“Vismṛti, Nalanda Vihāra, Experience, and Indian Education”, Brhat, July 06, 2026

“The way Indians today talk among themselves about Indian culture looks quite bizarre. Some of them describe all the customs and practices of their ancestors as wonderful, possessing everything under the sun and therefore, they bask in past glory. On the other end of the spectrum, some speak of these practices dismissively, as if everything here is utterly futile and worthless. But neither of these two descriptions is about the way we experience the world. Instead, these are the descriptions given by the Europeans centuries ago at different points in time about India and her traditions and we keep on unconsciously reproducing and sustaining them. Both these images, one as India being wonderful and the other as useless, can be situated in the descriptions of how Europe experienced Indian traditions and described them, and have nothing to do with India itself. These descriptions, as repeatedly shown in the works of S N Balagangadhara, when taken as truth about Indian society and culture, make us appear foolish in our understanding of ourselves and feel contemptuous of our own traditions. Based on these descriptions, many thinkers raise several questions on the relevance of Indian culture. Many of them even go to the extent of dismissing them completely as primitive and superstitious. On one hand, there is an urge among the people to give apt responses to such descriptions about our life. On the other hand, we realize that our traditions, and our practices are paths to happiness. We celebrate, enjoy, and cherish the part of being in this ritual life. Though this is our experience of traditions, we have not been able to describe our traditions systematically, using our experience. In present times, attempting to do so yields many confusions and problems, hindering us from giving a reasonable account of our own lives and society. Therefore, it is important to understand how we have landed in such a crisis while talking about our own traditions.

Let us be clear about the fact that this constant attack on our traditions and the attempts to respond to these criticisms are not new. These attempts to trivialize and caricature our traditions have their history since European colonialism. It is precisely because of colonialism that many thinkers took the pathway of ‘decolonization’ to defend India and her traditions. Despite these attempts, problems and confusions in giving appropriate descriptions of India from our experience persist. Since there is a long-standing story of this never-ending debate between an apparent attack on Indian tradition and its defense, it is important to know its limitations and create an alternative pathway to enable us to describe Indian traditions aptly. In this context, it is worthwhile to ask what a response to such a challenge from Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) would be. Though there could be many possible directions one can take in addressing these issues, I would like to explore one potential pathway, something which is familiar to people who know the works of S N Balagangadhara. I would use his approach to see whether we can address some challenges in front of us. 

Snake and Rope: European experience and Indian culture

Let us try to untangle the knots of such a confused situation about India and her traditions, using the snake and rope analogy (Rajju-Sarpa Nyāya – Adhyāsa) from Advaita Vedānta and let us see whether we can arrive at some resolution of the issues at hand. Let’s discuss Adhyāsa in detail. We are aware of the idea that Adhyāsa is about superimposing something on the object when it is not. In this case, if one assumes India as a rope, the idea of a snake (European experience) is superimposed on the rope (Indian traditions). The superimposition of a snake on the rope was possible because certain conditions made the person observe the rope to see that object as though it were a snake. Such superimposition is possible because of the observers’ experience and the background conditions within which the rope was seen. In any case, I would like to argue here, that when Europeans came to India and saw the life of Indians, they perceived that life (rope) as a snake. The snake that came into existence in the experience of Europeans later became the standard way of talking about India. Even though everyone for centuries talked about a snake, it never existed and yet became an object of study…….”

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