Maintaining the Ideal of Dharma in our Tradition: Nyaya
Ours is a knowledge-based tradition. At the core of our tradition lies the uncompromising pursuit of truth and the striving to obtain the highest knowledge, which confers liberation on the soul. It takes two steps to fully understand an object: first, we have to make sure that our understanding matches the Pramaana that applies to that object; second, we have to get rid of any doubts that keep us from fully understanding the object’s truth so that the knowledge attains stability and certainty. As long as doubts remain, knowledge is not complete.
The entire process is an intellectual churning that goes by the name of Nyaya or Tarka. Its form is in the nature of a discourse aimed at knowing, or establishing in the public domain, the truth of an object in a veridical manner. We simply call it ‘Tarka’ when we apply reasoning to knowing the truth of a general linguistic proposition. We call it ‘Mimamsa’ when we apply it to understanding Vedic-vakhya meanings. Tarka, or Nyaya, is at the heart of our intellectual tradition. It is the intellectual discourse by which the tradition upholds Truth and Dharma in our society. Today our tradition has become cocooned within its own narrow circle, far removed from the religious needs of the contemporary Hindu. It has thus lost the vigour and vibrancy that it once had that made our country and our civilisation the centres of learning in the entire world.
Why Our Tradition Has Lost Its Relevancy
Today, teaching about Hinduism has become synonymous with teaching Vedanta. But Vedanta is Nivritti Dharma. It is applicable to only a few people, i.e., to the mumukshus whose desires for the world have burnt out, as it were, whereas the educational needs of the vast majority of Hindus who are qualified only for Pravritti Dharma are being entirely ignored. What is left of our tradition has absolved itself of its crucial responsibility of educating the vast majority of Hindus about the Dharma that is applicable to them, i.e., Pravritti Dharma or Dharma with regard to human action.
We are thus left with a situation where Hindus (and even the Supreme Court of India) utter inane, banal, and cliched platitudes like “Hinduism is a way of life” without anyone being able to even articulate what this way of life is. In such a barren land, where our tradition fails to teach the Hindu majority their Dharma, how can missionaries be blamed for converting our people? We must first address our own issues before confronting anyone else.Meanwhile, while our tradition is stuck in clearing old doubts and busy teaching Vedanta instead of Dharma with respect to action, the discourse on Hinduism shifted to the West.
The discourse on Hinduism has to be brought back to India, where it belongs. Our Shastras are given to us for us, Hindus, to know about our Dharma; they are not meant for teaching the West or the Americans about our Dharma. Our Shastras are based on the apaurusheya Veda and are hence self-established and self-validated. They do not need the validation of the West or the West Academy when there is a basic incommensurability of the paradigms. Bringing back the discourse on Hinduism to India will serve as a means to restore the ideal of Dharma in our society.
The Role of Nyaya
“The discussion of the meaning of the Vedic sentences is the main object of Mimamsa. These two vidyas, Mimamsa and Nyaya, have different functions. Mimamsa is known as Vakhyarthavidya (i.e., it deals with the meanings of Vedic sentences) but not as Pramanavidya (which deals with the means of valid knowledge).”
“The Nyaya-shastra is the main pillar of all the systems because it is the means to establish the authority of the Vedas. “
(Nyaya Manjari, Jayanta Bhatta)
What does Nyaya Shastra mean in our context? It is not a speculative philosophy, nor a philosophy made by system builders, as Karl Potter says. It is a Vedic Darshana having its birth in the knowledge contained in the Vedas. Each of our Darshanas adopts Nyaya in the context of challenging the Western tradition. The disagreement between our own schools on some finer nuances is part of the vibrancy of our tradition. They all have their common foundation in the Veda, in Pramaana Shastra (epistemology), and in sabdartha (padartha or meaning of words and objects). The ideas generated by the contemporary Western tradition are contrary to the spirit and foundational elements of our tradition. The revival of Tarka tradition ensures Avirodha (consistency) to our own tradition.
The Revival of The Tradition of Tarka
The West treats our philosophies as archaeological relics while it treats its own philosophies as a living tradition. Indian philosophy has been known to the West for at least 300 years. Since the beginning of the 20th century, scholars have translated the key texts of most Darshanas into English. But philosophy papers and philosophy books written in the West do not mention Indian philosophy or any Indian philosopher even with regard to topics on which India has had a rich philosophical past and the West has had none. Instead, we find attempts to trace the ideas to some scant references (often limited to a vague paragraph) in some old Western philosophy text.
At the same time, just next door to the philosophy departments of the Western Academia, enormous effort and money are invested to study Indian texts in departments bearing titles such as ‘Indology’ or ‘Indic Studies.’ The West employs Indian philosophy as a rich source of ideas to uphold its own tradition as a dynamic force, exemplified by Ferdinand De Saussure, while simultaneously attempting to eradicate Indian philosophy by treating it as a mere archaeological relic from the past.
In our tradition, we view the study of shastras as an obligation we owe to the Rishis. The West, on the other hand, steals ideas from our Rishis and claims ownership. It can get away with doing so only because our tradition has receded into a shell and has stopped confronting the world.
Dismantling The Overarching Principles of Contemporary Western Philosophy
Our first and foremost task should be to break the protective shield that so-called professional philosophers have erected for themselves by demolishing the ground on which it stands. Ironically, the only discipline that has gained professional status, not due to its successes, but despite its remarkable failures, is philosophy. Failure is not a valid reason to formalise or professionalize a discipline. A method obtains its authority not by its mere acceptance by a select community.
There is no uniform philosophical method in the Western tradition itself to justify the professionalisation. The methods of Analytic philosophy and of Continental philosophy are vastly different from each other. Furthermore, each method relies on fallacious arguments and false principles, as demonstrated by Pramaana Shastra.
The approach of Analytic philosophy of taking up only small topics at a time while rejecting the larger goals of philosophy violates a fundamental principle of epistemology. If one fails to perceive the rope clearly, it may appear as a snake, and one keeps studying the snake. The West has never been strong in theories of error. It is a topic that is dealt with in detail in the Indian tradition, and it is easy to show how the approach of Analytic philosophy is entirely misguided and prone to error at every step.
Continental philosophy, which believes that language consists of floating symbols, is self-negating with respect to its own assertions. It reduces to a form of the liar’s paradox. Western philosophy has no clear grasp of the nature of language. There is much confusion between the objective nature of a word’s meaning (yathartha) and the word’s appearance in the mind, which may be yathartha or ayathartha. Similarly, the freedom to choose a word (a set of phonemes) by the language-speaking community at the point of its etymological origin and the word-meaning itself is not subject to human determinations. In Indian Darshanas, words have origins beyond the body and mind at the highest level of Consciousness.
A comprehensive demonstration of the objective nature of word meanings would contradict the claims of Post-Structuralism both with respect to language being “floating symbols” and the thesis that there is no truth with a Grand ‘T.’ The professionalisation of philosophy and the rejection of the metanarrative intertwine with each other. One stroke can demolish both of them.
Bringing The Discourse on Hinduism Back
Our primary aim is to bring the discourse on Hinduism back to India. A paradigm going in the opposite direction would never accept Indian paradigms for doing philosophy or seeking knowledge. In accordance with this aim, we should not attempt to publish papers or theses in the West or seek recognition from the Western Academy. Our own university should present and publish the papers/theses. The revival of the tradition of Tarka by itself would mark the birth of a new university.
To begin with, the university need not be a building made of bricks and stones which can come later. All it needs is an identity and a periodic gathering of scholars for presenting papers and conducting dialogues on key issues of philosophy. The papers and theses will be addressed to Indian scholars and the Indian audience, not to the West or the Western Academy, since their primary purpose is to impart knowledge of our Dharma to our people. The refutation of opposing views is merely avirodha, clearing the field of all contradictory theories that (i) stand in the way of understanding our Dharma, or (ii) belittling our tradition.
The Western Academy will try to ignore or belittle this phenomenon. Let them. Today, they can afford to ignore our traditions because they do not confront the worldviews promoted by the West. We will chip away at their tradition’s foundations one by one in a cogent, logical, and sustained manner, forcing them to notice and respond. We then become the initiators of the dialogue, and they become the responders. The centre stage of the dialogue will then begin to shift from the Western Academy to the soil of Bharata Varsha.
When we revive our tradition as a living force, we will create our own Aptas or authorities. Today, people cite the names of Chomsky, Davidson, Chalmers, Tarski, Richard Rorty, Popper, Rawls, etc., when we speak on the key topics that determine our beliefs. When people start citing the names of our own scholars, the effects of the tradition will begin to percolate into our society.
Today, the national discourse has no place for the viewpoints of our shastras. When we have people with the status of Aptas participating in the dialogue on key national issues with the viewpoints of the shastras, our Dharma will begin to take its rightful place on the stage of national discourse. The power of verbal testimony in society has been grossly underestimated. It has a far-reaching influence on almost every aspect of our lives, and it shapes our value systems.
The Larger Project
Reviving the tradition of Tarka is part of a larger project to restore Dharma. That larger enterprise will consist of establishing a university, among other things, for the revival of the study of all the Fourteen Vidyas (Chaturdasa Vidyas) and not just of Vedanta.
The requirements of the Hindu householder must align with the teachings of Hindu Dharma. The common Hindu must learn the meaning of Swadharma and Dharma in relation to action, not just Vedanta alone. Hinduism is not a laissez-faire religion, as it appears to have largely become today. If we do not match the teaching of our shastras with the requirements of the common Hindu householder, nothing else will save us—not the teaching of Vedanta, not fighting the missionaries, not preserving the numbers, and not becoming a powerful Hindu nation. Grahasthashrama is the main field of Dharma, and it should be the focus of the teaching with regard to what Hindu Dharma means.
We cannot afford to be ignorant of the opponent’s arsenal and weapon systems anymore. We must impart the study of Western philosophies to our traditional scholars at the university to ensure a thorough understanding of the Purva-Paksha. Only then can we effectively defend our Dharma. The enemy operates at the field level in an orchestrated manner through organisations that have established themselves in our society for hundreds of years. We too need to have a field-level strategy that is long-term—a strategy whose vision goes beyond a hundred years. We suffer today because of three hundred years of neglect and loss of direction. We should not commit the same mistake again.
The Need to Develop a Two-Level Strategy
We urgently need a long-term strategy to restore our Dharma by dismantling the opposition along with short-term strategies to tackle the street-level activities of the missionaries trying to convert. The short-term strategies by themselves are inadequate because the scope of the opposition is wider and grander in scale. The institutions attacking our Dharma are strong politically and financially and adept in the art of knowledge subversion. We need to fight on a more organised scale by identifying the root causes, delving deep into history, focussing on our mistakes, and strategizing better.
The opponent, whom we are confronting, is an axis of three,comprising the political institutions of the West, the Christian Church, and the Western academy. The academic institutions shape the way of human knowledge and value systems in the modern world. The political institution of the West directs human action towards the inappropriately universalised principles of equality, liberty, and unbridled capitalism through threats and pressure tactics. The Christian Church propagates narratives showing only one religion as true and the religions of other cultures as false. Acting in concert, this powerful axis undermines civilisations and cultures.
This axis has been a destroyer of cultures and civilisations. It destroyed not only its own Judaic law but also the civilisations of Egypt, Babylonia, and Mesopotamia. It destroyed the native religions of its own lands—the Celtic religion of the British Isles, the Nordic religion of Scandinavia, and the Gaul religion of France. It destroyed the Mayan civilisation, the Inca civilisation, and the Apache civilisation in the Americas. It destroyed the shamanic religions of the Pacific. Wherever it went, it left a trail of destruction for the native cultures, the native religions, and the native civilisations. In Bharat, it is continuously trying to subvert the very texture of our Vedic religion.
The world we live in today is shaped by the West. A carefully designed long-term strategy that identifies the root causes of the problem and effectively dismantles them is what the country needs. We cannot fight an opponent without knowing their tactics well. We need to study Western philosophies so that we can counter them effectively. Kumarilla Bhatta learnt the Buddhist scriptures meticulously so that he could refute them comprehensively. The task is huge, but we have no option left if we are to preserve our Dharma and survive as a unique culture and civilisation. We need both the short-term to fend off the opponent temporarily and the long-term to defeat the opponent effectively and comprehensively.
…Continued in Part 3
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