Category world

India should replace the UK on the UN Security Council – Michael Rubin

VOI

UN Security Council

With the unravelling of the last aspects of the British Empire, the notion that the United Kingdom should have any seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council has no logical or moral basis. – Michael Rubin

That the structure of the United Nations is antiquated is not news. The Security Council rewarded the victors of World War II, but ignored both their colonial holdings, the practical impact of decolonization, and general shifts over eight decades.

Upon the United Nations’ founding, for example, 74 countries were independent including those like Germany and Japan still under occupation. Of these, 51 became UN members. Today, the UN has 193 members, plus the Holy See and Palestine, both of which have observer status.

The Security Council is important; it provides a check on the General Assembly’s mob mentality and also resolves the problem of tiny autocracies like Guinea-Bissau having as much power as industrialized democracies like India or Germany. Yet it is also archaic.

The United Kingdom symbolizes how dated and unjust some membership on the Security Council is. In 1945, the United Kingdom’s share of the world’s economy was 6.5%, and that was despite the devastation of Nazi bombardment during World War II. Today, however, the International Monetary Fund estimates the British share at just half that. Today, by purchasing power parity, India ranks third globally and the United Kingdom ranks ninth.

Consider also population. In 1945, the United Kingdom’s population was just shy of five crores, while India under British rule had more than eight times as many people. Today, the United Kingdom’s population has just shy of seven crores; India has 148 crores.

As the United Nations prepares for the selection of a new secretary-general after eight years of António Guterres, India should use its diplomatic heft to demand reform now. Broad reform would be impossible in the short-term, but India has another out: Assuming the United Kingdom’s Security Council seat permanently.

Technically, any structural reform needs an amendment to the Charter, which each of the permanent five members of the Security Council can block. But there are precedents:

On December 17, 1963, the UN expanded the Security Council from 11 to 15 seats. Within the General Assembly. France and the Soviet Union voted no, the United States and United Kingdom abstained, and Taiwan voted in favour. Ultimately, however, all five ratified the amendment anyway.

Technically there is no withdrawal clause for Security Council membership, but there have been changes. Article 23 of the UN Charter recognizes the “Republic of China” and “USSR” rather than their successors, the People’s Republic of China and Russia. In both instances, the seat changed hands without an amendment. Taiwan lost its seat in a credentialling vote, while the Soviet Union ceded its seat based on a no-objection letter.

The United Kingdom recognizes that it no longer deserves its permanent Security Council seat; it is a vestige of its imperialist past for which its government continues to make amends.

On May 22, 2025, the United Kingdom and Mauritius signed a treaty committing the United Kingdom to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, though the United States and United Kingdom would retain a 99-year-lease over the Diego Garcia base for an annual payment of approximately £101 million to Mauritius. The United Kingdom has not yet ratified the deal though, largely due to President Donald Trump’s opposition. With the midterm elections confirming Trump’s lame duck status, though, this is likely a temporary problem. Regardless, it does not change the bigger shift in British self-awareness.

Today’s Chagos will likely be tomorrow’s Cyprus. The United Kingdom still claims 3% of Cyprus, in theory as sovereign base areas, but London has consistently betrayed Nicosia. The British did nothing when Turkey occupied one-third the country nor did the United Kingdom act when Iran launched drones against Cyprus. The sad reality is that Britain occupies Cyprus to use its beaches as a resort and little more.

British control over the Falkland Islands are also again at stake; after all, it is hard to justify recognition of Palestine and not simultaneously acknowledge Argentine sovereignty over Las Malvinas.

With the unravelling of the last aspects of the British Empire, the notion that the United Kingdom should have any seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council has no logical or moral basis.

India should demand the United Kingdom voluntarily relinquish its seat and that the new secretary-general, whomever he or she might be, support that decision as a condition of receiving Indian support. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should further demand that the support of Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are the price of resuming the bilateral relationship gratuitously shredded early in the second Trump term. Russia will support India, and France has no reason to object. One West European Security Council permanent member is enough. China may be more reluctant but may not veto. Beijing’s own veto will protect Pakistan, and China has much to lose in its own quest for appointments and General Assembly influence if it stymies New Delhi. After all, the Global South would cheer for India’s new status, seeing a crack in the door to UN reform while bringing insufferable Britain down to size. – The Sunday Guardian, 8 Novermber 2026

› Michael Rubin is Director of Policy Analysis at the Middle East Forum in Washington, DC, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Usanas Foundation in Udaipur.

UN NYC headquarters with India flag in the flag row.

Emperor Xi’s War Lab – Ravi Shankar

VOI

President Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who is the paramount leader of China. He has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Party Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and as the president of China and chairman of the State Central Military Commission since 2013.

“Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake up the world.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon’s prophecy is about two centuries old. It is coming true now. The man who has awakened it is Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader (Zuigao Lingdaorén), General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and its powerful nationalist president since 2013. His Made in China 2025 policy seeks to realise the Chinese dream of world hegemony. His instrument is self-reliance: reducing China’s dependence on foreign technology to become a fully capable military manufacturing power in its own right.

That technology is what Napoleon warned the world about. The warning is echoed by a capable officer who knows the India-China frontier not as a line on a map but as a difficult, unforgiving stretch of mountains where weather, altitude, distance and the smallest movement of troops can have strategic consequences. On October 22, the Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Shatrujeet Kapur, warned: “To face China through traditional ways would be tough now. Because China has invested heavily in the modernisation of its forces and has moved ahead. But through drones, small nations can fight bigger nations, as we have seen in the Russia-Ukraine and Iran-US conflicts. Russia is sacrificing 10,000-15,000 soldiers every month.”

The warning came a week before the Fifth Plenum. Past sessions have reaffirmed Xi’s position as the “core” of the Party. The abolition of presidential term limits in 2018 opened the way for him to remain in power indefinitely. His personal philosophy, known as “Xi Jinping Thought”, is being elevated to a status comparable to that of Mao Zedong’s ideological doctrine. Xi has unleashed a wave of purges of Party and government officials for “moral corruption”—a term often used as shorthand for those perceived as insufficiently loyal to the 73-year-old strongman. Estimates from the Asia Society Policy Institute suggest that only two of the 44 military members of the Central Committee in 2022 have survived the purge. The number is the same in the seven-member Central Military Commission, which oversees China’s armed forces: only Xi Jinping and one other general remain.

What does this mean for Xi, China, India and the world? Following the Fifth Plenum, Xi is set to consolidate his position as the most powerful man in China and one of the most powerful leaders in the world. Under his leadership, China has taken a quantum leap across the vectors that determine global power: technology, military strength, the economy, diplomacy, and development.

Supertech Sultan

Xi, to strengthen China’s position against its top competitor United States, has ordered investments in billions in advanced chips, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy. China now dominates global supplies of several industrial, automotive, and defence micro controllers, and is integrating AI into national security, and pursuing its “AI Plus” strategy to expand Chinese software across Global South markets.

Its “Big Three”—electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar energy—have become major export engines, replacing the traditional “Old Three” of clothing, furniture and home appliances. A “New New Three”, comprising AI software, industrial and humanoid robotics, and biotechnology, is emerging. Dr. Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor of China Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, traces this rise to science and technology initiatives launched in the 1980s, including the 863 Programme, which targeted robotics, telecommunications, space technology and biotechnology. “Today, China is a major player in 5G, solar manufacturing, electric vehicles, batteries and critical-mineral refining, and is advancing towards 6G. However, technological dominance does not mean complete self-reliance. Semiconductors remain a key weakness.” Although China has advanced in seven-nanometre chip technology, it still trails the US in aspects of semiconductor manufacturing. Nevertheless, Dr. Kondapalli argues, sustained technological investment remains central to Xi’s ambitions to create economic assets and China-centric global influence.

Defence Dragon

This is where the maximum growth is, since China is the world’s second largest defence spender: its official defence budget 2025 was about $245 billion—up by 7.2 per cent the previous year. The real spending is substantially higher, because R&D and the People’s Armed Police are partly excluded. The PLA’s 13 group armies spread across the five theatre commands has 4,500-5,000 main battle tanks including several hundred Type 15 light tanks built for high-altitude areas like Tibet and Ladakh; thousands of armoured personnel and infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled howitzers PCL-181, and long-range rocket systems PHL-03 and PHL-16; Z-10 attack helicopters and Z-20 utility helicopters. China has the world’s largest navy: roughly 370 ships and submarines. It has three aircraft carriers with electromagnetic catapults, 8 -10 Destroyers, innumerable frigates, amphibious ship helicopter assault ships, 6 ballistic-missile subs, 6 nuclear attack subs, 48 diesel-electric subs, a naval aviation arm with J-15 carrier fighters, with the J-35 and the KJ-600 early-warning aircraft for aircraft carrier use. Air Force (PLAAF) and naval aviation together operate about 3,000 aircraft, including over 2,400 combat aircraft, making this the largest air force in Asia: J-20 stealth fighters, J-16, J-10C, J-11, Su-30 and Su-35, and now J-35 stealth fighter entering service. Stealth bomber H-20 is under development. China’s huge drone fleet is fast-growing, and includes the WZ-7 high-altitude surveillance drone, the WZ-8 supersonic reconnaissance drone and the GJ-11 stealth combat drone. Dramatic growth has been in rocket force and nuclear arsenal: over 600 operational nuclear warheads as of mid-2024, up by 400 in 2019, with more than 1,000 projected by 2030. Its missile inventory includes ICBMs DF-41, DF-31AG and silo-based DF-5 variants, the DF-26 intermediate-range missile (nicknamed the “Guam killer”), the DF-21D anti-ship missile (“carrier killer”), and the DF-17 hypersonic glide missile. It has estimated the world’s largest inventory of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles. Chinese space and cyber forces operate over 1,000 satellites, of which 359 are ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems, triple the 2018 figure. Since April 2024, space, cyber and information warfare have been handled by three dedicated forces: Aerospace, Cyberspace and Information Support. Dr. Saibal Dasgupta points out, military modernisation is about more than acquiring advanced weapons. “China’s priority is to establish global leadership in the eyes of its own people, counter American influence in its neighbourhood and achieve reunification with Taiwan. China has strengthened its Rocket Force and integrated AI, drones and robotics into military operations. However, technological superiority alone does not guarantee the ability to win wars.”

Economic Superman

Xi’s relentless drive for economic hegemony makes China the world’s second-largest economy, with a nominal GDP of approximately $21.5 trillion; it ranks first in purchasing power parity. Its research and development expenditure has grown and is now estimated at approximately $584-588 billion, making it the world’s second-largest spender in absolute terms. China ranks 12th globally in R&D intensity. Xi, by controlling Chinese businesses, has forced private corporations to bear the vast majority of the research costs, which are approximately 77.4 per cent of China’s R&D expenditure. This integration of government priorities, corporate investment and technological development is Xi’s brainchild to give Beijing the advantage in directing resources towards strategically important sectors. However, China’s economic and technological ascent has vulnerabilities. It is dependent on certain advanced semiconductor technologies. The PLA’s ability to translate technological superiority into battlefield success is yet to be proved in real-time action.

Diplomacy Daring

Xi Jinping’s defining diplomatic formula is “building a community with a shared future for mankind”—read helmed by China. The Communist country’s diplomatic clout has grown alongside its economic and military power. Its share of the UN’s regular budget is up from approximately 2.05 per cent in 2006 to around 20 per cent today. China is the second-largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations and sends the largest contingent of peacekeepers among the Security Council’s permanent members. Through infrastructural investments, diplomatic partnerships and defence cooperation, Beijing continues to expand its strategic reach, particularly across the developing world.

Dr. Kondapalli places these ambitions in historical context. “When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he advanced three key concepts: the China Dream, national rejuvenation and a community of shared destiny.” The China Dream seeks global leadership in technology and the economy, while national rejuvenation involves reclaiming territories Beijing considers historically Chinese, including Taiwan and parts of the South and East China Seas. Together, these ambitions reflect China’s goal to become the world’s dominant power.

Yet India is far from incapable of challenging China. Its defence budget for FY 2026-27 is $ 7.85 lakh crore, approximately $86-93.5 billion, as the world’s fourth-largest military spender. China has around 2.035 million active-duty military personnel against India’s roughly 1.435 million. India’s challenge is not to simply match China tank for tank, aircraft for aircraft or ship for ship. Its ability to detect threats, process intelligence, make decisions without hesitation and coordinate military operations quicker and more effectively than its adversary is what matters.

Strategy Wiz

Counting tanks isn’t enough. In modern warfare, the side that sees first, thinks fastest and connects best has the advantage. Operation Sindoor underscored this lesson, placing C4ISR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance—at the centre of the confrontation. China has sought to exploit its capabilities through Pakistan, whose Chinese-made J-10C fighters reportedly targeted Indian Rafales with PL-15 missiles. Justin Bronk, an air-warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Reuters: “The Indians were not expecting to be shot at.” Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh described the China-Pakistan partnership through an ancient Chinese dictum: “killed by a borrowed knife.” Beijing, he suggested, could weaken India through its partner without directly confronting it on the border.

Singh revealed how Pakistan received real-time intelligence from China during the operation. “When the DGMO-level talks were going on, Pakistan was mentioning that we know that your such and such vector is primed and is ready for action,” he said. “So, they were getting live inputs from China, which is comparatively far from the theatre of action.” Retired British Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, a RUSI fellow, distilled the lesson: “The winner in this was the side that had the best situational awareness.”

Singh described India’s northern frontier as a “live lab” for China, which can assess its military technology through its Pakistan partnership. Operation Sindoor offered Beijing the opportunity to demonstrate its equipment power against Western systems. It had potential commercial consequences for the West. Indonesia, which has ordered Rafale fighters from France, is reportedly weighing the Chinese J-10.

Former ambassador and author Rajiv Dogra says, “China and Pakistan are virtually Siamese twins in military cooperation and defence technology.” Their joint Karakoram 2026 exercise in Xinjiang, held from October 14 to 23, highlights their union. China supports Pakistan’s nuclear technology, satellite capabilities, military aviation and telecommunications, and has emerged as Pakistan’s major defence supplier by upstaging the United States.

Dogra warns that the partnership has wider implications for India. His statistical model identifies an India–China or India-China-Pakistan conflict as a potential flashpoint for a major war. “Whether we look at our western or northern neighbour, India remains the common strategic consideration shaping their military cooperation,” he says.

Therefore, India’s challenge goes beyond disputed borders and touches satellite intelligence, cyber capabilities, defence manufacturing and the growing military coordination between Beijing and Islamabad.

Master of Symbols

Xi Jinping’s global strategy must be understood through China’s growing military and economic power. Sun Tzu’s maxim that “great results can be achieved with small forces” resonates in Xi’s philosophy. During his September 2014 visit to India, Xi took a riverside stroll with Prime Minister Modi and tried his hand at a charkha at Sabarmati Ashram. At the same time, approximately 1,000 Chinese troops entered Ladakh, withdrawing after Xi left. During his September visit to the BRICS summit, satellite images showed Chinese troops advancing into disputed territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The lesson for New Delhi: summit selfies do not stop soldiers. There is no evidence he personally directed every military move, but China demonstrated its willingness to deploy substantial military resources to a border confrontation, using territorial claims and sustained pressure to influence negotiations. The pattern is striking: diplomatic warmth accompanied by conspicuous military manoeuvres. Chinese emperors understood symbolism; sometimes, a circle drawn by an emperor conveyed approval more powerfully than a direct command. So, Xi’s message is both subtle and clear: China is willing to negotiate, but on its own terms. Contrary to earlier American expectations that Beijing would accept the liberal international order and defer to Washington, its military moves in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and along the Indian border suggest otherwise. Xi’s global strategy is simple in its duality: expand Chinese regional influence while preparing to challenge American global leadership. Xi no longer wants merely to rule China. Whether he intends to extend that influence over India remains the million-dollar question along the border. But ambition does not guarantee success.

The One and only Ruler

The West is waking up to Xi’s China only now, having overlooked a crucial history lesson. For much of recorded history, China was a global centre of wealth, culture and technology. From the Xia, Shang and Zhou to the Qin and Han dynasties, successive emperors pursued the idea of a bigger, stronger and more unified China. Constraints of geography and internal divisions limited the reach.

While the West built the liberal international order after the Second World War, Xi’s “Chinese Dream” draws on a much older legacy, epitomised by Qin Shi Huang. In 221 BC, Qin became the First Emperor of a unified China by consolidating political, economic and cultural systems while expanding fortifications that laid the foundation for the Great Wall. He commissioned the Lingqu Canal, an extensive road network and a vast mausoleum guarded by the Terracotta Army. His achievements came at a terrible human cost. Through Legalism, an ancient Chinese authoritarian system, Qin Shi Huang enforced strict laws, harsh punishments and intellectual repression. Yet his vision of unity, stability and national strength continues to echo in Beijing’s gilded halls of power.

Xi Jinping appears to draw on a similar playbook. Before succeeding Hu Jintao, he remained relatively unknown to the world. His formative years as a “sent-down youth” living in a cave and doing arduous labour in rural Shaanxi, may have shaped his political resilience and appetite for risk. The province lies in the ancient Qin heartland, near Xianyang, the emperor’s former capital. The connection may be coincidental, but the parallels are striking. By 2017–18, Xi had consolidated personal power, dismantling collective leadership and benefiting from the abolition of presidential term limits in 2018. The post-Mao safeguards against one-man rule weakened, placing him at the centre of China’s political system more firmly than any leader in decades.

More than 2,200 years after Qin Shi Huang, China once again has a powerful leader whose ambitions invited comparisons with its imperial past. Xi’s supporters portray his anti-corruption campaign as necessary reform, while affectionate nicknames such as “Xi Dada” (Uncle Xi or Daddy Xi) helped cultivate a paternal public image. His wife, Peng Liyuan, became “Auntie Peng” or “Mother Peng”, while the viral 2014 music video Xi Dada Loves Peng presented the couple as approachable and relatable. But beneath this carefully cultivated image lies the central reality of Xi’s rule: concentration of power in one man’s hands, justified by the promise of national rejuvenation through strong, centralised leadership.

Economic Engineer

Geopolitical experts, presidents and tycoons all want to know what Xi Jinping is thinking. But guessing his psychological impulses is like guessing where a dragon will breathe fire next. The smarter approach is to follow the paper trail: the priorities Xi has hard-wired into the Chinese state. The picture that emerges is of a leader who sees China’s rise as his historical mission, treats security and economics as two sides of the same coin, builds global clout using every available instrument, and believes the project will succeed only if power remains firmly at the centre—preferably with him. The real story lies in how these pieces fit together. Weeks after becoming Party chief in November 2012, Xi toured a historical exhibition at Beijing’s National Museum and popularised the phrase that would define his era: the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. A decade later, at the 20th Party Congress, the slogan remained central to his political vision. Its significance lies in the way it combines economic growth, military strength and diplomatic reach into a single historical narrative. China is not simply a developing country seeking prosperity; it is an ancient civilisation reclaiming what Beijing considers its rightful place after a century of humiliation.

Dr Kondapalli explains how this historical narrative forges China’s technological and strategic priorities. For Beijing, technological development is not an isolated economic objective but an instrument of national power. China’s investments in semiconductors, AI, robotics and advanced computing serves both its domestic development goals and its ambition to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers. The integration of civilian industrial innovation into military modernisation is particularly important. Technologies developed for commercial applications can be used to strengthen surveillance, communications, intelligence gathering and battlefield coordination as well.

This civil-military integration is central to Xi’s ambition to make China technologically self-reliant and militarily formidable. But the ability to innovate, coordinate forces, respond to uncertainty and sustain operations under pressure remains just as important. As Dasgupta notes, is the PLA’s advances in AI, drones and robotics that give China technological strength alone sufficient to ensure victory in war? The answer matters enormously for India, which faces China not only across a contested mountain frontier but also through a growing network of Chinese strategic partnerships, technological capabilities and military investments.

Mystery Man

A significant talking point in diplomatic circles is the health of the 73-year-old Xi. After he skipped the official dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan immediately after the BRICS Summit got over, the Delhi grapevine murmured Xi had a sudden stroke to exhaustion after a packed schedule. ThinkChina, a Singapore-based publication under Lianhe Zaobao, used proprietary algorithmic analysis to examine Xi’s movements after he left. It reported “no significant anomalies were observed in Xi’s movements when he boarded the plane on September 13 for the return journey; and at the meeting the day before”. His measured step-length asymmetry was 0.33 per cent, while his left-right auto correlation was 0.6910. The analysis concluded that “this suggests that Xi’s cardiopulmonary function is quite good”. When Modi reportedly asked Xi twice whether everything was okay, the algorithm found predominantly positive emotional responses, with a confidence level of 93 per cent. However, such readings must be treated cautiously: movement and body-language analysis alone cannot reliably diagnose a medical condition.

If the algorithm is right, guessing what it means for Indo-Sino relations is playing the 2,500-year-old Weiqi, one of the most complex strategy games in human history despite its simple rules. The players must surround more territory than the opponent while capturing enemy stones by fully surrounding them. The game reflects Taoist concepts of balance, flow, yin and yang, and strategic patience rather than immediate aggressive annihilation. Xi Jinping is an emperor-leader who methodically rebuilt the Chinese state around clear national priorities. The shatranj equivalent to Weiqi is sente: the ultimate form of initiative or tempo. Hence, India cannot afford to play passive moves just because its opponent threatened something small. Instead, it must ask: “Do I really need to answer that, or can I play a bigger move elsewhere?” Retaining sente will dictate the pace of the entire match. – The New Indian Express, 1 November 2026

› Ravi Shankar is an author and cartoonist. He is currently a columist and editor at The New Indian Express in New Delhi.

Xi's Mind Graphic

There was never a Nazi Out-of-India theory – Koenraad Elst

VOI

Out of India Map

The objective finality of Sheldon Pollock’s thesis is to blacken the Out-of-India Theory (OIT) by associating it with Hitler’s National Socialism. Reality, however, is just the opposite: more even than other Europeans, the Nazis espoused and upheld the Aryan Invastion Theory (AIT). – Dr. Koenraad Elst

While we were working on the argumentation against the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), an improper and utterly false argument against the presumed association of the rivaling Out-of-India Theory (OIT) with Nazi Germany was being prepared in high places. This becomes clear from a refutation of the latter in a paper published by the International Journal of Hindu Studies (no.16, 2012, p.189-252), and written by the German scholar Reinhold Grünendahl (Göttingen): “History in the making: on Sheldon Pollock’s ‘NS Indology’ and Vishwa Adluri’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’”.

The homeland debate

Ultimately, a question of ancient history, such as the location of the homeland of the Indo-European language family inside or outside of India, will not be decided by its real or putative association with political tendencies in the modern age. Thus, when Hindus are writing for the umpteenth time that the AIT stems from colonialism and racism, they may be wrong or they may be right, but at any rate they are wasting their breath. Historians know that even a theory-generated history plays out in a time when other concerns were at stake than in the present by the wrong motives may prove to be right, and even a point of view stemming from noble political positions may be wrong. We all would like to domesticate history into political usefulness for today, but have to acknowledge that it doesn’t work that way.

All the same, the AIT school do occasionally try to blacken the Hindu nationalist movement’s newfound enthusiasm for the OIT with a wrong political association, viz. by fitting it into their well-established narrative that somehow this is a “fascist” movement. Thus, in a newspaper column, Robert Zydenbos (“An obscurantist argument”, Indian Express, 12-12-1993) tried to associate Navaratna Rajaram’s arguments for the OIT with Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism. More crassly, Yoginder Sikand (“Exploding the Aryan myth”, Observer of Business and Politics, 30-10-1993) likewise tried to link the OIT with Nazi Germany, playing on their common concern for (but diametrically opposite interpretation of) the term Arya.

Of course, nobody who follows the debate, closely or even from afar, can be taken in by this. Very obviously, the Nazis themselves never believed in the OIT but were more ardent than most in espousing the AIT. Practically all Westerners at the time, and many Indians as well (including the Hindu nationalist leader of the Congress party, Balagangadhara Tilak, and the ideologue of the Hindutva movement, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), took the AIT for granted. The Nazis had an extra reason for putting their faith in it, viz. that the AIT served as the perfect illustration to the Nazi worldview. The Aryan immigrants had demonstrated their superiority, they had sought to protect it by instituting a colour-based (to the Nazis: race-based) caste system, and they had lost part of their European quality by succumbing to race-mixing nonetheless. So, if anyone should be likened to Hitler, it is the AIT advocates themselves, including Zydenbos and Sikand. The OIT school rarely misses a chance to highlight this political identification of the AIT: with British imperialism as well as with European racism epitomized by the Nazis.

We may assume that Zydenbos was a newcomer to this debate, that he objected to the OIT in good faith and that he hadn’t informed himself of the Nazi view on the homeland question. But two decades down the line, the AIT belief has definitely lost its innocence. And already back then, a specialist like Columbia professor Sheldon Pollock published a paper titled: “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and power beyond the Raj” (in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds.: Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, UPenn Press, 1993, p.76-133), which includes a chapter titled “Ex Oriente Nox: Indology in the Total State” (p.86-96). He and his acolytes have since kept on elaborating this thesis, viz. that Germany invested much in Indology and used it in its project of self-definition as “Aryans” contrasting with the “Semites”. A recent example of this polemic is Vishwa Adluri’s paper in Pollock’s defence, “Pride and Prejudice: Orientalism and German Indology” (International Journal of Hindu Studies, no. 15, 2011, p.253-294).

While we, both in the OIT and AIT camp, were concentrating on the scientific evidence pertaining to the homeland and to the direction of the Indo-European expansion, someone somewhere was working on a large-scale and truly daring attempt to finally link the OIT to the National Socialist regime. Nonetheless, a Hindu industrialist recently donated Pollock a fabulous sum of money for his work on Sanskrit literature, trusting him more with this heritage than other Indologists including the native scholars, both traditional and university-trained, who are far better at home in Sanskrit and financially far cheaper than an American academic. So, this highly reputed Sanskrit specialist sharpened his long-standing hatred of the Hindu nationalist movement into a paper alleging that Indology in general and the OIT in particular was much beloved of the Nazi establishment.

Edward Said

In this paper, Pollock at first seeks to supplement Edward Said’s unjustly famous thesis Orientalism (1978) with the German chapter which Said purposely left out. If truthful, such a chapter would have refuted Said’s whole theory, viz. that “Orientalism” was nothing but the intellectual chapter of the political-economic colonial entreprise. The mainstay of “Orientalist” scholarship was Central Europe, then thoroughly German-speaking at least at the intellectual level. Prussia only had colonies at a late date and far from the lands that interested the Orientalists, while the other countries involved, including the Austro-Hungarian empire, had no colonies at all. In the colonial countries too, many Orientalists were by no means part of the colonial entreprise (pace Said’s conspiracy theory), but in the German-speaking world, there was not even a colonial entreprise to integrate the Orientalist endeavour in; yet Orientalism flourished there like nowhere else. Moreover, Orientalism took wing when the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Oriental neighbor, the Ottoman Empire, was by no means a colony but a threat and an equal trading-partner.

Indeed, even in its better-developed “British” part, Said’s theory was deeply flawed from the beginning, and the numerous errors of detail as well as the general error of his theory have ably been pointed out by Robert Irwin (For Lust of Knowing: the Orientalists and Their Enemies, Allan Lane, London, 2006) and Ibn Warraq (Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, Prometheus, Amherst, NY, 2007). A comprehensive work on German-language Oriental scholarship has been produced by Suzanne Marchand (German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship, German Historical Institute, Washington DC and Cambridge University Press, 2009). With the benefit of hindsight, we can now pass judgment on Said’s influential publication which has seriously damaged the fair name of the academic discipline called “Orientalism”.

Academics who still rely on Said’s thesis, actually rely on a profoundly mistaken and highly politicized piece of scholarship. His thesis is a thin attempt at justification for anti-Westernism. Much as this is in vogue among Hindus, they are only making fools of themselves by espousing Said’s conspiracy theory. For everyone, it is academically weak and factually full of mistakes, but for Muslims at least, they would be supporting their own man. They would be cheering for a Dhimmi, someone upholding Islamic causes, in that as well as in other books. In supporting Said, Pollock is true to his own camp, i.e. the anti-Hindu coalition. But for Hindus, there is nothing in it, they are cheering for someone serving a declared enemy.

What Nazi rule really meant for Orientalism

Grünendahl cites many examples where Pollock and his defender Adluri manipulate quotations to make past authors witnesses for their accusations. I vaguely knew that Pollock was wrong in associating the OIT with National Socialism, but not that he was so spectacularly wrong. His thesis is first of all that India was a central concern for the Nazis. This is put forward most emphatically (but only with bluff) by Pollock and, on his authority, generally taken for granted. Adluri elaborates that Germany was very worried about building its “identity” as contrasting with the Semitic heritage and the Semitic people in their midst, and used India for that purpose.

But Grünendahl shows from old and neutral sources that the Indology departments received no special attention, that they were small compared to Ancient Near-Eastern Studies, Sinology etc., and that the Nazi period showed no special interest in Orientalism in general or Indology in particular. If anything, they suffered in their orientation on India from the reigning emphasis on “Indo-Germanic studies”.

Marchand notes that the number of German Oriental scholars as a whole fell from 360 in 1931 to 180 in 1940. [2009:488] What connection she cites between Indology and the Nazis [2009:499] is wholly based on Pollock, who estimates that one-third of the (only!) ca. twenty-five Indology professors in the Third Reich were active in the National Socialist party or in the SS. This is the only time she cites him in her 526-page book. (She also naïvely gives credence to other anti-Hindu scholars such as Reza Pirbhai, p.311.) According to her: “Worst of all among the Indologist collaborators was Walter Wüst, the Vedic specialist at the University of Munich who became the director of the SS Ahnenerbe.” [p.499] But Wüst is not known to have championed the OIT, on the contrary. The Nazi regime’s favourite historian H.K.F. Günther believed the homeland lay in Southeastern Europe. This was the reigning opinion in Europe, challenged only by some Nazis who insisted on Germany or Scandinavia as the homeland. All of them agreed that the Indo-European language family had only reached India through an Aryan invasion.

Let us add that Marchand agrees to include among the Nazi Indologists Paul Thieme, the revered teacher of Michael Witzel; and he was, like his more militant pupil, a believer in the AIT. According to Marchand, one of the Nazi concerns in Oriental scholarship was “the refutation of the Jewish origins of monotheism” (p.489) namely in Mazdeism. The picture of religion in National Socialism was complex and diverse, but belief in the superiority of monotheism was unchallenged. Like racism, it was then part of the general consensus.

She also notes that: “Among the Islamicists, there were also numerous collaborators (…) things looked rather promising for this bunch in the period 1936-39” when the Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels and Baldur von Schirach toured the Middle East, and the Islamologists were used to liaise with Muslim leaders like the Jerusalem Mufti, so that they “successfully disseminated Nazi ideas throughout the Middle East”. [2009:490] Wouldn’t that be a good topic for Orientalist scholars: Islamic-Nazi similarities as the reason for Nazi-Muslim friendships?

The Nazi concern for “Aryans” speaking “Indo-Germanic” (innocently so named after its two extremes: Indo-Aryan in Bengal and Germanic in Iceland) or Indo-European, now and originally conceived as a language family but then also conceived as a racial unit, couldn’t seriously be bothered with India. Their main concern was with the North, so Grünendahl argues:

“The fundamental flaw of Pollock’s narrative is that it hinges entirely on the exact reverse of the ‘Nordic’ notion. This reversal, which provides the basis for the ‘founding myth’ of the entire discourse machinery he set in motion, is enshrined in the grotesque proposition that ‘the Germans … continued, however subliminally, to hold the nineteenth-century conviction that the origin of European civilization was to be found in India (or at least that India constituted a genetically related sibling)’ (1993:77) Even to the Romantic period [end of 18th, early 19th century, when this notion was upheld by Johann Herder], this assertion only holds with considerable qualifications. (…) To make it the basis for theorizing any aspect of the NS period is rendered absurd by the above-mentioned texts alone”. [p.199]

Hitler on the Hindus

Reference is to texts revealing Hitler’s position on the Hindus. In 1920 already, he laid his cards on the table, and would never waver from this position, not in Mein Kampf, which disparages Hindus as also German neo-Pagans, not in his speeches nor in his wartime table talks. There he had evolved to mocking religion in general and his native Catholicism specifically, though he appreciated its organization and mass psychology and its anti-caste way of recruiting its priests from the people rather than from a separate priestly caste (yes, Hitler was also a comrade-at-arms of Pollock in their common anti-Brahminism). He only knew of the Hindus through the lens of the AIT:

“While Hitler does refer to ‘the Hindus’, he does so not with the intent to employ them as distant relatives in the ‘creation of Indo-German as counteridentity’ (Pollock 1993:83), but merely as an illustration of ‘racial decline’ (Rassensenkung) due to the destruction of ‘national purity’ (nationale Reinheit.)” (p.218, with reference to Adolf Hitler 1980 (1920): “Warum sind wir Antisemiten?” in Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, eds: Hitlers sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924, p.184-204: specifically p.195-196)

So, Hitler’s rare utterance on the Hindus was a racial interpretation of the AIT. These are his own words (1980/1920:195): “Wir wissen, dass die Hindu in Indien ein Volk sind, gemischt aus den hochstehenden arischen Einwanderern und der dunkelschwarzen Urbevölkerung, und dass dieses Volk heute die folgen trägt; denn es ist auch das Sklavenvolk einer Rasse, die uns in vielen Punkten nahezu als zweite Judenheit erscheinen darf.” (“We know that the Hindus in India are a people mixed from the lofty Aryan immigrants and the dark black aboriginal population, and that this people is bearing the consequences today; for it is also the slave people of a race that almost seems like a second Jewry.”)

For Grünendahl, this is merely an example of how the primary sources of German history contradict the free-for-all that amateur historians make of it, in this case the manipulated narrative by Sheldon Pollock. He sounds like defending Germany’s true history against American (and then, by imitation, Indian) distortions. Probably he doesn’t realize that this distortion, about the presumed Nazi love for the OIT, constitutes Pollock’s ultimate motive. We don’t want to pretend to read inside a man’s skull, so we will not speak out on his intimate motives. But the objective finality of his thesis is at any rate to blacken the OIT by associating it with National-Socialism. Reality, however, is just the opposite: more even than other Europeans, the Nazis espoused and upheld the AIT. Hitler-Pollock, same struggle! – Swarajya Magazine, 9 December 2012

› Dr. Koenraad Elst is a Belgium Orientalist and Voice of India author who often visits India to lecture.

See also

India (Meluhha) trade by sea with Mesopotamia ca. 2500 BCE.

Durga we worship, women we doubt – Tejusvi Shukla

VOI

Durga

Dharma is not set once and preserved in amber; it is re-established in every age. Civilisations endure by shedding what has worn out so that what is eternal may continue. Even the Constitution of India, barely 76 years old, has been amended over a hundred times because the society it serves is alive. Continuity depends on change. – Tejusvi Shukla

Navratri brings nine nights of a civilisation remembering who it believes holds up the universe. Each night unveils another face of Shakti, and the journey ends on Vijayadashami, or Bijoya, when Durga stands over the slain Mahishasura. She is not the rescued but the rescuer.

There is something extraordinary about a culture whose very word for power, shakti, is feminine. That inheritance is also a mirror. A society that bows before the Devi for nine nights sometimes returns, on the tenth morning, to imagining her daughters as fragile, and calls that culture. Bijoya leaves us one question: what do we keep of her once the pandals come down? The answer is not to worship less but to let worship mean what it says.

The Goddess who speaks for herself

The idea is ancient. In the Devi Suktam (RV 10.125), the rishika Vak Ambhrini does not pray to the Goddess. She speaks as her:

Aham rashtri sangamani vasunam chikitushee prathama yajniyanam.

I am the rashtri, the sovereign of the universe, the knower of Ultimate Reality.

This is not a goddess waiting to be defended. She is sovereignty, knowledge and righteous force, declared in a woman’s own voice. The same tradition gave us Gargi, who questioned Yajnavalkya, and Maitreyi, who chose knowledge over wealth.

What the shastras also said

The Dharmashastras are often held responsible for the distance between the Goddess and the woman, though the record is richer than that. The Manusmriti carries the much-quoted

Na stree swatantryam arhati (9.3). Yet the same text declares: Yatra naryastu pujyante ramante tatra devatah (3.56).

Where women are honoured, the gods rejoice; where they are not, every rite is fruitless.

Kautilya’s Arthashastra, in its chapter on the superintendent of yarn (2.23), fines any officer who looks upon a woman worker’s face or speaks of anything but the work, in a workshop where the lamp is kept only as bright as the yarn requires. The burden of propriety fell on the official, not the woman. The text secured the space; it did not confine her.

How the two voices came to part

If both voices belong to one tradition, how did they come to part? The divergence between the exalted status of the feminine in sacred thought and the lived position of women was neither instantaneous nor uniform. It grew through the interaction of normative texts, customary practice, social institutions and changing material conditions. The authority of Vak Ambhrini, Gargi and Maitreyi coexisted with later juridical formulations that increasingly located women within the structures of the family, and even within the Dharmashastra tradition the record cannot be reduced to a single position.

Every text carries the worldview of the world that wrote it. The hymns belong to an age that made room for women as seers. The legal literature that followed was composed as settled households, inherited property and lineage became society’s central concerns, and its authors, writing as men of their time, spoke of women chiefly in relation to the family. Even the verse on independence is framed as guardianship, with father, husband and son each keeping watch in turn. It reads less as a verdict on a woman’s worth than as the assumption of a household-centred world. Over centuries, custom repeated those assumptions until they felt like scripture.

What changed, then, was not the disappearance of the feminine principle from our religious imagination, but its uneven translation into social practice. Shakti remained divine, sovereign and unconstrained in the sacred sphere, while the autonomy of women in the social sphere became progressively mediated by custom, family structures and patriarchal readings of tradition. Neither the reverence nor the reflex is foreign to us. Both are ours.

A civilisation that is alive

Which one we carry forward is a question the tradition itself prepared us to answer, for it never claimed to be fixed. The very Manusmriti that records the household’s rules also observes that dharma differs from age to age:

Anye kritayuge dharmas tretayam dwapare apare; anye kaliyuge nrinam yuga-hrasanurupatah (1.85).

Sri Krishna gives that understanding its grammar: Dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge (Bhagavad Gita 4.8).

Dharma is not set once and preserved in amber; it is re-established in every age. Civilisations endure by shedding what has worn out so that what is eternal may continue. Even the Constitution of India, barely 76 years old, has been amended over a hundred times because the society it serves is alive. Continuity depends on change.

To read the old texts as living thought is therefore not to defy them but to follow them. Their authors answered the questions of their age; ours is to answer our own. Restricting a daughter’s movement instead of making the street safe for her, or questioning a woman’s clothes rather than an offender’s conduct, is not preservation. It is a quiet disservice to a civilisation whose own statecraft fined an officer for a lamp that burned too bright. The Saraswati we invoke before examinations holds the book and the veena in her own hands; her daughters can hold their ambitions the same way.

The victory we celebrate

The Devi Mahatmya tells how the gods, unable to defeat Mahishasura, pooled their radiance into one feminine form and placed their weapons in her hands. She did not need their protection. She needed only their trust, and she won. Its best-loved hymn salutes her in every being:

Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu Shakti-rupena Samsthita.

In every being, not only on the altar.

The hymn to the sovereign Devi was voiced by a woman. The rules of the household were written by men of their age. What is written next belongs to us, for every generation of this civilisation is handed the same pen. The Devi has already answered what a woman is. The question that remains is ours: when a daughter stands at the door with a book in one hand and a dream in the other, which of our two voices will she hear?

Shubho Bijoya! – The Pioneer, 20 October 2026

› Tejusvi Shukla is the Assistant Director (Research) at Bharat Ki Soch. Her focus of research is internal security, left-wing extremism, medical diplomacy, and the weaponization of social media. 

Women apply vermilion on each other's face during 'Sindoor Khel' on Vijayadashmi the tenth day of Durga Puja in Lucknow.

Even the creator-god is Durga’s creation – Aravindan Neelakandan

VOI

Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Indra and other devas pray to Durga.

For the Hindu, evolution being the work of a blind watchmaker creates no problem. The creator-god is not the supreme power. He is not infallible. He is but a form of the Mother Goddess. – Aravindan Neelakandan

Unlike Christendom, Hindu intelligentsia did not have a problem with the idea of evolution. Evolution came to India within a few decades of 1859. In 1879, the Krishna Samhita of Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda was published. He was the grand guru of Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada Swami, the founder of ISKCON. Particularly interesting is the way Bhakitivinoda Swami treats the Dashavatara concept in his book:

Here the Samhita describes how each incarnation of God successively assumes a physical form to match the evolutionary development of the embodied soul (jivatma) from its most primitive invertebrate state to its highest vertebrate and intelligent state. Not only do these passages suggest the evolutionary theories of Darwin, they also reflect the view that the passage of time is synonymous with progress. – Shukavak N. Das, ‘Bhaktivinoda and Scriptural Literalis’ in the Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant, 2004.

Whether such a progressive evolution is consistent with Darwinian evolution is another question. But that the Hindu scholarship of that time could approach religion with what Vinoda Swami himself called Adunika Vada or modern approach is what is important.

Again, two important savants of Hindu dharma in modern context, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo had no problem with evolution. In fact, Sri Aurobindo could sing it in his Savitri.

Hindu puranas speak of the humbling of both Brahma the creator-god and Indra the celestial sky-god. In Skanda Purana, we see Skanda-Muruga humbling the creator-god because he did not know the meaning of Aum through which alone, he creates. In Bhagavata again, we see that Brahma is humbled by Sri Krishna—who emanates the entire population of cowherds, when Brahma hides them. Again, Indra is also humbled when he becomes jealous and seeks to get revenge for the cowherds worshipping the Govardhan mountain.

Knocking down of Brahma, humbling of Indra—the conceited creator-god and the jealous sky-god is known to every child of Hinduism. As Swami Vivekananda says, it is manifestation not creation—and a Hindu child knows this truth. So, when science speaks of the random mutation and natural selection ushering in the infinite variety of life, the Hindu child can say with Darwin, “there is grandeur in this view of life.…”

Sri Aurobindo in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad explains:

Uma is the supreme Nature from whom the whole cosmic action takes its birth; She is the pure summit and highest power of the One who here shines out in many forms. From this supreme Nature which is also the supreme consciousness the gods must learn their own truth; they must proceed by reflecting it in themselves instead of limiting themselves to their own lower movement.

The gods, devas, are hence just movements in the infinite consciousness that is She.

In fact, the names from 256 to 262 in the Sri Lalita Sahasranama speak of Her as doing the five functional archetypes of creation, sustenance, dissolution, veiling and liberation as the five gods themselves—Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra, Ishwara and Sadashiva (Names: 264 to 273).

So, for the Hindu, evolution being the work of a blind watchmaker creates no problem. The creator-god is not the supreme power. He is not infallible. He is but a form of Her.

In the nascent stages of Christianity, particularly during its Gnostic phase, the same insight into the Divine Feminine was present there too.

In Gnostic tradition, the creator of the material universe was not the ultimate god but a deity by name Yaltaboath who was actually a creation of the Wisdom Mother Goddess, Sophia. However, having forgotten Sophia, Yaltaboath, who thinks he had out of his own power created humanity in his image, declares that he is the jealous god and that there is no other god besides him. Through a heavenly voice, Sophia reminded him who he really was and called him Samuel—the blind god. Gnostic Christianity even tried to structure a mytho-theological universe with a break from the literalist textual traditions—the creator-god and a higher God whose wisdom was Sophia.

Unfortunately, Sophia went into exile as Christianity became more institutionalised. Had Christianity not been a separate religion but a mere sect of Judaism—incorporating the mythology of Sophia as its theological basis—one wonders how the Western common religious mind would have responded to the science of evolution.

The Goddess tradition in India is such that it makes us like a child look up to the Devi as the Mother Universe and then approach material science with the same awe and veneration. – Swarajya, 12 October 2021

› Aravindan Neelakandan is an author, psychology and economics major, and contributing editor at Swarajya.

Yahweh / Jehovah

The Eiffel Tower controversy and Hindu monastic practice – Bhakti Mamtora

VOI

Swaminarayan monks at the Eiffel Tower, Paris.

The Eiffel Tower episode and its subsequent media coverage reveal how personal religious disciplines can be rendered as demands for accommodation. This is especially the case within the context of French secularism, or laïcité, wherein public expressions of religiosity might have made people upset. In this environment, a little-known monastic vow can be easily misinterpreted. – Prof. Bhakti Mamtora

A visit to the Eiffel Tower by a delegation of monks representing a global Hindu religious denomination on Sept. 5, 2026, has raised broader questions about accommodating religious observances in public spaces.

Eiffel Tower workers protested with a one-day strike after tower management allegedly replaced some women employees for the duration of a 20-minute visit by monks from the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS.

As a scholar of South Asian religions, I have studied the Swaminarayan Sampradaya, a religious community founded in India in 1801, for nearly a decade. BAPS is one of several denominations within the group. I argue that at the center of this controversy lie different reactions to a long-standing Hindu religious practice known as “brahmacharya,” which the monks of the Swaminarayan Sampradaya follow.

While it is often translated as “celibacy,” the practice is aimed more expansively at developing inner control over one’s senses to attain spiritual perfection and immerse oneself in God.

The discipline of ‘brahmacharya’

Brahmacharya is described in many premodern Indian texts, including the Yoga Sutra, dating to the early centuries C.E. This text outlines eight successive stages of yoga aimed at reaching mental tranquility through focus on God. Progress toward higher stages of yogic practice—such as “asana,” postures; “pranayama,” breathwork; and “dhyana,” meditation—hinges on the steadfast observance of “yama,” a code of conduct governing the yogi’s interaction with others. The practice of yama includes avoiding violence, dishonesty, theft and greed, and cultivating brahmacharya.

In this text and others, brahmacharya involves physical and mental practices that are observed differently by lay and monastic members of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religious communities. Lay disciples typically uphold the vow of brahmacharya by maintaining fidelity toward their spouse. For monks and nuns, it often takes the form of absolute celibacy.

From ancient times, various monastic orders have followed a more expansive form of brahmacharya, one that restricts eight types of engagement with the opposite gender. This includes not only physical and verbal but also mental contact, where “mental” means sustained, deliberate thought. Through this practice, monastics endeavor to lead a life that is focused on God.

Textual explanation and practice

Brahmacharya in the broader sense is an important practice in a foundational text that I have studied, called the Swāmīnī Vāto, which explains the core teachings of Swaminarayan, who lived from 1781-1830 and is revered in the Swaminarayan community as God.

The Swāmīnī Vāto notes the central position of brahmacharya among the five vows that Swaminarayan Hindu monks take upon initiation: overcoming desire, greed, taste, attachments and ego. Swaminarayan monks, who practice the eightfold version, see it as an important way to help eradicate all traces of desire and remain singularly focused on God.

By relinquishing marital relationships and family ties, Swaminarayan monks explain that they also seek to reduce claims to private attachment on their time and attention, allowing them to dedicate themselves more fully to devotion, spiritual counseling and other social work. They move from place to place, meeting devotees and traveling between temples, conducting rituals and addressing religious congregations consisting of both men and women.

In all such public spaces, they avoid direct eye contact with women, as that is understood as a form of connection, without requiring women around them to alter their presence or behavior.

According to BAPS theologians and textual traditions, brahmacharya is an individual choice, not a moral critique of others. While monks have relinquished family life for themselves, they recognize and support the family as central to people’s lives and practices.

Eightfold brahmacharya follows a similar logic: Monks adopt the discipline focusing on their own attention, desires and conduct, but they do not expect this of others. The discipline does not make a judgment about the worth of women. This ideal is made explicit in BAPS texts that affirm women’s equal spiritual standing and entitlement to religious practice and liberation.

The controversy

The current leader of BAPS, Mahant Swami Maharaj, consecrated a new Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Bussy-Saint George, a suburb of Paris, on Sept. 6, 2026. Leading up to the consecration celebrations, the community’s delegation of 100 monks visited the Eiffel Tower. Following the visit, their centuries-old monastic vows became the center of controversy.

BAPS has stated that it requested an early morning visit to minimize disruption for visitors or staff, given the size of their group. Moreover, in a comment to CNN, BAPS Paris noted, “It was never, at any point, intended as a request rooted in gender, and any suggestion to the contrary does not reflect the spirit or values of our fellowship or the delegation.” A small area of the observation deck was sectioned off, which is a common practice for large groups, but BAPS categorically denies requesting the removal of women employees.

The Eiffel Tower Operating Company, SETE, claimed that the delegation had requested a visit that would limit “interactions with women,” according to CNN affiliate BFMTV. The BBC reported that Ariel Weil, president of SETE, “blamed its managers for being ‘a bit overzealous’ in complying with the request without questioning whether it was ‘inappropriate.’”

In my view, the issue seems to be a disconnect between what BAPS requested and what SETE requested of its employees. Understanding the practice of brahmacharya helps explain BAPS’s request: The early morning visit likely would have limited their interactions with heavy crowds, including women. Indeed, BAPS monks’ practices have typically gone unnoticed before now, because they observe them on their own, without imposition on others, even in crowded spaces where women are present.

The episode and its subsequent media coverage reveal how personal religious disciplines can be rendered as demands for accommodation. This is especially the case within the context of French secularism, or laïcité, wherein public expressions of religiosity might have made people upset. In this environment, a little-known monastic vow can be easily misinterpreted. – The Conversation, 30 September 2026

› Prof. Bhakti Mamtora is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir, Paris

Scientist proposes conciousness might be the fabric of reality itself – Humans

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What is conciousness?

Consciousness remains one of science’s greatest unsolved mysteries, and that understanding it may require researchers to rethink long-held assumptions about the relationship between mind, brain, and reality. – Dr. Christof Koch

For decades, neuroscientists have searched the brain for the biological basis of consciousness, assuming our thoughts, emotions, and subjective experiences emerge from networks of neurons.

But what if that assumption is incomplete?

That’s the provocative question explored by neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute in Seattle.

Koch recently presented his ‘challenges’ to our understanding of consciousness at the Bial Foundation’s “Behind and Beyond the Brain” symposium in Porto, Portugal, in April 2026—building on a body of published work that includes this 2016 paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Koch explained to ScienceAlert that it may be time to rethink one of neuroscience’s deepest assumptions: that consciousness is something the brain produces.

Koch does not dispute the brain’s essential role in conscious experience.

Decades of research have shown that injuries, disease, anesthesia, and electrical stimulation can profoundly alter—or even eliminate—awareness.

Instead, he asks a different question: Does the brain create consciousness, or could it be shaping something more fundamental?

Despite remarkable progress in understanding how the brain processes information, neuroscience still faces a profound mystery, Koch argues.

Scientists can increasingly identify the neural circuits involved in perception, memory, emotion, and decision-making. Yet those discoveries still cannot explain why physical brain activity is accompanied by subjective experience.

As Koch writes in a new, as-yet unpublished essay shared with ScienceAlert: “Nothing in science explains how three pounds of matter, a piece of furniture of the Universe like any other, subject to the same natural laws, can love, hate, dream, imagine, fear or hope for its future.”

It isn’t the first time Koch has grappled publicly with this puzzle. In 2023, he conceded a 25-year bet with philosopher David Chalmers, admitting neuroscience was no closer to pinning down consciousness’s neural mechanism than when he made the wager in 1998.

To address that question, Koch turns to a philosophical framework known as analytic idealism, which proposes that consciousness may be a fundamental feature of reality rather than something generated by the brain.

Within this framework, the brain is viewed less as a producer of consciousness and more as a filter or shaper of conscious experience.

The ideas did not emerge from a single scientific experiment. Instead, Koch describes a deeply personal experience that fundamentally changed the way he thinks about consciousness and reality.

Several years ago, while sitting alone on a beach, he recalls the boundary between himself and the world dissolving, describing the experience as a timeless and universal reality.

In his essay, Koch describes the experience as “the most meaningful of my life,” writing that it “flipped my view of reality”.

Koch is careful not to present the experience as scientific evidence. Instead, he writes that it gave him “a view of Mind-at-Large” and prompted him to re-examine the metaphysical assumptions that had guided much of his scientific career, taking alternative philosophical perspectives more seriously.

He also acknowledges that such experiences are inherently subjective. But he argues they should not be dismissed simply because they are difficult to explain, suggesting they, too, are part of the phenomenon science is ultimately trying to understand.

In the essay, he points to developments in modern physics as another reminder that some of science’s deepest assumptions have already been revised. He does not argue that quantum physics explains consciousness. Rather, he suggests that the history of physics shows scientists have repeatedly been forced to rethink the nature of reality when new evidence emerged.

Koch argues that “our understanding of reality must be rebuilt on a simpler foundation, compatible with both the ‘objective’ outcome of empirical science as well as with ‘subjective’ experience.”

Koch argues that if current assumptions about consciousness prove incomplete, neuroscience itself may eventually require a similarly profound conceptual shift.

The ideas also have implications for artificial intelligence. If consciousness is not simply the product of increasingly complex computation, the path toward conscious machines may be more complicated than simply building increasingly powerful AI systems.

That does not mean future AI systems could never become conscious. Rather, he argues that the debate cannot be settled simply by making computers more intelligent or more computationally sophisticated.

Koch acknowledges that analytic idealism is not an established scientific theory but a metaphysical framework whose future depends on whether its ideas can be translated into empirically testable hypotheses.

As he writes, “The most important task for the future is to take these insights and translate them into empirically testable hypotheses.”

He argues that consciousness remains one of science’s greatest unsolved mysteries, and that understanding it may require researchers to rethink long-held assumptions about the relationship between mind, brain, and reality. –  Science Alert, 9 August 2026

Man meditating on beach at sunrise.

Can Devdutt Pattanaik save Hinduism from Western distortions? – David Frawley

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Devdutt Pattanaik

Make certain, Pattanaik is no detached observer, but has a vested interest in the very negative interpretations of Hinduism that he now seems to question. He has so far shown little interest in any defence of Hinduism whether by Indians or Westerners, much less promoting its deeper Yoga and Vedantic teachings. – Dr. David Frawley

Devdutt Pattanaik is a popular interpreter of Hindu sacred stories, what are now, not always respectfully, called “myths”. In an old article “From Macaulay to Frawley, from Doniger to Elst: Why do many Indians need White saviours”, he claims that “Indians do not really need Europeans and Americans to tell them what Hinduism, Sanskrit or Vedas were, are or should be.”

Attacking both Western critics and Western defenders of Hinduism

The title of the article appears appealing given the many Western distortions of Hinduism. Yet strangely, Pattanaik criticises both Western defenders of Hinduism as well as critics, lumping them both together as if they were two sides of the same bad coin, suggesting that neither understands the Hindu tradition.

Pattanaik would like us to think that he is honouring this tradition of great yogis that has suffered so much from colonial, missionary, Marxist and neo-modern misinterpretations. But in the majority of his own writings, he himself follows the current politically correct Western scholarship that denigrates Hinduism at a cultural level and downplays its deeper philosophical and yogic dimensions. His comments on Hindu gods and goddesses are often in terms of modern psychology and leftist politics, as if these deities were human beings with personal problems and social biases, not symbols of transcendent and cosmic powers.

Now Pattanaik is suddenly critical of the same controversial Western scholars like Wendy Doniger and Sheldon Pollock that he has previously defended. The mythological approach he uses is an approach they also use and is very different from India’s own dharmic school of thought. Is he questioning that mythological angle that he has so extensively promoted?

Looking deeper, Pattaniak’s article betrays a subterfuge. His critique of Western defenders of Hinduism appears more strident than his questioning of anti-Hindu views. Clearly Western scholars defending Hinduism are his main target, and by implication the defence of Hinduism itself.

India connections of Western interpretations of Hindu Dharma

Pattanaik makes a point that one has to be born a Hindu to be a real Hindu that is connected to “birth” and “geography”, no doubt to discredit any Western attempts to speak for Hinduism. This is historically easy to disprove given the numerous Hindu temples and kingdoms from Angkor Wat in Cambodia to Vietnam and Indonesia whose populace were not simply born Hindus in what is now India.

Yet the deeper question in all such discussions is the nature of the interpretations given, not the skin colour of the person advocating them. Most important is the methodology that such interpreters follow. Individual scholars are usually representatives of schools of thought that must be examined overall.

The denigrating approaches of such as Doniger and Pollack have prominent Indian supporters, notably Marxists like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, whom Pattanaik does not mention. Similarly, the view of Hindu Dharma by Western Hindus has its roots in teachers from India. The books of Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup have framed much of the defence of modern Hinduism. Yet this trend goes back to Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Lokmanya Tilak and India’s Independence movement that challenged Eurocentric ideas of religion, culture and history.

Mahatma Gandhi’s criticism of Christian missionaries is also relevant here. It ultimately is based upon Vedic texts that address the nature of the mind and the meaning of human life in a very different manner than dominant Western schools of thought.

Pattanaik has tried to place Hinduism’s Western defenders on the “right” of the political perspective, with its critics on the “left”, forgetting that right and left in politics are Western views, not Indian and neither is dharmic. He reflects the statements of anti-Hindu writers who routinely label Hinduism as right-wing and regressive.

Pattanaik further describes Western defenders of Hindu Dharma as “authoritarian” and “Abrahamic” in approach, as if they were presenting a distortion of Hindu Dharma. This is also nothing new. The same charge is made by Luytens’ Delhi against any Hindu groups in India that have sought to proudly promote Hindu Dharma. Such verbal theatrics only shows that he remains ambivalent about presenting Hindu teachings in a respectful manner. He does not otherwise criticise Abrahamic traditions.

Problems with ancient history

Pattanaik seems to have a particular problem with the historical view of the Harappan or Indus Valley civilisation as Vedic, as supported by Western Hindus. Yet, this is also the view of the Archaeological Survey of India and its former director general Prof. B.B. Lal. It is the view of the Geological Survey of India based upon Landsat Satellite photography and numerous ground water studies of the long dry Sarasvati River. It is the view of India’s great gurus today. To call it into question because it is also a view of white Hindus is neither accurate nor sincere. It suggests that Pattanaik does not like the idea of a history of India that gives prominence to Vedic and Hindu contributions.

Is sadhana necessary to truly understand Hindu Dharma?

Hindu teachings, as in the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads, have at their core a yogic pursuit of higher consciousness, including experiences beyond the human intellect and its limiting dualities. They hold that the physical world is but an outer aspect of a multi-dimensional universe of consciousness, with our inner self having many bodies and many births and ultimately extending beyond all time and space.

Pattanaik does not seem comfortable with such yogic spirituality, which Doniger and company routinely ignore or dismiss, though he throws a few Sanskrit terms around in order to sound traditional. He is particularly unhappy with my claim that Yoga sadhana should be part of any authentic interpretation of Hindu texts. Yet that is not merely my personal view, it is found in all the great traditions of India that emphasise meditation over mere book learning. If sadhana is not part of one’s study of Hinduism, one can only claim to have the view of an outsider.

Is Pattanaik changing his views?

Pattanaik’s article is a cover-up for his own errors and prejudices. It is an effort to surreptitiously disown his own past with Doniger and company, perhaps out of fear of being judged politically incorrect by these Western critics that he has often kowtowed before in the past. Attacking Western defenders of Hinduism along the way affords him the appearance of being a neutral observer, and makes it more difficult for him to lump with what Doniger and company castigate as the Hindu right that they usually decry as fascist as well.

Make certain, Pattanaik is no detached observer, but has a vested interest in the very negative interpretations of Hinduism that he now seems to question. He has so far shown little interest in any defence of Hinduism whether by Indians or Westerners, much less promoting its deeper Yoga and Vedantic teachings. While there is nothing wrong with changing one’s views, it is better to be honest about it and admit one’s mistakes. – Swarajya, 1 January 2017

Koenraad Elst & David Frawley vs. Wendy Doniger & Sheldon Pollock.

Ganesha: A figure of great mystery, power, and paradox – David Frawley

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Shiva, Shakti & Ganesha

Ganesha represents the cosmic realisation of the Self as all nature, and can teach that infinite truth to us. But for this to occur we must also learn to go beyond the mind, something that most modern intellectuals with all their opinionated views are not likely to attempt. – Dr. David Frawley

Ganesha is a figure of great mystery, power, and paradox. We sense in his unusual figure something of the unknown, unlimited and mysterious, far beyond our human considerations. What are the secrets that he holds and what do they mean for us at the deepest level?

Ganesha’s arising or birth, if you could call it, appears very strange. It is said that his mother Parvati created him for her protection and asked him to prevent anyone from entering into her room. While Parvati was bathing, Lord Shiva approached, and Ganesha true to his role would not let him in. When Ganesha obstructed Shiva from entering, Shiva sensed an infringement on his power, fought with him and in the skirmish cut the boy’s head off.

Soon learning his mistake, that it was Parvati’s son, who was quite angry at his demise, Shiva quickly, sometimes it is said by chance, found the head of an elephant for Ganesha, put it on the headless body and brought him back to life. The story seems contradictory and arbitrary, like many Puranic depictions that have been the subject of denigration, if not ridicule.

Clearly, such bizarre tales are riddles for the mind to ponder, and not meant to portray literal events. They require a deep insight to unravel. This story has been analysed politically and psychologically, extending to bizarre Freudian and Marxist theories, but the inner meaning, which has nothing to do with sex or politics, has been missed altogether.

Symbolism of Ganesha

Ganesha symbolises the human soul and its latent aspiration for the infinite. Initially, the soul is bound to Maya or Prakriti, symbolised by Ganesha being created by Parvati (Prakriti) and seeking to protect her as her servant. The ignorant soul does not know Shiva, the transcendent reality beyond Maya. Shiva, therefore, cannot recognise the soul as his own.

In cutting off Ganesha’s head, Lord Shiva takes the soul beyond the human mind, its dualities and expectations—which is a common theme in deities with their head cut off, be it Hayagriva, Chinnamasta or Ganesha. In giving Ganesha the head of an elephant, Shiva connects it to the profound cosmic intelligence that is under his guidance.

Shiva is Pashupati or the Lord of the Animals that symbolises the souls bound to ignorance, ruling over them from his unbounded awareness. Ganesha as Ganapati or the Lord of the Group is the chieftain or head of the animals, the foremost of which is the elephant and indicates Shiva’s consciousness in manifestation.

The elephant relates to memory, concentration and the hidden wisdom of nature. Ganesha as the awakened soul learns the secrets of the universe and gains the ability to teach them to all who are receptive. Ganesha becomes the guide to the cosmic processes of birth and death, karma, and liberation, and holds all the vidyas or sacred ways of knowledge for understanding all existence.

Ganesha as the Guru

With the head of an elephant, Ganesha becomes awake as Shiva’s son, and functions as the great guru and the giver of wisdom through Shiva’s power within him. He gains access to the mantric energies of the cosmic mind, in which all the higher knowledge is stored, the omkara of Lord Shiva, which is Ganesha’s own word of power.

Such higher knowledge as Ganesha possesses cannot be transmitted to the mortal mind, put into ordinary language or logic, or confined to the parameters of mere human depictions. It requires going beyond the intellect and emotions to unitary awareness or samadhi, which rests upon a profound Yoga sadhana.

Ganesha represents the cosmic realisation of the Self as all nature, and can teach that infinite truth to us. But for this to occur we must also learn to go beyond the mind, something that most modern intellectuals with all their opinionated views are not likely to attempt.

To worship Ganesha, we must become Ganesha, which is to let go of our outer minds and embrace the unknown higher knowledge, becoming the entire universe and beyond, Shiva and Shakti, both within and around us. To do that we must become humble and let Shiva and Parvati enter into us. Jai Ganesha! – Daily-O, 24 August 2017

› Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is the director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the author of more than 30 books on Yoga and Vedic traditions. 

Ganesha Symbolism

The fallacy of human agency and the perils of algorithmic grooming – Sreejith Sreedharan

VOI

AI

Who decides what AI knows? Whose values shape its reasoning? Which languages, histories, and knowledge systems are marginalised by the data it learns from? Which voices are amplified, and which are effectively erased because they do not belong to profitable markets or dominant cultures? – Sreejith Sreedharan

We have built an entire civilisation on a comforting assumption: that each of us, as individuals, freely determines our own thoughts, values, and choices. That we are the authors of our own minds. That our decisions are wholly and unmistakably ours.

It is a beautiful idea. It is also, in the strictest sense, incomplete.

A person does not begin life as a self-made thinker. A child inherits language, class position, family habits, cultural assumptions, religious background, and ideas about success long before the child has the capacity to question them. School extends that inheritance. Peers reinforce it. Media saturates it. Daily routines harden it. By the time a person begins to call a belief their own, much of the mental architecture has already been installed by forces outside their control.

That does not mean agency is an illusion. People still choose. They still judge. They still resist. But agency operates inside conditions that were not selected by the individual. Human freedom is real, but limited, shaped, and unevenly distributed.

Artificial Intelligence has entered this already conditioned environment and begun to alter it at scale and speed.

The loud concerns around AI diminishing or even replacing human agency are understandable. Yet the argument often misses a deeper point. Human minds have never developed in a vacuum. They have always been formed by institutions, social norms, and inherited systems of belief. The real question is not whether conditioning exists. It always has. The real question is what kind of conditioning AI now produces, and who controls it.

For the first time in history, a technology can do more than distribute information. Writing preserved knowledge. The printing press widened access to it. The internet made vast quantities of it available to nearly everyone. But none of these systems democratised the capacity to reason with information. They expanded access to data, not necessarily access to judgement.

AI changes that status quo radically. Used well, it can act as a reasoning companion. It can explain, translate, compare, summarise, test assumptions, and scaffold thought. A first-generation learner in a small town in Odisha or Oaxaca can now ask questions and receive a level of intellectual engagement that once belonged largely to elite classrooms. That is a real shift in the conditions under which thought develops.

This is why AI carries such promise. It may become the first technology capable of raising the cognitive floor rather than merely expanding the speed of execution. It can help more people reason, write, learn, and participate in knowledge systems that were earlier closed to them by geography, class, language, or institutional access.

Across philosophical and spiritual traditions, many thinkers have argued that a civilisation advances when knowledge and capability become more widely shared. Not equal outcomes, but a more even base of epistemic standing. A society cannot remain intellectually healthy if only a small minority has the tools to think clearly while everyone else is left to consume, repeat, and comply.

AI may be the first technology capable of helping build that base.

But that promise sits beside a more troubling reality. The AI systems shaping public life today are not neutral infrastructure. They are products. They are built within business models, commercial incentives, and institutional assumptions that reflect a narrow set of priorities. Frontier AI remains concentrated in a relatively small number of firms and research ecosystems, even if development is becoming more global. That concentration is a red flag, as it shapes what these systems know, what they optimise for, and what kinds of users they are designed to serve.

The result is not a plural expansion of human possibility. In many cases, it is a worldview encoded at scale. English-language dominance, Western institutional habits, and the logic of engagement and monetisation influence how these systems respond, recommend, and rank. The hidden power here is not simply technical. It is cultural and political.

Algorithmic conditioning works differently from older forms of cultural conditioning. Traditional conditioning was often coercive, but it was visible. People could argue against it, form counter-cultures, or reject it outright. It had friction. That friction gave some room for reflection.

Algorithmic conditioning is more adaptive. It studies what a person already prefers and returns it in refined form. It offers convenience while narrowing the range of encounter. Personalisation can reinforce existing habits, reduce exposure to disagreement, and narrow the range of ideas people encounter. It creates the feeling of discovery while quietly reducing surprise. The recommendation engine does not simply show people more of the world. It often shows them more of themselves.

The deeper concern is not that a feed is mildly curated. It is that repeated curation trains attention, and attention shapes thought. A person who is continually shown familiar positions, familiar styles, and familiar emotional cues begins to treat familiarity as depth. The system does not need to coerce. It only needs to keep rewarding what already works. We already see this pattern in everyday choices, from mundane chores to the people we choose to lead us.

That is why the AI governance question is critical and matters so much. The real influence lies in the algorithms, where design choices quietly become societal outcomes.

Who decides what AI knows? Whose values shape its reasoning? Which languages, histories, and knowledge systems are marginalised by the data it learns from? Which voices are amplified, and which are effectively erased because they do not belong to profitable markets or dominant cultures?

These are civilisational questions, not technical ones. Yet they are being resolved today with limited public oversight and little democratic participation from most of the world.

There is still a meaningful opportunity here. AI can widen access to reasoning support, lower barriers to learning, and help more people participate in intellectual life with greater confidence. It can serve as a tool for epistemic levelling if it is designed and governed with that purpose in mind.

But that outcome is not guaranteed. If the systems that shape thought at scale remain concentrated in a handful of corporate hands (or governments), the result will not be liberation. It will be a more efficient consolidation of intellectual power, dressed in the language of empowerment.

Governing AI for the good of all humanity is not a nicety, but a necessity. Public institutions cannot treat AI as a neutral utility while its incentives shape what large populations see, repeat, and accept. The systems that mediate thought now require scrutiny equal to their influence. Transparency, language inclusion, dataset diversity, and accountability are no longer niche policy concerns. They are core conditions for preserving plural thought.

The debate we need is not whether AI threatens human agency that never fully existed. It is who governs the algorithmic conditioning that now shapes thought, and whether that power serves human development or merely corporate advantage.

That debate is not happening at the scale and with the intention it should. It urgently must. – Firstpost, 22 August 2026

› Sreejith Sreedharan is a technology analyst and author. He works on organisational AI readiness and created the AI Instinct Index®, a psychometric diagnostic designed to assess behavioural readiness for AI adoption and adaptive capacity in constraint-heavy environments.

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