Dr Subhash Kak is a professor of computer engineering at Louisiana State University as well as a Vedic scholar. He is well known for his contributions to information theory and quantum physics, as well as to history of science and Indian studies. Kak's scientific research is in information theory, artificial intelligence, including neural networks and quantum theory. He is the inventor of a novel protocol for quantum teleportation and of a quantum cosmological model of the universe. Some of his ideas can be found in his book The Architecture of Knowledge: Quantum Mechanics, Neuroscience, Computers and Consciousness.
Kak discovered an astronomical code in the altar construction connected with Vedic rituals and showed how these numbers are reflected in the very organisation of the Rgveda which he has captured in his book The Astronomical Code of the Rgveda.
He is the author of several books on Indian civilisation. One of these is In Search of the Cradle of Civilisation which argues against the view that advanced civilisation came to India from elsewhere.
The following article was written for the Hindu Renaissance magazine:
We all understand how the 19th century construction of the Orient by the West satisfied its needs of self-definition in relation to the other. To justify its ascendancy, the other was defined to be racially mixed and inferior; irrational and primitive; despotic and feudal. This definition was facilitated by a selective use of the texts and rejection of traditional interpretations, an approach that is now called Orientalism. The terms in the construction were not properly defined. Now we know that to speak of a "pure" race is meaningless since all external characteristics of humans are defined in a continuum.
In the 19th century atmosphere of European triumphalism, what obtained in Europe was taken to be normative. With hindsight it is hard to believe that these ideas were not contested more vigorously.
Although this was the age which marked the true beginnings of modern science, old myths continued to exercise great power. When it was found that the languages of India and Europe were related in structure and vocabulary, the West responded with "a tissue of scholarly myths." These myths were steeped in erudition, informed by profound knowledge of Hebrew and Sanskrit, fortified by comparative study of linguistic data, mythology and religion and shaped by the effort to relate linguistic structures, forms of thought and features of civilisation. Yet they were also myths, fantasies of the social imagination, at every level.
The comparative philology of the most ancient languages was a quest for origins, an attempt to return to a privileged moment of time when God, man and natural forces still lived in mutual transparency. The plunge into the distant past in search of "roots" went hand in hand with a never forgotten faith in a meaningful history, whose course, guided by the Providence of the one God, could be understood only in the light of Christian revelation. As scholars established the disciplines of Semitic and Indo-European studies, they also invented the mythical figures of the Hebrew and Aryan, a providential pair which, by revealing to the people of the Christianised West the secret of their identity, also bestowed upon them the patent of nobility that justified their spiritual, religious and political domination of the world (Vernant 1992).
Although the term Aryan never had a racial connotation in the Indian texts, the scholars insisted that this was the sense in which the term ought to be understood. It was further assumed that Aryan meant European by race. By doing so Europe claimed for itself all of the "Aryan" texts as a part of its own forgotten past. The West considered itself the inheritor of the imagination and the mythic past of the Aryan and the idea of the monotheism of the Hebrew. This dual inheritance was the mark of the imperial destiny of the West.
Despite his monotheism, the poor Jew, since he lacked Aryan blood, should have seen "the dark silhouette of the death camps and the rising smoke of the ovens" (Vernant 1992).
On the other hand, the Asiatic mixed-blood Aryan had no future but that of a serf. He could somewhat redeem himself if he rejected all but the earliest core of his inheritance, which existed when the Aryans in India were a pure race. For scholars such as Max Muller this became ultimately a religious issue. Echoing Augustine, Muller saw in his own religious faith a way for progress of the Asiatic. We would smile at it now but he said, "Christianity was simply the name 'of the true religion,' a religion that was already known to the ancients and indeed had been around 'since the beginning of the human race' (see Olender 1992). A linguistic "Garden of Eden" called the Proto-Indo-European language was postulated. Europe was taken to be the homeland of this language for which several wonderful qualities were assumed.
Satnarayan Maharaj is the
secretary general of the
Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha
