New Delhi: Author and Indologist Rajiv Malhotra recently called on Indians to recognise that what we often praise as Western culture or achievements are actually rooted in Indian traditions. From yoga to turmeric, the cultural appropriation story is now being challenged.
“A large part of Indian culture is hidden beneath the surface of what they thought was their (Western) culture,” said Malhotra, citing examples such as the patenting of Basmati rice in the US and the co-opting of Ayurveda. This, he noted, also extends to systems of knowledge.
At the launch of his book, The Battle for Consciousness Theory: A Response to Ken Wilber’s Appropriation of Sri Aurobindo’s Work and Other Indian Thought—co-authored with Manogna Sastry and Kundan Singh—Malhotra presented what he calls the U-Turn Theory.
“The reason I started (the book) is that I was developing something called the U-turn theory and the theory of digestion,” he said. This, according to him, is a process where Indian thought gets absorbed into a Western framework, repackaged, and then sent back as something new.
Among other cultural injustices, the book targets American theorist Ken Wilber, accusing him of adapting and misinterpreting Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo’s ideas to fit his own flawed theory.
“Our detailed analysis shows how Wilber reduces the entire scope of Sri Aurobindo’s work and Vedic thought into a single Western-centric quadrant,” said Manogna Sastry, discussing the book’s comparative study of Wilber’s work from 1977 to the present.
Malhotra also expressed his frustration over the lack of awareness among Indians about Sri Aurobindo’s contributions, even as repackaged versions of his ideas gained popularity in the West. He added that he spent three decades going about setting the record straight.
“Leaving behind a for-profit career to pursue this research full-time, I spent over 30 years immersed in the study and dissemination of Indian knowledge,” said Malhotra.
The book, in the making since the 1990s, took life with a three-hour-long launch event at the Alliance Française Auditorium in New Delhi on 22 August.
The event drew such a large crowd that some audience members had to stand. On stage, chief guest Karan Singh, former Union minister, and Professor Kapil Kapoor, the guest of honour, joined the book’s authors, with Dr Shruti Nada Poddar moderating.
“Among the innumerable contributions Bharata has made to the global stage, the most majestic are its unparalleled insights into consciousness, the nature of reality, and human psychology,” summed up Sastry.
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Stages of ‘digestion’
Throughout their research process, the writers claimed they faced numerous challenges, including resistance from Western scholars and even some Indian followers of Aurobindo. They described efforts to engage with Aurobindonians, only to be met with pushback when advocating for a more critical and comparative study of Sri Aurobindo’s work alongside the interpretations of Wilber— a New Age guru known for his “integral theory”, which unifies a large range of different philosophies and fields into a single framework.
One problem arose when Malhotra’s Infinity Foundation, which specialises in “civilisation studies”, attempted to use the term “Integral Psychology” for a conference in Puducherry. However, Wilber held the copyright for the term and blocked its use—something Malhotra deemed essential to his project.
After this incident, Wilber’s Integral Institute allegedly offered an affiliation that required organisations to surrender intellectual property related to this research, which would then be licenced back to them. Malhotra criticised this as exploitative. He also claimed that some Aurobindonians argued that joining Wilber’s institute would boost their global standing, terming this as indicative of an “inferiority complex”.
“Wilber had become a bit of a hero in Pondicherry in the eyes of several people,” Malhotra said. “They ask me to join Wilber because we are not good enough and he will make us better.”
Malhotra then explained his “U-turn and digestion theory”, breaking it down into four stages.
First, Western seekers would find a guru, like the hippies in the 60s. They would receive a Hindu name, get initiated, and practice what seemed like genuine Indian traditions.
In the second stage, some would start claiming that the ideas they encountered in India could also be found in Western figures like Plato, Jesus Christ, or Hegel.
“They try to present these ideas as universal, claiming they exist everywhere. I call this decontextualising Indian knowledge and claiming it as a universal discovery,” Malhotra said.
In the third stage, some would claim that these ideas originated in the West. This stage includes searching for scholars or historical points to support this claim while ignoring their Indian roots. The fourth and last stage starts with criticising the Indian sources, branding them as caste-ridden, outdated, and irrational—despite having gained knowledge from those very sources.
All the addresses emphasised recognising and valuing the true origins and contributions of Indian knowledge while critiquing its appropriation and misrepresentation in the West.
During the event, however, many guests appeared to be more interested in listening to the comments of the chief guest Karan Singh. Some were even seen reading about Singh on Wikipedia while the authors spoke. However, 93-year-old Singh kept his remarks short, praised the authors, and left early.
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‘Copy-pasting’
The authors critiqued Wilber’s interpretations of Sri Aurobindo’s work, labelling them as “synthetic” and based more on individual beliefs than on direct experience.
“Wilber assembled his ideas into a new theory without having experienced them firsthand, which I see as a synthetic unity rather than an integral unity,” Malhotra said. “Integral unity comes from direct experience, while synthetic unity is simply copy-pasting from here and there.”
Malhotra further noted that Wilber started as a psychologist interested in Indian philosophies like Madhyamika Buddhism and Kashmir Shaivism. He began by curating and translating these ideas, connecting them with Western thinkers. However, he never had the experiences or practices that inspired these ideas, as Sri Aurobindo did.
In comparing Wilber’s and Aurobindo’s perspectives on Indian cultural knowledge, the authors stressed the importance of including Sri Aurobindo’s ideas in educational curricula.
“Sri Aurobindo’s ideas, which have often been misunderstood to be mere idol worship, were more engaged with real-world evolution and collective consciousness,” added Malhotra.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)