The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15.s1.14

c15.s1.14

Sorokin has referred to some recent Indian authors of the history of old Indian philosophy. But the fact that these authors happen to be Indian does not improve the situation. They belong to traditional indology in so far as they commit the same fallacies of mal-observation and non-observation as the Western pioneers. As a rule, they are as indifferent to the materialistic sources as the founders of traditional indology. To them as to the Western writers on Indian philosophy the dozens of Chandraguptas, Rājendra Cholas, Bukkā Rāyas, Śivājis and other Indian Napoleons are non-entities and their literary or archaeological documents mere shadows worthy but to be ignored. Like the Western indologists, again, these Indian authors have the knack of treating perhaps as inconvenient exceptions the thousand and one wars of Indian history as well as the million instances of sensuality, luxury, corruption and what not prevailing in the societies of India as of Europe through the ages. And the vast literature bearing on blood-shed, sex-life, economic prosperity, domestic bliss and so forth is apparently considered by these authors as by their Western colleagues to be of hardly any worth by the side of the texts bearing on *ahimsā* (non-killing) and *mokṣa* (salvation). In their sociological or philosophical interpretations of culture they are no less apathetic to the anthropological, economic, militaristic, historical and other objective realities of life as the Western interpreters. Both care to study a very small part of India's life and thought, institutions, activities and movements and exclude the major portions from their survey. And yet both talk glibly of the "Hindu view of life," "Indian ideals, "the heart of Hindustan," the spirit of India, etc.⁴ These Indian authors are as obsessed by monistic interpretations of culture as their Eur-American *gurus*.