Introduction 

When I began working on this paper, I wanted to write a general survey of the Infinity Foundation (IF). I soon found, however, that I would end up with more questions than answers, and that I would be most interested in the writings of Rajiv Malhotra, the most vocal member of the group and its de facto leader. In a way, this concentration on an individual trustee of IF is problematic, because, as Mr. Malhotra writes, “…one must see IF as separate from any individuals’ ideas,” but, in a way, it is also useful, because, as Mr. Malhotra writes, “…there isn’t necessarily such a thing as ‘IF’s position on item X or Y.’”[1] While working on this project, I was reminded, both by Mr. Malhotra and Professor Hawley, of my own subtle biases and limitations. Nonetheless, my questions, questions about context, about the rules of cultural investigation, about who writes those rules and who plays by them, are valid questions.

In the original version of this paper, I began by highlighting Mr. Malhotra’s personal wealth, for which, it is true, I had and still have no evidence. The point of this statement was not to detract from Mr. Malhotra’s credibility, but to supply a possible reason for what IF itself perceives as the academic community’s negative feelings toward IF.[2] The same goes for the statement that Mr. Malhotra does not have an academic background in the humanities.

            I never saw either of these factors as shortcomings on the part of Mr. Malhotra or IF. The relationships between money, power, and knowledge operate in the same ways, regardless of whether they are in the context of the academy or of IF. Questions about sources of financial support and the influence of these sources on intellectual product can be asked of both sides, and it is not accurate to say that one side is always more powerful than the other.[3] Laurie Patton writes,

…the power balance is constantly shifting; hence the need for constant mutual correction within a lifelong companionship. There will be the power of the one who can afford to visit a country vs. the one who cannot afford the plane ticket; there will be the power of the funder vs. the relatively controlled position of the funded; the power of the one who has better library resources vs. the one who cannot gather the basic texts necessary for research.[4]

 

            This “constant mutual correction” is central to my project, which examines the relationships between the academics who study Hinduism and the subjects they study, when those subjects attempt to obtain agency in the world of the academics themselves, specifically in the case of Mr. Malhotra and IF. The paper will also examine these same relationships in reverse, to examine what happens when Indian, especially Hindu, individuals start to feel that Western scholarship has worn out its welcome in Indic studies, as if it somehow needs an invitation to stay.

 

Infinity Foundation – Origins and Principles[5]

Mr. Malhotra immigrated to the United States from India in 1971 and worked in the computer and telecom industries for many years before retiring in 1999 to work full-time with IF, which he created in the mid-1990s.^[6] Now, IF has several independent trustees who work with Mr. Malhotra to fulfill IF’s dual mission of Wisdom and Compassion.

According to its trustees, IF is not an ideological body; it is a think-tank devoted to looking at issues from a global and/or Indic perspective. IF exists to counteract the treatment of Indic civilization and Indic ideas by Western academics until now, and to evaluate, as well as correct, the manner in which Indic studies are conducted in Western schools. These are part of a phenomenon that IF calls “Westology,” in which the West looks at India through the lens of “Indology.” IF’s philosophy is that, similarly, the West ought to be looked at through the “Indic” lens. To that end, IF sees itself as “a place where substantial intellectual capital is being developed to have a global impact,” via the organization of colloquia and the publishing of literature about Indic traditions.[7]

            In fact, IF uses the word “Indic” rather than the word “Hindu” because IF, in its own words, is neither a religious movement nor a temple, and because “Indic” is more inclusive than “Hindu.” Mr. Malhotra writes, “The Indic family consists mainly of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.”[8] Here Mr. Malhotra describes the Indic family of religions; in its study of Indic traditions, IF does not discount the contributions of Muslims and of Islam.

IF is also not a political organization; it is averse to political involvement because it does not want to be held subject to changes of power. IF is not a subsidiary of any organization; it sees itself, again, in its own words, as an association of several self-made individuals, who are free to hold conflicting points of view. IF chooses to be independent in terms of its funding, which comes from private donations, lest it be beholden to any one organization or ideology. The one duty IF is obliged to perform is to accomplish its original objectives of Wisdom and Compassion.

The Compassion wing of IF carries out philanthropical efforts. For example, IF does a lot of work with AIDS. The interest in AIDS began when Mr. Malhotra himself was a volunteer working with AIDS patients in New Jersey. It was during that time that he did some research on the disease and learned about the imminent enormous AIDS epidemic in India. He contacted the Indian Embassy and the Indian Consulate, but no one seemed interested in helping. Then he saw in a newspaper that when Richard Gere became involved, people became interested, while Mr. Malhotra had put in so much effort just to find out to whom to give money. This incident resulted in the idea for IF.

Under Mr. Malhotra, IF has donated money to homeless, animal’s, and women’s shelters. However, IF does not hand out money arbitrarily. After the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, IF gave money to the Red Cross and started a matching fund that eventually raised several hundred thousand dollars. The reason that IF chose the Red Cross was that it is truly a neutral organization in India. Another group assisted by IF is the village of Auroville, in Tamil Nadu. At Auroville, Mr. Malhotra was impressed by the efforts of French, Indian, and American workers to empower villagers rather than abusing, blaming, or attempting to eradicate their native culture. IF maintains that, with its help, the decentralized Auroville has been able to remain self-sufficient and modern, without sacrificing tradition. This principle is important to IF. Mr. Malhotra writes,

Madhu Kishwar describes in her talks how Western funded NGO feminists failed to make any dent in reforming rural property ownership biases against women, but that different movements run entirely using Indic principles and metaphors were very successful. The Swadhyaya movement is another great example of large scale reform, from within the culture, that is strengthening the indigenous knowledge systems rather than strengthening neocolonialism. There are also numerous successful examples of the practical use of traditional knowledge systems in areas such as water harvesting. [9]

 

In general, the Compassion sector of IF is opportunity-driven; whenever IF gets a chance to help, it does.

            The Wisdom wing requires IF to play a more proactive role. IF believes that Indic civilization is underrepresented and misrepresented in the West. Mr. Malhotra visited several philosophy departments around the country and was told that “there is no such thing as Indian philosophy,” and that “nothing east of Athens has any value,” before coming to this conclusion.[10] IF feels it is obvious that Eastern thought has entered Western thought in several prominent ways, be it in psychiatry, in physics, or in philosophy. However, IF also finds that this contribution by the East is often left unacknowledged.

Mr. Malhotra gave the example of Steven LaBerge of the Lucid Dreaming Institute. When confronted by Mr. Malhotra, Mr. LaBerge admitted to having studied with Indian swamis, but said he did not mention this in his lectures because it did not seem appropriate and did not matter. He also replied that in hiding his Indian sources, he maintained his funding credibility. It is precisely these kinds of behaviors and double standards, whereby respectable Western academics use Indic ideas to enhance their scholarly careers but then exotify those same notions, that the trustees of IF find so compelling.

            Thus, IF sees the views of non-Westerners as being marginalized in the West. Mr. Malhotra says that “Westology” is to study and document in a very authentic scholarly way; he also feels that the West is where power is and that therefore, the West should be understood. However, he does not believe that one can know the West from within itself, because it is biased and chauvinistic.

IF sees the intellectual situation in India as similarly problematic, with its polarization of left and right. According to IF, the right, the Hindutva subscribers, have made too much out of the Ayodhya issue, furthering this polarization. This right wing ignores more pressing issues, such as community development, and its leaders are shallow. So IF distances itself from this side of Indian politics. Mr. Malhotra also takes Ralph Nader, before he entered politics, as an example, and thus steers IF away from the left as well. He does not want IF to become a contender; if IF had a political “stake,” Mr. Malhotra believes that it would not be able to maintain its quality of thought. This is the mistake he says Nader made. When Nader turned his think-tank into a political organization, he removed it from its original mission. According to Mr. Malhotra, before Nader became a political entity, he commanded such respect that people on all sides would take his thoughts into consideration. Mr. Malhotra wants IF to have a similar level of credibility, so that no matter where people are on the political spectrum, they can place confidence in the intellectual product of IF.

IF believes that in the Indian left, Nehruvian secularism has taken a serious toll on Indian scholarship of Indian Classics. Rajiv Malhotra cites Ronald Inden’s explanation of this episode in the history of Indian academics.[11] Inden writes,

 

Nehru's India was supposed to be committed to “secularism”. The idea here in its weaker publicly reiterated form was that the government would not interfere in “personal” religious matters and would create circumstances in which people of all religions could live in harmony. The idea in its stronger, unofficially stated form was that in order to modernize, India would have to set aside centuries of traditional religious ignorance and superstition and eventually eliminate Hinduism and Islam from people's lives altogether. After Independence, governments implemented secularism mostly by refusing to recognize the religious pasts of Indian nationalism, whether Hindu or Muslim, and at the same time (inconsistently) by retaining Muslim “personal law”.[12]

 

The way IF sees the problem with Nehruvian secularism is that here in the US, at university, the works of the ancient Greeks are proudly taught as the origins of our intellectual tradition, and no one holds back the Classics for their chauvinism, but in India, this same teaching of the Indian past was denied for several decades because it was seen as nonprogressive, as the result of Nehruvian ideals.

            Mr. Malhotra gave an interesting example as proof of this and as a justification for the existence of IF. He told us that when he suggested yoga be taught in schools in India, he was accused of being saffron. In his words, when he got a few white people involved, the white people were surprised that Indians had not taken up the study of this great native tradition on their own, and when Indians saw big white names involved, they eventually came around, despite the initial scandal. For Mr. Malhotra and IF, this has been the lasting influence of colonialism on the Indian mind; Indians have been so ashamed of their own traditions.

            The nexus of this relationship between power and knowledge is what Mr. Malhotra sees in the world as a “marketplace of knowledge,” in which there is control over the production and distribution of knowledge, especially where the social sciences are concerned. He feels that standards of objectivity in these areas are not as stringent as in other academic fields. Also, IF is uncomfortable with the fact that the human subjects studied in the Indic sphere are never given a chance to respond to what is written about them. This is a key issue taken up by IF: the right to respond.

            The final duty of the “Wisdom” arm of IF is funding courses at the university level and organizing conferences. This has been carried out successfully at several universities and in both India and the US. IF is currently organizing a conference in India in an attempt to legitimize academic religious studies in India.

            However, IF will continue to stay out of Indian politics, as well as away from political involvement in this country. Mr. Malhotra feels that successful NRIs have put too much money toward temple development and political fundraising, rather than attempting a serious engagement of their own culture. On the other hand, many NRIs have told Mr. Malhotra that his efforts in this capacity are unnecessary and rude. Nonetheless, Mr. Malhotra strongly believes in the mission of IF.

            He and his board members are especially passionate because they feel that their religion is the only major world religion whose academic study is controlled by outsiders in funding, in teaching, and in research. They do not see Hindus teaching Hinduism at the university level, at least not ones who will admit they are Hindu. At the most basic level of IF’s thinking is this division between East and West. Jayant Kalawar, one of the trustees of IF, epitomizes this viewpoint to IF’s philosophy when he says, “Why does the issue of diversity seem like a revelation for the Western mindset?”^[13] There is very clearly here a delineation of an Eastern mode of thought and a Western mode of thought.

           

Our Experience with the Infinity Foundation

I was surprised by the trustees’ insistence that we call them by their first names and by their friendly informality. The most impressive aspect of the Foundation to date has been the eagerness of its trustees. Before the IF trustees even knew which students would be assigned to study the Foundation, Rajiv had corresponded with Professor Hawley about the details of the course and had distributed the course syllabus among the trustees. When we first spoke to them, they were bursting with questions about the class and were obviously thrilled at the prospect of a class dedicated solely to the topic they themselves so ardently care about. Even when inclement weather prevented our meeting them, the Foundation trustees took the initiative and arranged a conference call, which lasted for over three hours.

The trustees are so enthusiastic, in fact, that they are willing to give the time to review every piece of literature written about them and respond to it. They asked us to forward them any writing of ours that mentions them before it is to be seen by others, not to edit or alter our work, but to add and respond to it if they saw fit. The way IF explains this is that IF does not try to appropriate editorial rights over the work of others, but merely asks a chance to answer any criticisms or to correct any false claims presented therein. While this makes working with IF frustrating, IF should not be seen as any less scrupulous, at least not in this aspect, than the academic community with which it seeks to communicate.

          My general impression of IF is that its intentions and goal are honorable, and that it tries, at least in the scholarship it funds, to maintain high standards. For example, IF would not try to use the example of the pushpak vimaan, an example that cannot be substantiated, as proof of the advanced state of ancient Indian engineering.[14] IF and all of its trustees need to be careful that such standards are maintained, lest all this work be done in vain.

The Infinity Foundation, Business, and Engineering

            Since all the trustees of IF, as well as its founder, hail from the business world, it is no surprise that IF often conducts its intellectual work in business-like terms. This phenomenon extends to several participants on the website www.sulekha.com, on which many of the IF trustees post their work. There we see the growing trend amongst Indians to investigate the representation of their culture in the academic setting and to respond to this portrayal; this phenomenon itself reflects the precedents set by IF in many ways. Swami Tyagananda further explains the growth of this movement in the Diaspora when he writes, “In India…religious studies as an academic pursuit outside of a visibly religious environment hasn’t developed yet. Since this context doesn’t exist there, many Hindus are offended when they feel that their tradition is being distorted.”[15]

The influence of business on IF’s phraseology is clearly visible when Mr. Malhotra describes the “marketplace of knowledge” in which IF seeks to participate.[16] This influence is also apparent when IF is described as “a place where substantial intellectual capital is being developed to have a global impact.”[17]

In an article on proselytizaton fittingly titled “An Unholy Business,” Mr. Malhotra writes, “Religions are often becoming commercial ‘brands’ competing for market share, selling both God's love and insurance from hell.”^[18] In India, Christianity is a major force among these competitors, as “…there are estimated to be 100,000 career Christian missionaries in India, a size several times the sales force of the largest Indian corporations.”^[19] The Christian Western academics, whom IF sees as misrepresenting Hinduism, are compared to this competitor religion when they are described as “…[going] out of their way to control positions in academics, to research and to teach about Hinduism, as a sort of competitor intelligence gathering which seeks hegemony.”^[20] Finally, Mr. Malhotra offers as proof of the colonial and antiquated nature of conversion the fact that “…economic progress in Europe happened only when the hold of the Vatican was reduced.”^[21] He says, “Every marketing company, despite its firm belief that it has the "best" or even only "true" product, must comply with norms of fair competition. …There must exist certain ethics of "marketing" religion, and rules of fair competition.”^[22]

These ideas of globalism, market shares, and intellectual capital have spread to IF’s contacts. When Mr. Malhotra created a stir about what many Indians see as the pro-Pakistan bias of CNN, he did it on Sulekha.com. In response, Satya Prabhakar, the President and CEO of Sulekha.com, said, "Sulekha is proud to be the forum that galvanises global Indian opinion around issues of interest. The Internet is uniquely capable of enabling effective distributed co-ordination. We are glad that Sulekha.com's twin rallying cries of statement and interaction are helping build the social capital of the global Indian community." ^[23]

Rajeev Srinivasan, a columnist on www.rediff.com, describes this intellectual revolution being fomented in the minds of Indian engineers in his article “Fear of Engineering.” Writing about the controversy over RISA, Wendy Doniger, and Kali’s Child as seen on Sulekha.com, Mr. Srinivasan writes, “…the bulk of the respondents were NRI engineers, as they are most comfortable with the Internet and e-discussions…technologists, who have to deal with the complexities of the real world, are intellectually equipped to debate humanities people even in their own specialties.”^[24]  Mr. Srinivasan’s sentiments directly parallel IF’s discomfort with what it sees as lax standards of objectivity in the social sciences[25] when he writes, “…the natural sciences deal with immutable laws of nature, whereas the humanities deal with man-made laws, which are generally not based on fact, but on opinion.”^[26] Engineers and scientists like Mr. Srinivasan see themselves as coming forward to clean up these humanities and make them more like the quantitative sciences. As Swami Tyagananda writes,

Some in the Western academy see the “faith” of practicing Hindus as a blind, unquestioned acceptance of personalities and events. This is often due to predetermined academic or religious views held by some scholars. On their part, many Hindus see academic study as equally faith-driven: unquestioned faith in certain methods of research and total reliance on certain theories, often with little firsthand acquaintance with the living tradition.[27]

 

The general consensus of this body of Indian scientists is, as Mr. Srinivasan says, that “the liberal arts [have become] monotheistic cults regurgitating received wisdom from Beijing, the Vatican, Deoband or Chicago.”^[28] Srinivasan describes part of IF’s struggle to be taken seriously by those whom it seeks to impress with its research when he writes of the general notion held by Amitav Ghosh that “…a lot of fundamentalists are engineers with banal ideas about religion.”^[29]

            Mr. Srinivasan focuses on the Indian left when he writes, “It bothers the JNU types that many of those challenging both their cherished shibboleths and their neo-colonialist processes are engineers and computer scientists. For example, N S Rajaram, Subhash Kak, Rajiv Malhotra.”^[30] This view is similar to IF’s opinion of the Indian left. Srinivasan goes to on to equate the Indian left with the American intelligentsia, writing, “I am struck by the equivalence between Romila Thapar and her brood and Wendy Doniger and hers.”^[31] He describes Doniger and her “band of acolytes” as having “a strangle-hold on the academic representation of Hinduism.”^[32] Mr. Srinivasan writes that they and other academics refuse to accept that actual believers in Hinduism could have something valid to say on that issue. IF also sees it this way, but whether that refusal actually exists is another question.       

 

IF and the Media and Politics

            IF says that it is uninterested in politics, but one wonders whether IF considers how its research could be used by politicians. In the past, Mr. Malhotra’s work has certainly been used politically, but in an international, rather than partisan, sense.

            When Mr. Malhotra and others sensed that CNN’s post-9/11 coverage had a strong pro-Pakistan bias, an article by Mr. Malhotra at Sulekha.com and a petition drafted by Kris Chandrasekar, resulted in their meeting with CNN executives in Atlanta. This was the culmination of what is described as a “global campaign against CNN” which commenced in Mr. Malhotra’s Sulekha.com column illustrating CNN’s bias in favor of Pakistan. In this article, Mr. Malhotra points out that by calling Pervez Musharraf a “President,” CNN accords a military dictator the validity of an elected official. He also finds fault with CNN’s use of the word “militants” to describe Pakistanis in Kashmir when they use the word “terrorists” to describe people who carry out the same activities in other parts of the world.^[33]

            Following the online publication of this article, Mr. Chandrasekar wrote his online petition in support of Mr. Malhotra’s viewpoint. How strong was the response to his petition? It took fewer than ten days for 55,000 people to sign it.^[34]

IF and Women

            Another question on the minds of many who deal with IF is whether its frustrations are part of the backlash of upper-class, upper-caste Indians, who are starting to react to decades of what they see as oppressive quotas favoring the scheduled castes. One of the battles IF is currently participating in is about the representation of women in Hinduism by Western scholars. IF takes the view that the West focuses too much on the negatives for Hindu women and ignores the positives.

            However, in reading a review of an IF article about women in India by a writer on the Dalit E-Forum, one finds that not all Indians agree with this statement by IF. Dr. K. Jamanadas writes in response to Madhu Kishwar’s “Traditional Female Moral Exemplars in India,” which appeared in an issue of Education about Asia that was designed and given subvention by IF.

            Dr. Jamanadas begins his criticism writing, “Coming from the propagators of "Women's Rights", the article makes a sad reading. No where it depicts the ignoble life Indian women had to suffer for centuries; on the contrary it tries to glorify the devis, the female deities, to show the presumed greatness in their own humiliations.”[35] Dr. Jamanadas finds that the article deals with women’s issues in India only superficially and via distortions of the actual situation in India today. He says the article “…concentrates on non-issues just to praise assumed greatness of Brahminic culture about women. If one can not know the ailment, how can one carry on mission of liberating Indian women, I wonder.”[36]

            Dr. Jamanadas writes that in the “Dalitbhujan mind,” Savitribai is the first example of an unyielding fighter for women’s rights, not Saraswati. As far as he can tell, Saraswati, on the other hand, “remains a tool in the hands of her husband, Brahma. She becomes delicate because Brahma wants her to be delicate.” She works for only the amusement of her husband and thus is a perpetrator of an oppressive Hindu culture.[37]

Dr. Jamanadas also finds fault with the Manu Smriti, which he describes as recommending that “…women should be under care of father, husband or son and never independent. And also that the father who does not marry his daughter before age of eight, goes to hell.”[38] At this point, one has to wonder what motivates Dr. Jamanadas, since he goes on to describe these restrictions as attractive hooks used to pull people away from Buddhism, a religion that many Dalits today champion. Professor Hawley also points out that the demonization of Brahmins is as much a problem for consideration as the oppression of Dalits.

In any case, it is clear that knowledge here is seen as being split along caste lines. The Dalit writer prefers Buddhism and Dr. Ambedkar as his heroes, while the IF writer favors Hinduism and Saraswati. While the IF writer makes a point in saying that Hindus worship female deities as well as male ones, the Dalit writer, discussing the treatment of women in the real world, has a relevant point in illustrating a system of oppression maintained by this pantheon and in showing that the IF writer glosses over the everyday problems of women in India.

 

IF and the Kali’s Child Controversy

            I have to admit that I did find much of Jeffrey Kripal’s Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna shocking, not because I was offended by its thesis, but because of the scandalous amount of sex involved. I also have to admit that I do not know enough about Ramakrishna or about the Bengali language to rebut the theories of Kripal or the criticisms of Kripal made by Mr. Malhotra in his article, “Risa Lila – 1: Wendy’s Child Syndrome.”

            The sheer volume of textual references provided by Kripal makes his claims seem, to me, largely irrefutable. Whether he really writes out of “sympathy,”[39] however, is questionable. For the most part, I do find myself believing Kripal’s claims of writing as a friend. He certainly tries to stay moderate. Kripal writes,

In short, from the perspective of the public, Ramakrishna’s ability to ‘steal’ the boys constituted a problem, and his sexual behavior mounted to a scandal. The words of an anonymous boatman capture both aspects of the public reaction: “What a sham this is! He eats well, lounges on cushions, and under the guise of religion ruins so many school boys!” (LP 5.7.20)

            He “ruins so many school boys.” The phrase carries both a sexual scandal and a social problem.[40]

 

Kripal never accuses Ramakrishna of being a child molester, in our terms, but it is implied here, although barely, as if Kripal does not really want to transplant this case into our world for our judgment.

            So does Kripal portray Ramakrishna as a sexually-abused homosexual child molester, as Mr. Malhotra alleges?[41] The answer, I think, is yes. Does Kripal make Ramakrishna out to be a monster? The answer, I think, is no. Does Kripal sometimes stretch his interpretations? Probably. For example, is it really significant that Mahendranath Gupta’s last name itself means “the Hidden”?[42] Is it right for Kripal to write, as Mr. Malhotra points out in his article, “One can only imagine what it must have been like for Ramakrishna…to be shut away for days in a small hut with another, stark-naked man…[I]t was this man’s nudity, and more specifically, his penis, that naturally caught Ramakrishna’s attention. How could it not?”[43]

As far as Wendy Doniger is concerned, I do not have much of a sense of her from the readings I’ve done for this project. I can see why many practitioners would see her as abrasive; she sees sex, something most practitioners would deny as part of their practice, as part of the “charm” of Kripal’s dissertation.[44] Swami Tyagananda writes of her anthology of the Rig-veda, “…those who are familiar with the contents of the complete Rig-veda find her selection quirky and offensive.[45] Whether such quirks are the result of an overemphasis on the “sexual deviance” of Hindu society, as Mr. Malhotra suggests[46], or just a natural separation along the “scholar/practitioner divide” described by Swami Tyagananda[47], I do not know.

 

How Indians Perceive the Study of India

After the publication of an article on the Harappan Horse Fraud, one man threatened in an email, “We all expect civility and good manners. However, the Indian practice of being civil to every visitor is incumbent on the visitor/guest being civil and decent. If not, the bilateral code of conduct is to be broken. Krishna kept on listening to the abuse of Sishupal only that far. After that it was time to take out the sudarshan chakra."[48] The Warring States Project website[49], on which this email is posted, goes on to explain that a sudarshan chakra is “a disk thrown to cut off someone's head,” the implication, of course, being that when we Indians have finally had enough of Western scholarship, off with their heads.

In its response to this email, the Warring States Project writes,

The notion that foreign scholarship, when it does not simply serve as a guest of, and retail mechanism for, native scholarship, is a defilement of native tradition, is one that, unhappily, will be familiar to members of the international Sinological and Japanological communities. We would remind all parties, and all observers, that the facts of history are not the property of any one tradition, and that the great traditions in particular, precisely because of their greatness, have a world posterity, not merely a local posterity.^[50]

 

This statement could also be applied to those defenders of native culture who seem to be unhappy whenever Indic traditions are portrayed in a negative light, although not necessarily to IF. What IF should—and I suspect, does—keep in mind in all of this would be, as Edwin F. Bryant writes, “Two wrongs do not make a right: European racism and elitism cannot be replaced by Hindu chauvinism. History cannot be written by decibel.”[51] Yet it should be acknowledged that IF does have valid contributions to make in the field of Indic studies, especially when it comes to balancing emic and etic scholarship. IF’s commitment to creating an awareness of religious and Sanskritic studies in India demonstrates its dedication to effecting change in this sense.

The dichotomies that must be bridged in order to promote an overall better understanding and investigation of Indic traditions are poles created and maintained by members of both IF and the Western academy. The worlds of business and academics, of humanities and science, of ideas and politics, and of wisdom and compassion should not, after all, be so far apart.