Being Different : An Different Challenge To Western Universalism
Being Different : An Different Challenge To Western Universalism
Paperback
Rs 1040
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About the Book
India is more than a nation state. It is also a unique civilization with philosophies and cosmology that are markedly different from the dominant culture of our times - the West. Indian spiritual tradition spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in Western frameworks. Unfortunately, in the rush to celebrate the growing popularity of India on the world stage, its civilizational matrix is being co-opted into Western universalism, thereby diluting its distinctiveness and potential.
In Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, thinker and philosopher Rajiv Malhotra addresses the challenge of a direct and honest engagement on differences by reversing the gaze, repositioning India from being the observed to the observer and looking at the West from the Dharmic point of view. In doing so, he challenges many hitherto unexamined beliefs that both sides hold about themselves and each other. He highlights that while unique historical revelations are the basis for Western religions, dharma emphasizes self-realization in the body here and now. He also points out the integral unity that underpins dharma's metaphysics and contrasts this with Western thought and history as a synthetic unity.
Erudite and engaging, Being Different critiques fashionable reductive translations and analyzes the West's anxiety over difference and fixation for order which contrast the creative role of chaos in dharma. It concludes with a rebuttal of Western claims of universalism, while recommending a multi-civilizational world view.
In Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, thinker and philosopher Rajiv Malhotra addresses the challenge of a direct and honest engagement on differences by reversing the gaze, repositioning India from being the observed to the observer and looking at the West from the Dharmic point of view. In doing so, he challenges many hitherto unexamined beliefs that both sides hold about themselves and each other. He highlights that while unique historical revelations are the basis for Western religions, dharma emphasizes self-realization in the body here and now. He also points out the integral unity that underpins dharma's metaphysics and contrasts this with Western thought and history as a synthetic unity.
Erudite and engaging, Being Different critiques fashionable reductive translations and analyzes the West's anxiety over difference and fixation for order which contrast the creative role of chaos in dharma. It concludes with a rebuttal of Western claims of universalism, while recommending a multi-civilizational world view.
All Editions
Paperback, 3rd Edition
ISBN13: 9789351160502
HarperCollins India, 2015
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