion is Vishnu.

Tagore here presents Vishnu as a monumental ideal of unity, industry, and expansion, emerging out of a great churning in both social and spiritual orders. The social axis is seen in the Brahma-Kshatra conflict and the spiritual axis manifests in a decisive movement away from the older form of Vedic religion. In describing this move away from the Vedic to the Pauranik stage of religion, Tagore leaves out the Sramana portion of Indian religious history. The only reason he could have skipped mentioning Buddhism and Jainism here entirely is perhaps because he sees them as part of the same historical sweep - emanating out of and concluding in this great churning of social and spiritual orders.

Vaishnava Figures in History

Brahmins embraced the Vaishnava religion after a period of struggle. But that they did not do so at the outset is clear from surviving details. Brahmin Bhrigu kicked Vishnu on the chest - within this story lies a history of resistance. In Vedas, Bhrigu is considered the ideal of the ritualist sacrificer. When Vishnu replaced Brahma on the altar, the era of Bhakti-religion dawned over the age of sacrificial-religion. This age of transition unleashed a veritable storm, and this was on expected lines. Those who had enjoyed power over ritual activity and had used this power to create a special place for themselves in the social hierarchy, they would not have easily stepped back from this transition.

This Bhakti-religion or Vaishnava-religion was characteristically of a Kshatriya provenance. A proof of this is in the kshatriya Shri Krishna appearing as a guide of this religion, and in his message we see a glimpse of revolt against the Vedic ritual and code of conduct. A second proof lies in ancient Puranas accepting two human personalities as avatars of Vishnu - Shri Krishna and Shri Ramchandra, both of whom are Kshatriyas. It is clearly seen then that this Bhakti-resource of the Kshatriya class was propagated not only through the message of Shri Krishna but also through the life of Shri Rama. The instinctive difference between the Kshatriya and Brahmin classes which then grew into a difference of consciousness, developed to an extent that it sowed seeds of a social upheaval. The story of Vashishtha-Vishwamitra contains the history of this revolution.

In this episode the Brahmin side took refuge in Vashishtha, and the Kshatriya side, of Vishwamitra. Not all Brahmins and Kshatriyas were in adversarial camps as there were many kings who favoured the Brahmins. It is said that Brahmin-vidya was in tears after being chastised by Vishwamitra; Harishchandra stepped up in its defence, but ultimately had to surrender to Vishwamitra after losing his kingdom, his wealth, and everything else.

Tagore presents an outline of Ramayana in which the trio of Rama-Vishwamitra-Janaka represent the Kshatriya vision of an Arya society intent on extending its geographical limits. What brave hero will extend the Arya practice of agriculture and its spiritual knowledge to the south was the reigning question before the Kshatriya sages, and Vishwamitra ultimately found one in Ramachandra. As the hero of this epic, Shri Rama brought new lands under Arya domains. He accomplished this task not through martial valour alone but also because the Kshatriya understanding of God had become universal and interiorized through which he established a cordial bridge between Aryas and non-Aryas. This is how Tagore looks at Rama’s southern journey, his engagement with Guhaka, the Vanaras, even the Rakshashas.

This part of the essay consisting of Tagore’s refreshing mimamsa on the epics merits independent consideration, and since our concern here is Tagore’s broader vision of Indian history, we will move on. But not before making note of Tagore’s dramatic declaration in the middle of this meditation on Ramayana and Mahabharata:

The Brahminical Instinct in Arya Society

We have looked at the phases of contraction and expansion in Arya society. Man has his ‘particularity’ on one side and on the other side his ‘universality’. It would be impossible to understand India without observing how it has been affected by the appeal of these two directions. At one point its self-preservation power was in the hands of Brahmins and its self-propagation power lay in the hands of Kshatriyas. When Kshatriyas advanced forward, the Brahmins tried to stop their movement. But when Kshatriyas overcame these obstacles and firmly moved the society in the direction of expansion, Brahmins once again assimilated the old with the new and set up new boundaries. Europeans have always denounced this role of Brahmins in India, they think that a special interest group of ‘Brahmins’ did this and stopped India’s progress. What they forget is that there is no racial difference between Brahmins and Kshatriyas, both of these are natural powers invested in the same race. In England, the entire British race is divided into two branches to direct politics - the liberals and the conservatives. In the competitive conflict between these two branches there are elements of contention, skill, and probably even corruption and injustice, but it would not be wise to look at these entire independently, as two factions completely separated from each other. Like powers of attraction and repulsion, they appear to be entirely dissonant from the outside, but looking from within, they are different forms of the same creative power.

Similarly, Indian society has followed the pattern generated by natural forces of inertia and movement by taking recourse to two different poles, and thus generated its history. None of these poles are artificial in nature.

Here Tagore come very close to a law-like intuition concerning Indian history. Kshatriya instinct for expansion vs. Brahminical instinct for preservation. Royal extroversion and priestly ritualcraft. Two schemes of generating history, one obsessed with thrust and movement, the other with continuity and identity. It is through his thoroughly romanticist nature, that Tagore rises above all difference to establish an ultimate union of these dichotomies in the generation of a historical rhythm. But what is precious here is that in this analysis and classification, in delineating these two principles he has risen above the raw material of Indian history. That he has cut through historical matter and established a set of principles, this is the monumental Hegelian achievement of Tagore in this essay. This is similar to Darwin’s cutting through biological history and establishing the principle of evolution as a guiding light. The illumination is extraordinary. And we will see just how effortlessly and how much of India’s past Tagore will light up with this thesis. This section is important as it is concerned with establishing the proper idea of ‘Brahminical’ principle in Indian society, to explain just why does so much of what is uniting and universal in Indian culture appears to be Brahminical.

It can’t escape our notice that the harmony of inertia and movement could not be entirely maintained in India. After all the opposition directed at them Brahmins did ultimately acquire centrality in society. It would be ahistorical to declare this a result of any special shrewdness on the part of Brahmins. The real reason for this can be found only in the specific circumstances unique to India. The different groups that collided with each other in this land were in extreme conflict, and the differences of identity and ideals were so sharply drawn that this strong antagonism gave an impetus to the instinct of self-preservation. There was always a possibility of losing the self by going too far on the path of self-propagation, this is why the society’s vigilance strengthened with every step along this path.

The courageous mountaineers who climb up the snow-covered Alps they make their way up by tying themselves up in ropes. They tie themselves while moving up and and go on tying further as they move. This is the way of making any movement there, it is not a question of skill on the part of the mountaineer. The same ropes that are used to restrict a person when he is in prison help him move and be active as he makes his way up a mountain. In India too the society has moved forward by tying itself up from time to time, because the possibility of slipping up and devastation instead of going straight up on your way always existed. This is why naturally the self-preservation instinct grew stronger than the self-propagation instinct.

The Rise of Kshatriya Sages - Buddhism and Jainism

It can be seen through a study of the Mahabharata that even in face of internal opposition the blood union and religious union of Aryas and non-Aryas had never really stopped. In this way when Varna-confusion and Dharma-confusion started prevailing, the self-preserving forces of society tried to set boundaries to save themselves time and again. Whatever could not be rejected was accepted and tied up with conditions. The attempt made against Varna-confusion in Manusmriti and its disgust against the profession of Brahmins engaged in Murti-worshipping, all of it tells us that even when the blood and religious unions with non-Aryas had been sanctioned, opposition to them had not actually stopped. This is how the society made itself rigid by resorting to the instinct of contraction right after it had undergone a phase of expansion.

One day it was the great reaction to this tendency that found its refuge in the two Kshatriya royal ascetics. The element of Dharma is an investigation of truth, and not mere social convention. That only a refuge in Dharma can offer us liberation and not superficial social mores, that this policy of Dharma does not consider any difference between humans as eternal truth - the two Kshatriya ascetics Buddha and Mahavir proclaimed this discourse of liberation around all of India. Surprisingly this ideology of liberation overcame all ancient customs and obstacles to eventually rule India. And then for a very long time, dominated the Brahminical powers in India through the impact of Kshatriya Acharyas.

This dramatic efflorescence and bursting forth of Kshatriya energy in Buddhism and Jainism is natural to Tagore but it tended towards a certain kind of excess, which in its radical aspects destroyed the very fundamental ground on which Brahm-Kshatriya worldviews had been tending towards a principle of unity through their creative conflict. What had been so far a garden was now turned into a forest. These historical developments were not concerned only with India’s interior function but were also affected by and in turn affected the foreign material that entered India’s borders at that time.

Earlier Brahmins and Kshatriyas were being accorded centrality in Indian society by turns but still there was a fundamental unity of identity between them and hence the task of national organization had remained in Arya hands. But in the times of Buddhist influence, apart from the non-Aryas present within the society, non-Aryas from foreign lands also made and entry and the task of maintaining their harmony with the Arya populations became terribly difficult. So long as Buddhism remained strong, this absence of harmony did not manifest itself in unhealthy ways but with the weakening of Buddhism, this state of disorder covered the whole country in its strange and inconsistent ways. The non-Aryas overcame all obstacles to implant themselves in Indian society. The question of their being different and intermixing with them was not a peripheral concern any more, it was very much at the center of society.

In this tsunami of Buddhist current, only the Brahmins as a group were able to maintain their free and independent existence, as the duty of defending sovereign Arya-independence had always fallen to them. Even in the middle period of the Buddhist age, the difference between Sramanas and Brahmins had not ceased to exist, even though all the other distinctions in society had disappeared. During that period Kshatriyas to a large extent had intermixed with the masses. It is clear from the Puranas compiled around that time that Kshatriyas were not barred from intermarriage with the non-Aryas. This is why we see that towards the end of the Buddhist period, most of the royal dynasties were not of Kshatriya ancestry.

On the other side, groups of foreign non-Aryas like Sakas and Hunas had entered and assimilated into Indian society. The wave of Buddhism brough the flood waters inside, which started reaching the very heart of society in batches. The social nature of that time had little capacity for resistance, and when the non-Arya content became quite condensed, thus leading to a collapse of any fraternal principle in the midst of all kinds of disorder, then the innermost Arya nature of society, at the height of this terrible suffering, manifested itself in its most powerful form. The Arya nature had lost itself completely, that is why it became so eager to reinvent itself once again with utmost clarity. '

Veda and Itihasa as Functional Principles of Identity

It was as a part of this effort that Vyasa compiled the Vedas. In the Vedic age, the society had learned and preserved the hymns and ritual systems of yajna tenaciously. But even so, it was only instructional knowledge and not everyone considered it to be supernatural. But to tie a fragmented society into a whole, one day the need was felt to establish an ancient scripture which would not be amenable to differing arguments, which would be the most primordial word of the Arya society, by fiercely subscribing to which even entirely opposed systems will find common ground. That is why even though the Vedas had become far removed from the world of practice, everyone could easily accept them - in fact we can say that it was their remoteness that made them universally accepted. It was necessary to establish a common fixed center first to determine the boundaries of a race that had become disintegrated. After accomplishing this, the various Arya lore that were lying broken and scattered everywhere were brought together and compiled into ‘Mahabharata’.

Just like a fixed center was necessary, a narrative circumference was also absolutely essential. This narrative circumference was the ‘itihasa’, the another great work waiting to be accomplished by Vyasa. He united the lore lying scattered in the Arya society. Not just the lore, he carved a colossal statue of cultural totality by collecting all the belief practices, the faiths and logics, and the moral values prevalent in Arya society then.

Gita as the Absolute Essence of India’s History

The lines of Arya history that were etched in the Arya memory and subconscious of the time, some of these were clear, some had been lost, some were consistent, some contradictory. Mahabharata collects and preserves copies of all of these. But it is not the case that in Mahabharata only public hearsay has been compiled without any due thought. On one side of the convex fire glass there is diffused sunlight and on the other side there are concentrated rays. In the same way, on one side of Mahabharata lies the wide amount of public lore, and on the other side its concentrated light. This light is the ‘Bhagavat Gita’. The unity of jnana, karma, and bhakti that it establishes, this is the ultimate elemental essence of India’s history.

It is possible that the underlying unity of logic is not complete in the Gita, but it has the indescribable unity underlying a vast cultural existence. Between its clarity and ambiguity, consistency and contradiction, we see the most profound achievement in truth emerging from the acceptance of all of the whole. In this way all aspects of Gita are found at one place. Gita goes to the extend of giving yajna a place in the field of sadhana. But in Gita, the act of sacrifice acquires such great feeling that it loses its narrowness and becomes the content of all universe. Yajna is the act by which man awakens the universal potency through his individual potency. Had Gita been composed by a contemporary person, he would recognize this same act of yajna in the modern pursuit of science.

The Timelessness of History

In the course of going through Tagore’s writing above, many obvious questions regarding chronology can be raised. It is perhaps to answer these questions that Tagore reestablishes the timeless nature of some of these phenomenon, meaning that he is dealing with historical tendencies rather than concrete historical facts when he speaks of Vedas, Itihasa and such.

The age of Mahabharata that has been analysed here, is not to be understood as the historical chronology concerning the Mahabharata. It has to be perceived as the Bhagavata age, and we can not locate it in the limits of any historical time period. We can not know precisely when did the Buddhist age start. There is no doubt that it had existed in some nascent form even before Shakyamuni and there had been ‘Buddhas’ before him. It was a tradition of a certain notion which found its ultimate conclusion in Gautama Buddha. Similarly the origin of Mahabharat also can not be clearly established. The forces of fragmentation and union within a society are always going on side-by-side - like Purva-Mimamsa and Uttara-Mimamsa. Surely this reflects the contest between the sides of the old and the new. The dating of the respective scriptures that these traditions rely on does not matter, it is clear that the difference in perspective is very ancient. Therefore the tendency to collect and organise one’s content, and the tendency to direct the ancient way by compiling Puranas over a long time period, both of these can not be frozen in time. Along with the eternal inter-mixing of the Aryas and non-Aryas in Indian society, these two mutually opposite tendencies have been active in India forever.

The Nature of Hinduism as Such

I have skipped over a lyrical portion in which Tagore writes about Brahmasutra as the fountain of both dual and non-dual strands in Indian philosophy. Now we move into a section where Tagore will establish ‘Hinduism’ as the composite conclusion of the intermixing of different people-groups in India. The kind of understanding that this reading gives to Hinduism is that of a ‘process’, and in its territoriality as well as in giving it its cultural basis, Tagore comes close to a contemporary Hindu nationalist understanding of the word.

Nobody should ever believe that non-Aryans did not make any contributions for us. In fact the ancient Dravid people were not inferior in civilization. It is through their contribution that the Hindu civilization gained diversity of form and depth of emotion. The Dravids were not philosophers, but they had imagination, were skilled at music and architecture, and adept at all the arts. ‘Kala’ was the companion of their deity Ganesha. The union of the pure philosophy of the Aryas with the sensuality and the creative power of the Dravids created a curious material. This material was neither purely Arya nor Dravid - it was Hindu. India has amassed an incredible wealth owing to the continuous coordination-synthesis between these two contrasting tendencies. It learned how to make available between two ends that which is infinite and unending, and earned the right to perceive the piercing reality of earth amidst the banality of everyday life. This is why wherever in India these two contrasting forces could not meet, there was no limit to mindlessness and superstition; but wherever they did meet, the result was an uninterrupted expression of the wholesome form of the infinite. India got something which is not at all easy to handle for everyone, and which if improperly handled leads the country to ruin. These two mindsets, the Arya and Dravid, wherever they come together, beauty follows, and wherever they do not, we see only meanness and smallness.

It should also be kept in mind that foreign non-Aryas had also once entered the heart of undefended Arya society. The consciousness of this unauthorized entry was felt in our culture for a very long time. This was was not external but internal to the body. The bloody weapon had entered the vitals, the enemy was now well within the gates. In the Arya civilization, now Brahmins were raised to a supreme condition. Just like Vedas had emerged as a steady bridge in the shape of an inviolable religious scripture, the Brahmins too started to claim the most exalted position in the society. The way that this desire is strongly repeatedly everywhere in the Puranas, Itihasa, and the Kavya texts of that time, should help us understand that all of this effort was being put up against some resistance, against the natural course of things as they would have been. If we only see these efforts by Brahmins as the self-serving ways of a specific group aimed at enhancing its privileges, we may end up with a very narrow and superficial gaze at the history of that time. This effort was an internal attempt by the then struggling Arya society, in fervent service of its self-defense. If Brahmins had not had an absolute influence on all sections of society then, no attempt to rescue the essence and ideals falling away in all directions would have been feasible. In such a situation, Brahmins had two jobs - first, to preserve the tradition that had been carried on for ages, and second, to synthesize it with the new one. These tasks had become impossibly difficult to accomplish in the natural life-cycle of culture, this is the reason why society raised the office and authority of Brahmins to such an extraordinary level.

An important note should be made here. The reason that the Krishna-lore prevalent among the Abhiras became part of the Vaishnava dharma, is because there was a truth-affirming path of conjugal union that made this possible. The nayak-nayika (lover and loved) relationship has been accepted as a metaphor for the relation between the self-sould and God in many different cultures across the globe. The Arya Vaishnava-bhakti took this essence and investigated its presentation through the non-Arya lore in the light of the highest sublime truths. What was present only as material of aesthetic enjoyment among the non-Aryas was established as the perennial source of truth by the Arya philosophers. This way it did not remain merely the special lore of a specific group of people, but was raised to the metaphorical principle of highest human spirituality. By the coming together of Arya and Dravid spheres, Hindu civilization gained a wonderful union of truth and beauty. Jnana and rasa, unity and multiplicity, all of them became intensely intertwined.

But it was simply impossible to assimilate all the mores, the ritual-systems, and the mythos of the non-Aryas into the united system of Arya-consciousness as such. Even with all the assimilation effort expended, many contradictions would still remain. None of these contradictions could be reconciled - it is just that people eventually became accustomed to them over time. Due to this habit of practice, the contradictions continued coexisting together and even the intention of resolving them was ultimately lost. Slowly the policy that took root in society was that one should accept the system of worship and conduct that fits their nature and capacity. In a way this was a policy of just letting the helm go. When mutually contradictory things have to be put side-by-side in proximity and there is no way to reconcile them, this kind of policy is usually the only result.

In this way, after the eclipse of the Buddhist age, the Brahmins went about arranging all kinds of social material - new and old, strange and inconsistent, in whatever way they were able to. It was inevitable in such a situation that the arrangement would be rigid indeed. The things that are in themselves independent, materials from different groups and ages, when they are tied together, it is obvious that the knot would have had to be tightly bound together, since by the law of human nature none of these things would have bound themselves to each other by some internal accord.

Wherever one group of people gains total hegemony, where none is left standing equal to him or against him to contest his dominion, there bondages naturally manifest. There the one sovereign lord wants to spread his own glory around everywhere in all directions, and it is in this process that the glory suffers. This kind of poison has no equivalents. Arya-non-Arya, Brahmin-Shudra, European-Asian, American-Negro, wherever this kind of disaster has taken place, humanity has suffered from the wretchedness meted out on both sides. Enmity is definitely preferable over this kind of dangerous disdain for the other. Brahmins attained supremacy over the whole society at one point in time, and tied up everyone in the difficult knot of social order. Naturally after the age of great expansion, an age of extreme contraction covered the society.

The Tragedy of Missing Kshatriyas

In ancient times, society had only two poles of power - Brahmins and Kshatriyas. It was through a competitive union of these two contradictory forces that the society was established on the middle path. But the Kshatriya pole no longer remained functioning in society, and the non-Arya pole could not rise up and match the Brahminical force. The Brahmin pole coldly accepted it and established its victory tower.

The brave race that entered India as ‘Rajputs’ and established its royal power across the Indian thrones, they too were accepted by Brahmins just like the other non-Aryas, and made into an artificial Kshatriya race. These Kshatriyas could not match the intellectual firepower of the Brahmins, and were not able to utilize their talents in engineering of society like the ancient Arya Kshatriyas had. Purely by the merit of their courage and raw power, they were reduced to contributing to society as accomplices and inferiors of Brahminical forces.

The Summum Bonum ☀️

No society can maintain its balance in this state forever. The path to expansion is completely prohibited. The obsessive instinct for self-preservation constricts society and leads it down a narrow path of contraction. The genius of the race is totally inhibited. This bondage of society is an artificial thing; the societal essence can hardly be kept together tied and organized this way. Only a temporal religion survives by dint of continuity, the life-giving religion grows dim and suffers. This kind of a culture becomes completely destitute in all fields of thought and action and becomes available for all kinds of subjugation. In the very first stages of Arya society, its consciousness had acted swiftly to generate a unity function which will free it from the many obstructions of the ‘many’ when its action-susceptibility was blocking its way by gathering various foreign external materials. Today such a time has dawned before our society all over again. Today the external materials are even more numerous, even more inconsistent. They are making our consciousness dim once again. Only the preservation-force has been active in our society for a long time now. This force wants to conserve everything, whatever is breaking down it wants to collect, whatever is flying away it keeps in seize. The life-force of the nation is being held captive to a deadly hoarding nature. To save us from this catastrophe, today we need a consciousness that will freely pull up simplicity out of rigidity, internal essence out of superficial externality, and unity out of strange multiplicities. But to our utter misfortune, the society declared such consciousness itself to be criminal and locked it away bound in a thousand chains.

Even so, this captive consciousness can not really remain completely quiet. Even in the midst of society’s self-contraction and deadly stupor, its desire to call for its expansion is always throbbing. Such endeavors are seen in India’s Middle Ages. Preachers like Nanak and Kabir gave voice to the same desire. It can be clearly seen from the life and works of Kabir that he overcame all the external accumulation in India to illuminate the innermost excellence in service of truth. This is why his followers are specially called ‘Bharatpanthis’. He realized through meditation that inspite of all the fragmentation and inconsistency, Bharat is established on a firm unshakeable foundation of truth. In the Middle Ages, many great Acharyas like Kabir rose one after the other. All of them tried to lighten up the load that had become difficult to bear. They tried to wake up the nation by striking at the dead door of convention and archaic Shastra formulae.

That age has not yet passed. The same effort is still going on. Nobody can stop this, because such is how it has been in all of India’s history. Its consciousness has always struck at all deadly matter. All of India’s excellent treasures - its Upanishads, its Gita, its all-encompassing-universal Buddhist religion - all of it is the treasure trove of such great victories. Its Shri Krishna and Ramchandra are the heroes of these great battles. It can not be natural that such a free-spirited India will keep carrying on the dead matter accumulated over a long period of time, just standing stationary for several centuries, fixed, immobile. This dead weight is not a part of his body, it does not carry his life force and bliss, it is something external to him.

I have said it before that losing itself into many fragments at the altar of ‘diversity’ is not the nature of Bharatvarsha. It wants to attain ‘unity’; that is why instrumentalizing the many into one is its deep meditation. The innermost truth-seeking nature of Bharatvarsha itself will save it from the meaningless tragedy of diversity. No matter how much its history has obstructed its path, its genius will break through to the other side of this difficult maze by its sheer brilliant power. The bigger the problem, the bigger will its tapasya be.

To drown itself in what has been accumulating for ages is against the perennial-practice of India - India will not be defeated by this. To give up like this is the path straight to death.

Even in its darkest days, India never surrendered to tamasika derangement and squalor. Even in the middle of its worst nightmares, it tried to heave them away with its consciousness trying to wake itself up in the illumination of the most simple truth. The age that we are passing through today can not be understood from the outside, but even so we experience that India is assiduously trying to once again attain its truth, its singularity, its harmony. The river had been imprisoned in many layers of dams, its flow stopped for a very long time - today the embankment has fallen, the stagnant water is once again meeting the great seas, the tides of the world are touching us once again. We see all of our new efforts, living, fast-moving like blood in the vessels, sometimes turning towards the world, sometimes turning back again. Sometimes globalization prompts our efforts to leave home, and nationalism beckons us back home. Sometimes we give up individuality in trying to attain universalism; and sometimes we find that in this individuality is lost but universality is not attained. All of these are true signs of life beginning to work again. It is by getting squeezed on two sides that the middle way will be illuminated in our national life and we will come to understand that it is truly in our own country that globalization can be attained, and it is only in the global understanding that we can truly attain our own country. And only then will we definitely realize that sacrificing our own in trying to desire someone else’s wares is fruitless begging in the same way that letting go of other’s by making oneself small. It is extreme poverty, ultimate misery.

न हि ज्ञानेन सदृशं पवित्रमिह विद्यते ☀️

I am going to use this medium as a place of serious reflection, exploration, and intellectual experimentation. I will use the following sequence to explain my basic drive:

1. We are not the middle children of history but are living in interesting times. More like drowning.

2. This is because we are unable to understand our reality in a purposive way - future and past linger but do not flow seamlessly from/into the present.

3. This is a creative problem that can be solved. The right way through is confusion → curiousity → purposive understanding → purposive action → discovery.

4. Talking and writing clearly about this is like therapy 😇

5. Periods of liminality - where old certainty is lost but the new one is not ready, are also the periods of profound genius. A great parallel to our times existed in remote history, what philosopher Karl Jaspers called ‘The Axial Age’, a revolutionary period of global human thought from 800 to 200 BCE in which “the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today.”

6. Many material transformations contributed to the advent of this paradigmatic philosophical age - great cities were born, coinage was introduced on scale, market emerged as an idea, the overall level of complexity of life could not be meaningfully processes in old forms of thought. Hence axial age philosophies rose to answer new grand questions of life that made people feel unimportant. All of these philosophies rose to a level of monumental universalism in their own unique ways.

7. In our own times, complexity is at a threshold when mental models of our existence are being acutely tested and will soon give way. In a philosophical sense development of internet is profound, its alchemical properties for transforming human thought and behavior are endless. It is no longer an appendage to our reality but very much the mode of our commonsensical existence. The emerging constellation of technologies - “the most disruptive and far-reaching transformations of human civilization — redesigning the genome and creating intelligent machines — are no longer science fiction fantasies but materializing reality.”

8. Compared to what we have now, the raw material on which Axial Age acted was like a little baby. We are indeed at the beginning of a new paradigmatic age - the Abhinav Age.

9. This is not a prologue to a metatheory of history, it is merely to clarify my basic sentiment that what our solutions now can not be derived merely from a permutation and combination of the old - we must seek radical novelty while of course repurposing whatever is useful.

10. What I mean by Abhinav (meaning ‘new’ in Sanskrit) is better understood by associating it with the following words - Renaissance, Rejuvenation, Infinity, Space, Frontier, Dharma. All of these themes will be explored later.

11. ∆ → Abhinav, ∆ → Age. The Greek letter ∆ stands for change. Welcome!