36 Facts About Rajiv Malhotra

Apart from the foundation, Malhotra promotes a Hindu nationalist view of Indic cultures.

Rajiv Malhotra has written prolifically in opposition to the western academic study of Indian culture and society, which he maintains denigrates the tradition and undermines the interests of India "by encouraging the paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity".

Rajiv Malhotra studied physics at St Stephen's College, Delhi and computer science at Syracuse University before becoming an entrepreneur in the information technology and media industries.

Rajiv Malhotra retired early in 1994 aged 44, to establish the Infinity Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1995.

Rajiv Malhotra had been a speaker at an international conference held over the Center for Indic Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and was a board member of the Foundation for Indic Philosophy and Culture at the Claremont Colleges.

Rajiv Malhotra wrote extensively on internet discussion groups and e-magazines.

In October 2018, Rajiv Malhotra was appointed an honorary visiting professor at the Centre for Media Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

Rajiv Malhotra founded the institute in 1994; followed by Educational Council of Indic Traditions in 2000.

In early 2000s Rajiv Malhotra started writing articles criticising Wendy Doniger and related scholars, claiming that she applied Freudian psycho-analysis to aspects of Indian culture.

Rajiv Malhotra said "the drama has diverted attention away from the substantive errors in her scholarship to be really about being an issue of censorship by radical Hindus", hence the republication of his critique of Wendy Doniger and scholars related to her.

Rajiv Malhotra says Western scholars focus on the "sensationalist, negative attributes of religion and present it in a demeaning way that shows a lack of respect for the sentiments of the practitioners of the religion".

Rajiv Malhotra argues that American scholarship has undermined India "by encouraging the paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity", with scholars playing critical roles, often under the garb of 'human rights' in channeling foreign intellectual and material support to exacerbate India's internal fault lines.

Rajiv Malhotra compares the defence of Indian interests with corporate brand management, distrusting the loyalties of Indian scholars.

Rajiv Malhotra has accused academia of abetting the "Talibanisation" of India, which would lead to the radicalisation of other Asian countries.

Rajiv Malhotra posits that the Western appropriation of Indic ideas and knowledge systems has a long history.

Rajiv Malhotra then goes on to show how the appropriation occurs in several stages:.

Some examples Rajiv Malhotra cites are William James and his work The Varieties of Religious Experience ; Aldous Huxley and his work The Perennial Philosophy ; and the notion of involution in the works of Ken Wilber, a term which Vivekananda probably took from western Theosophists, notably Helena Blavatsky, in addition to Darwin's notion of evolution, and possibly referring to the Samkhya term satkarya.

Rajiv Malhotra believes that the practice of a distorted version of Yoga, Christian Yoga, is not only inimical but detrimental to Christianity's fundamental principles and doctrines.

Rajiv Malhotra indicates that this is a very fundamental contradiction of the doctrines of Original sin and Nicene Creed.

Rajiv Malhotra adds that internalized taboos, social prejudices, and all stereotypes of Dharmic culture and Hinduism in particular, act as a filter in the interpretation of Dharmic traditions, such as Yoga and meditation to create varied responses to Yoga.

Furthermore, Rajiv Malhotra cites a survey research conducted by the Yoga practitioners in the West shows that those who attained a sense of self-directed awareness, are less likely to identify as "Christians" or any dogma based religions, and more likely identified to be with Dharmic religions such as, Buddhists, or, contrary to that as Spiritual but not religious.

Rajiv Malhotra's book Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines discusses three faultlines trying to destabilise India:.

Rajiv Malhotra intends to give an Indian view on India and the west, as characterised by the Indian Dharmic traditions.

Rajiv Malhotra argues that there are irreconcilable differences between Dharmic traditions and Abrahamic religions.

The book uses Indra's Net as a metaphor for the understanding of the universe as a web of connections and interdependences, an understanding which Rajiv Malhotra wants to revive as the foundation for Vedic cosmology, a perspective that he asserts has "always been implicit" in the outlook of the ordinary Hindu.

Rajiv Malhotra says that Nicholson failed to attribute his ideas to the original sources and explains that the unity of Hinduism is inherent in the tradition from the times of its Vedic origins.

Rajiv Malhotra pleads for traditional Indian scholars to write responses to Pollock's views, who takes a critical stance toward the role of Sanskrit in traditional views on Indian society.

Rajiv Malhotra is critical of Pollock's approach, and argues that western Indology scholars are deliberately intervening in Indian societies by offering analyses of Sanskrit texts which would be rejected by "traditional Indian experts".

Sanskrit Non-Translatables, a book by Rajiv Malhotra published in 2020 and coauthored by Satyanarayana Dasa, deals with the idea of Sanskritizing the English language and enriching it with powerful Sanskrit words.

Scholars have widely recognized that Rajiv Malhotra has been influential in articulating diaspora and conservative dissatisfaction with the Western world's scholarly study of Hinduism.

Prema A Kurien considers Malhotra to be at "the forefront of American Hindu effort to challenge the Eurocentrism in academia".

Rajiv Malhotra claimed on social media in August 2020 that he spoke out against Wikipedia in the 1990s in a talk in Auroville that was posted in their magazine, when the portal sought Indian users for donations.

In November 2022, Google cancelled Rajiv Malhotra's talk at its headquarters after receiving complaints about his views on homosexuality and Islam.

Nicholson who authored Unifying Hinduism, alleged Rajiv Malhotra had plagiarized Unifying Hinduism in Indra's Net.

Rajiv Malhotra announced that he would be eliminating all references to Nicholson and further explained:.

Rajiv Malhotra published a rebuttal and stated that he had removed all references to Nicholson's works in chapter 8 of Indra's Net, replacing them with references to the original Indian sources.