Nikolai Karpitsky. Modern Warfare and Kshatriya Duty Through the Lens of the Mahabharata

Karpitsky N. Modern Warfare and Kshatriya Duty Through the Lens of the Mahabharata // Journal of Vaishnava Studies. 2023. Volume 31. No. 2. P. 57–71.

 

Modern Warfare and Kshatriya duty through the Lens of the Mahabharata

Abstract

This article raises the question of contemporary Gaudiya-vaishnava attitudes towards war and kshatriya duty, particularly in relation to Ukrainian, Russian, and Indian perspectives on Russia’s war against Ukraine. This is viewed in the context of the holy war depicted in the Mahabharata, especially in terms of Krishna’s instructions in the Bhagavad-gita. There are four types of symbolic correlation between modern war and the events of the Mahabharata: religious, mythological, ideological, and ethical. The differences between them have led to disagreements and discussions within the Vaishnava community about how to understand the duty of a devotee in the midst of this contemporary hostility in the Russia/Ukraine part of the world. The article substantiates the religious nature of the spiritual-practical position of Ukrainian Vaishnavas, some of them engaging in peaceful service to people impacted by the battle, and others in the performance of kshatriya duty in the ranks of the armed forces.

The Mahabharata narrates the holy war of the Pandavas and Kauravas, which has become an example for the bearers of ancient Indian culture in understanding modern wars and our attitudes towards them. It is natural for a religious person to correlate his daily life with knowledge that is transmitted in their religious tradition. Therefore, such a person spontaneously sacralizes the events of everyday life, i.e., endows them with sacred meaning and turns them into symbols of spiritual events described in the scriptures. Practitioners of the post-Vedic tradition also see modern wars as a symbolic reflection of the war narrated by the Mahabharata. This symbolic correlation can be of different natures—religious, mythological or ethical. At the same time, the mythological understanding can reveal and supplement the religious one, or, alternatively, it can replace it, which in turn leads to a situation wherein mythological understanding is replaced by an ideological one. In the example of how Vaishnavas in that part of the world try to comprehend the modern war of Russia against Ukraine, one can see all these ways of symbolically relating modern life to the Mahabharata.

Vaishnavism is the predominant tradition in India, and in recent decades, several of its sub-schools spread rapidly outside of India in the countries of Western civilization and in the “post-Soviet space.” Thus, Vaishnavism found itself in a new and different cultural environment, which is characterized by a clear delimitation between the religious and socio-political spheres of life in accordance with the nature of Western secularization. Accordingly, Vaishnavas outside of India also began to clearly draw a line between their sphere of religious life and activities outside social space, while for Indian Vaishnavas these two spheres are inseparable.

In the post-Soviet space, the tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism has spread the most, focusing the adept on spiritual life, since it partakes of a Brahminical character. It is therefore quite natural that in the post-Soviet secular society, Vaishnavas tend to distance themselves from political life. For this reason, they sought to remain neutral when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and tried to quiet down all political disputes within their midst. However, a new large-scale invasion in 2022 and the subsequent mobilization in Russia made it impossible to further maintain a position of neutrality, and, for many, it is no longer possible to extinguish internal disputes in the Vaishnava environment.

That said, India did not follow the path of Western secularization, and there we find a different attitude towards religion. In particular, there is no such clear delimitation between religious and socio-political spheres. If in Western countries it would be undesirable for a politician to justify his position on religious grounds, for an Indian politician, on the contrary, it is desirable. Accordingly, Indian Vaishnavas form their attitudes toward the war between Russia and Ukraine in accordance with the cultural attitudes of their environment and society, whereas Vaishnavas in the post-Soviet space, by contrast, form their attitudes according to the cultural attitudes of the society in which they now find themselves.

The new large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine required many Vaishnavas to personally participate in the war in the ranks of the armed forces on both sides. In turn, this requires a theological comprehension of the Indic view on the duty of a warrior, a kshatriya, and self-determination in terms of one’s attitude towards war.

In the most famous and widely read book of the Mahabharata, known as the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna instructs Arjuna about the duty of a kshatriya. Arjuna is confused before the battle; he cannot decide whether he should fight, largely because his relatives are on the opposing side. He believes that, in this case, victory would indeed be empty. But Krishna says that Arjuna should in fact fight, not for victory or some other self-centered goal, but for the sake of fulfilling his duty as a kshatriya, for the welfare of others. Each person has his duty, says Krishna, which is determined by his nature: “Better is [one’s] own-law imperfectly [carried out] than another’s law well performed. [It is] better [to find] death in [the performance of one’s] own-law, for another’s law is fear instilling.” (Bg 3.35) [The Bhagavad-Gita. (2011). A new translation/Georg Feuerstein with Brenda Feuerstein. Boston & London. Shambhala Publications, Inc., 129.]

The nature of a kshatriya is such that he cannot and should not renounce activities like a brahmana. Rather, his way to salvation is to perform activities in a “disinterested” manner. Only in this way can he break the chain of cause and effect that keeps him in the world of suffering. If in this battle it is his duty to fight, then he must fight not for victory or any other external purpose, but because at that particular moment it is right to do so. Only then is an act right when it is performed solely out of awareness of one’s inner duty. If at every moment a kshatriya does the right thing, not worrying about the future and not hoping for any personal asset, then he will be invincible, because then—and only then—his fears and doubts will disappear, and all external forces will cease to influence him. This practice of disinterested action is called karma-yoga and leads to liberation: “Therefore, always perform unattached the deed to be done, for the man (purusha) performing action [while being] unattached attains the Supreme.” (Bg 3.19) [The Bhagavad-Gita. (2011). A new translation/Georg Feuerstein with Brenda Feuerstein. Boston & London. Shambhala Publications, Inc., 125.]

However, the question arises of exactly how to relate this Mahabharata-driven knowledge to the current situation. The battle of Kurukshetra marked the beginning of Kali-yuga, a dark age of war and suffering. Wars, it might be said, are inevitable in our life and history, which begs the question, “What is the duty of a kshatriya for those who are fighting now?” “Does every war call for carrying out a kshatriya duty, or only a just war?” And more, “How might a Vaishnava today react to the current war in terms of his practice?”

In the modern context, it is natural for a Vaishnava to look for a religious justification for his attitude towards war. The easiest approach is to liken it to the holy war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas in the Mahabharata. This allows one to interpret all the instructions of Krishna to Arjuna regarding war from within one’s own context. In this case, the sphere of the sacred is expanded and the tragic events of our life are endowed with sacred meaning. But even if this is the case, the question arises, How to do it right? After all, the Mahabharata gives no direct instructions on how to correlate the holy war of the Pandavas with the subsequent Kali-yuga wars, like the ones we see today.

Since the Ukrainian and Russian adherents of Gaudiya Vaishnavism focus mainly on the spiritual sphere and distance themselves from politics, they do not have the experience to evaluate social and political phenomena from the standpoint of religious tradition, and they very often do not understand how to correlate spiritual knowledge with secular life in the social space. Instead of renouncing political propaganda, as their spiritual life requires, they, on the contrary, find themselves in the captivity of political prejudices, for which they begin to seek religious justification. However, many of them retain these prejudices from their former life, before they became Vaishnavas. In this situation, religious understanding is easily replaced by a mythological worldview.

The religious understanding of war presupposes that one’s attitude towards war corresponds to what God wants each person to do. If the war is sacred, then a person participates in it because he does it for God, fulfilling his duty as a kshatriya because God wants it. But if with regard to the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas there were clear indications of its sacred nature and of what God wanted, there are no such indications regarding the war between Ukraine and Russia, and the Vaishnavas are forced to rely on their own religious intuition. A tricky and tenuous situation, to be sure.

On a personal level, a Vaishnava may perceive his participation in the war as a duty to God or duty as a kshatriya, but religion suggests that any personal mystical experience be confirmed by tradition, which reveals a common spiritual gauge for legitimacy. In the Vaishnava understanding, this experience is transmitted in succession from teacher to student, a phenomenon known as parampara. In an effort to correlate one’s religious experience with his or her tradition, a Vaishnava spontaneously begins to give modern war such a mythological meaning, allowing it to be correlated with the war in the Mahabharata. This is how the transition from the religious to the mythological understanding of war takes place.

Myth presupposes the embodiment of a new meaning in events and phenomena in such a way that it unites them in a contemporary worldview. Such mythological meanings have been called “archetypes” by Mircea Eliade. When life is fully brought into line with mythological archetypes, all questions are removed. Religion can use myth to broaden the understanding of revelation in relation to everyday life. The purpose of religion is to realize the connection of a person with the supreme, which, in the understanding of the Vaishnava, consists of love (prema) and devotional service to God (bhakti). However, myth has its own task—to give all the phenomena of life true meaning, such that it would be easier to live and to know what to do in all circumstances. Such a mythological attitude to the war of Russia against Ukraine is its sacralization, or its identification with the holy war of the Mahabharata. As soon as the goal of such identification becomes a disservice to God, that is to say, a religious justification for a personal attitude to war, the mythological understanding no longer reveals, but, on the contrary, replaces authentic religious understanding.

In mythological consciousness, the Battle at Kurukshetra is such an archetype, even though it is ostensibly embodied in real events. If a Vaishnava takes one side or another in a war, then, in accordance with mythological logic, he identifies the war with the battle of Kurukshetra, and, further, identifies his side as being the side of the Pandavas. If at the same time his desire to religiously justify his own political position in relation to the war predominates as a motivating factor, then the mythological understanding is transformed into an ideological one. That is, religion is not immediately replaced by ideology, but only after it is replaced by mythology.

Ideology can use mythology, but its purpose is different, namely, to impose on a person a system of motivations so that the person will act in the interests of others, i.e., that of authoritative figures or a group of political leaders striving for power. One of the ideological methods of manipulating people is finding an enemy. An enemy can be created according to the laws of mythological thinking, and any attempt to bring religious justification under such an understanding of the enemy leads to a distortion of religion, since it subordinates religion to the tasks of ideology. In the Indic tradition, this is called the decline of dharma, which is today observable in the example of some representatives of radical Hinduism, who justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine on religious grounds.

In India, as stated, there is no clear distinction between the religious and the secular. This leads to the following: Not only are political phenomena understood in a religious sense, but the religious ones are understood politically, and this sometimes leads to the subordination of religion to the tasks of political ideology. The paradox of modern consciousness is that the desire to follow tradition has led to the emergence of new ideas that were not present in tradition—this is the foible of “traditional/modern” in the context of the opposition “East/West.” That which is traditional and thus Eastern is understood by default as moral, correct, ascetic, and dharmic, while that which is modern is all-too-often associated with opposite qualities, believed to be characteristic of Western civilization. From the standpoint of this way of thinking, the Indic tradition is now interpreted as a political ideology in opposition to the West. With this as a backdrop, the West is declared an enemy, Ukraine is declared an ally of the enemy, and an aggressive war is thereby justified.

There are ideological currents that arise on this basis of condemning the imperialist West and seeing Hindu civilization as the protector of world dharma. Some advocate the revival of “Undivided India” (Akhand Bhaarat) —which, in fact, is not traditional at all, but rather a reconstructionist idea of the Indian empire. Akhand Bhaarat is intended to unite all the lands and cultures that have ever been part of India, even though they have never, in all of history, coexisted simultaneously in one state. Traditional empires cannot exist in the modern world, since, with the loss of reliance on an archaic way of life, they must either be transformed into democratic federations, like the modern Republic of India, or into totalitarian systems based on ideology, like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. The emergence of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century was the result of a mutation of imperial consciousness, when reliance on tradition was replaced by reliance on the ideology of the search for an enemy.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia opened up to the possibility of transforming itself into a democratic federation similar to India. However, at the turn of 1999-2000, state security services came to power in Russia and embarked on the task of reviving the empire. For this they started a series of wars, first with Chechnya, then with Georgia, and now with Ukraine. However, they failed to revive the Soviet brand of totalitarianism, and this led to the second mutation of their imperial consciousness, caused by the degradation of society and the oversimplification of their worldview.

In truth, the complex world of today has become frightening, with the main goal of their new type of imperialism, as stated, being its simplification. Therefore, if Ukraine cannot be conquered from the position of Russian imperialism, they think, then it must be destroyed in order to make the world easier and safer for all who inhabit it. This, in their minds, justifies the bombing of residential areas, civilian repression, and mass military action against people in general. When the fear of the world’s complexity is so strong that the goal of simplification through destruction prevails over the pragmatic goals of war, a necrophilic attitude towards the world is formed. This has led to the degeneration of totalitarian imperialism, whose main task is power and domination, into necrophilic imperialism or necro-imperialism, whose main task is to simplify the world through destruction and ruination.

In the contemporary world, both in India and in Russia, one can observe the strengthening of such trends that replace religion with political ideology, and at the same time, we find leaders who arrogate to themselves the right to speak on behalf of religion. The proximity of these processes leads to the phenomenon of Russian imperial narratives that begin to penetrate Indian informational consciousness. Russian imperialism is even forcibly justified— or, let us say, an attempt is made to justify it—from the point of view of the Mahabharata, and this of course leads to the destruction of Vedic values.

For example, on his YouTube channel, Rajiv Malhotra, author of the book “Academic Hinduphobia” and founder of the “Infinity Foundation,” consistently reproduces narratives of the confrontation between East and West, especially in the context of how he interprets the war in Ukraine. This is particularly seen in his interview with politician and educator Sanjay Dixit, who reproduced the false claims of Russian propaganda that justify Russia’s war against Ukraine. Sanjay Dixit endorses the claim that a civil war has been going on in the Donbas for eight years, since 2014, and that neo-Nazi groups that exist only in the imagination of Russian propagandists are allegedly spreading in Ukraine. This is how Dixit justifies Russia’s war with Ukraine, comparing it with the Mahabharata war: “But is it justification of the Mahabharata war? . . . the Pandavas were actually coaxed into and persuaded into joining that war, because there comes a time when it is the matter of last resort. The question actually is to ask whether this was the matter of the last resort for the Russians. . . . if you look at it from the point of view of Russians, I think the way they had been treated by the West, actually when they wanted to be Westernized, they wanted to join the West, and they were spurned, they were actually plundered.” [Dixit S. (2022). Is the Russian invasion of Ukraine Justified? With Sanjay Dixit URL: https://youtu.be/C0PFGDXcm1w] By identifying the aggressor with the Pandavas, and the defenders of their country with the Kauravas, Dixit and others give an interpretation of the Mahabharata in which evil is understood as good, and good as evil. Such a replacement of ethical values with the opposite ones occurs in ideologies based on the search for an enemy and is absolutely unacceptable from the standpoint of the Vedic-Vaishnava tradition. Therefore, the negative impact of Russian propaganda on Indian public consciousness leads to a perversion of Vedic ethics—that is to say, it leads to adharma. But this only becomes clear if one looks at the situation carefully.

Interestingly, a significant number of Vaishnavas in Russia who believe in Russian propaganda are also influenced by those radical ideological currents in India that reproduce the narrative of opposing the immoral West to the highly spiritual East. In the context of this opposition, they view Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as a global struggle with the West. They see that the Ukrainian people refuse to submit to the aggressor, and based on this they begin to perceive Ukrainians as traitors who have gone over to the side of the West. On this basis, these Russian Vaishnavas justify war crimes against civilians.

There is no doubt that justifying the war of conquest by identifying it with the holy war of the Pandavas can lead to adharma. On the other hand, it is true that Ukrainian Vaishnavas also often understand their just war, fought for the protection of their own people from enslavement and destruction, as sacred, and they, too, consequently identify it with the war in the Mahabharata. This has led to the division of the Vaishnavas on different sides of the front line. In other words, both of them, at the same time, identify themselves with the Pandavas, that is, with having God Himself (i.e., Krishna) on their side. In this regard, the question arises, how justified is it in general to identify any modern war, even if just, with the holy war in the Mahabharata? Isn’t the danger of distorting our spiritual perspective always a tangible threat, with each side erroneously thinking that they alone are fighting a righteous battle?

Such sanctification of war has been criticized by a teacher of the Gaudiya Math tradition, Dandi Maharaja. According to him, the battle of Kurukshetra was sacred because Krishna himself wanted it. But we cannot say the same, Dandi Maharaja tells us, about modern wars. There have been many wars in history in which the morally right side has been defeated, because these wars were not sacred; they were only part of the disasters that are inherent in Kali-yuga. In this era, Maharaja warns, there can be no holy wars, as in the Mahabharata, because there is no social community that God would unambiguously support or deny. The domain of moral actions has shifted from the social level to the level of personal responsibility. It follows from the position of Dandi Maharaja that the duty of a kshatriya cannot be based on the idea of a state. Even at the time of war, most people have a completely different duty, and if someone understands his duty on an individual level as the duty of a kshatriya, then, whether he fights or not, he should not substantiate it with the so-called religious or sacred nature of the war. [Dundee Maharaj and Nikolay Karpitsky. On the assessment of the war between Russia and Ukraine from the perspective of the Mahabharata. Discussion, August 2022 // War with the view of Vaishnavism URL: https://vaishnavaandwar.blogspot.com/2022/08/2022.html]

The stance of Ukrainian Vaishnavas on the duty of protecting the country is manifested differently at institutional and personal levels. Vaishnava communities in Ukraine are actively engaged in peaceful service to people in war conditions. The Hare Krishna in Ukraine Facebook group discusses practical issues of helping people and rescuing cows in the war zone. [Hare Krishna in Ukraine URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/harekrishnai-nukrain] The Food for Life in Ukraine program has spread throughout the country as there are internally displaced persons in almost every city in Ukraine who need help. Reports on the activities of the program in different cities of Ukraine are posted on the website Food for life Ukraine. [Food Life Ukraine. URL: https://foodforlife.org.ua/] This is all virtuous behavior, regardless of one’s spiritual perspective as outlined above.

On an individual level, however, many Vaishavas choose to perform the duty of a kshatriya and join the army. They see the protection of their country as not only a civic duty, but also a religious one, and therefore they criticize or disagree with the position of Dandi Maharaj. For example, Victoria Gipik, the mother of two sons who died defending Mariupol, said that her sons consciously chose the military profession because they believed that it is necessary for Vaishnavism to have not only those who fulfill brahmana and vaishya duty but also those who fulfill kshatriya duty. Therefore, she believes that her sons died fulfilling not only their civil duty but a spiritual one as well. [Angels of Mariupol. Bogdan and Yaroslav Gipik. Interview with the mother of the dharma protectors. 04.01.2023. URL: https://youtu.be/t0WRttb6LPk]

Indeed, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita appeals to all free individuals and their sense of inner duty. Krishna explains his arguments in relation to the individual, and not on the basis of an assessment of the sacred nature of war as a social phenomenon. However, the correlation of the current war with Kurukshetra allows a Vaishnava to better understand his duty to God, particularly in this contemporary context. In a polemic with Dandi Maharaj, Ukrainian Vaishnavas point out that Krishna’s instructions about the duty of a kshatriya sets universal moral guidelines, and the Pandavas’ holy war itself sets patterns of behavior that anyone with a conscience in the realm of goodness would have to employ.

In other words, the symbolic correlation of the current war with the war in the Mahabharata has dimensions that are not only religious, mythological and ideological, but it also carries an ethical dimension, in which everyone can understand his or her duty. At the same time, representatives of the Ukrainian Society for Krishna Consciousness refer not only to the laws of Manu and other sacred texts, but also to the authority of the founder of their tradition, Srila Prabhupada, who spoke of the moral obligation, if necessary, to kill an aggressor. [Prabhupada refers here to the standard Indic concept of the aggressor (atatayi). There are six acts for which lethal retaliation is considered justified: (1) administering poison, (2) setting fire to another’s home, (3) stealing, (4) occupying another’s land, (5) kidnapping another’s wife, and (6) attacking with a deadly weapon. See Vasiṣṭhasmṛti 3.19. Prabhupada says, “What is religious fight? Religious fight means you have got right to kill your aggressor. If somebody takes your property, if somebody sets fire in your house, if somebody kidnaps your wife or somebody is trying to kill you, they are called aggressor. So aggressor should be killed immediately. It is not that somebody has become an aggressor, and if I say, ‘Now I have become a Vaiṣṇava. I’ll not be violent. I shall tolerate. Caitanya Mahāprabhu has taught us to be tolerant like the tree or the grass. So I shall become tolerant. Let him do.’ Just like Gandhi used to say. Somebody questioned him that ‘If somebody comes and violates the chastity of your daughter in your presence, what will you do?’ He said, ‘I shall remain nonviolent.’ But that is not śāstric injunction. This is foolishness. If somebody is aggressor, he must immediately be killed. Dharma-yuddha. Yudhiṣṭhira Mahārāja is thinking that ‘Although there was fight, the fight was between our own men—my brother, my nephews, my grandfather. So they are family members. I have killed them for my kingdom.’ He is thinking in that way. He is a pious man. Violence is required.” —Lecture on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.8.50, May 12, 1973, Los Angeles.] This becomes a mandate for those who are inclined to defend the righteous and to come to the aid of those who need protection. Moreover, this moral responsibility does not at all require the recognition of the war as being sacred and its likening to the conflict between the Pandavas and the Kauravas; it is quite enough that the Mahabharata reveals the ethical meaning of the duty of a kshatriya in the conditions of an ordinary war in the Kali Yuga.

All this being said, this ethical dimension is questioned by those Russian Vaishnavas who do not want to disagree with the current Russian state authorities, for one reason or another. At first, many tried to take a position of neutrality, based on moral relativism. Its essence was that due to the very nature of empiric reality, we cannot know the truth of the situation and determine who is truly to blame for the war. Thus, when mobilization was announced in Russia, ordinary Vaishnavas began to ask their leaders what to do, whether they should evade mobilization or not. In this way, a definite answer had to be given, which did not come easily.

In one such conversation, Chaitanya Chandra Charan, a guru and member of ISKCON’s Governing Body Commission, discussing the question of whether Russian Vaishnavas must agree to be drafted for war in Ukraine, announced: “There are also laws of the state . . . I accept this as the will of Krishna. Because there is law, and I must follow the rules, the law.” [Meeting and answering with ISKCON leaders – secrets of Sadhana Bhakti. 01.10.2022. URL: https://youtu.be/iVL4or7YVIE?t=5349] It follows from his words that if these laws stipulate that a Vaishnava must go to war, then he is obliged to obey, even if he is a brahmana and has his own preferred duty, different from the duty of a kshatriya. According to this logic, the law of the state may at times have priority over dharma, over ethical and religious law, and over personal conscience.

Interestingly, Chaitanya Chandra Charan does not try to clarify the potential contradictions in his position. What if the president’s mobilization order contradicts Russian law? What if the president himself holds his office illegally contrary to the Constitution? What if a Vaishnava who was mobilized into the Russian army ends up on the territory of Ukraine? After all, if he is obligated to obey the laws of the state in which he is located, then, accordingly, in Ukraine he is similarly obligated to obey the requirements of the Ukrainian system. In this example, we see how Russian Vaishnavas replace the ethical understanding of the duty of a kshatriya based on the Indic tradition with formal obedience to the demands of the state, even if these demands are illegal and perhaps even criminal. Still, these Russian Vaishnavas cannot supply a non-contradictory substantiation for this position. Therefore, individual devotees will agree with their leader’s proclamation, and act on it, while others will not.

The Mahabharata and the ancient Indic tradition as a whole provide the foundations for an ethical understanding of war, regardless of a follower’s view on religion. Along these lines, one more dimension can be singled out— spiritual and practical, which brings us back to religious perspective. In this case, a person comes to religious understanding on the basis of his internal practical experience, and not on the basis of general ideas that are enshrined in religious tradition.

It is this spiritual and practical meaning that Krishna reveals to Arjuna, showing that the basis of the duty of a kshatriya is the principle of disinterested action, which is the essence of karma yoga—a special path of liberation for kshatriyas. Staying in the wheel of samsara is due to a causal relationship between actions and desires. It is this conditioning that forces a person to commit evil deeds in order to secure pleasure and adjust to external circumstances. A person begins to do evil because he is not free. A brahmana can, ideally, renounce deeds and desires, and therefore can proceed on the path to liberation through knowledge.

A kshatriya, on the other hand, can renounce only desires, but not actions, because his nature, rajas, passion, is active. Therefore, in order to break the connection between actions and desires, a special spiritual practice of disinterested action is required—karma yoga. If a kshatriya performs an act disinterestedly, not for the sake of achieving this or that goal in the external world, but for the sake of fulfilling his inner duty, as mentioned earlier in this article, then he becomes free from all external circumstances, and his involvement in the wheel of samsara weakens.

A kshatriya intuitively knows his inner duty, for the reason that the duty of a kshatriya is inseparable from his nature. However, the desire to adapt to external circumstances suppresses this intuition, and this is true not only among kshatriyas. When Chaitanya Chandra Charan substantiated the duty of the Vaishnavas to participate in the criminal war by the demands of the Russian state authorities, he was guided not by his internal duty as a spiritual leader, but by the desire to avoid conflicts with state authorities, and this, it can be argued, led to the substitution of religious understanding for an ideological one.

However, by dint of karma-yoga, the kshatriya’s intuition about his inner duty, which is not conditioned by any goals, including the goal of pleasing state authorities, becomes clear. Therefore, this intuition reveals the falseness of the ideological interpretation of the Mahabharata, made for political purposes, and reveals the truth of the more universal Vaishnava understanding of the symbolic correlation of war in the Mahabharata with contemporary wars in general. From this perspective, the fulfillment of the duty of a kshatriya in the conditions of modern war acquires not only an ethical meaning, but also a religious one, as one of the paths of liberation that Krishna speaks about in the Gita.

Thus, an adequate attitude to war from the Vaishnava point of view is revealed in two dimensions—ethical and religious.

The modern war itself, as such, should not be endowed with sacred character. However, the Vaishnava tradition gives underlying principles of relating to it from an ethical position. Religious meaning is given not to war itself, but to the spiritual practice that leads to liberation—karma yoga— which determines the duty of a kshatriya in this and in any war, taking into account its ethical evaluation from the standpoint of the Vaishnava tradition.

But here a final question arises. Is it possible to perform the duty of a kshatriya on the side that wages an unjust war? After all, the Mahabharata says that many worthy people honestly fulfilled their duty as a kshatriya, even while fighting on the side of the Kauravas—Bhishma, Drona, Karna, and others. Is it possible to perform the duty of a kshatriya in the same way on the side of Russia, which is waging an unjust war against Ukraine? If the answer is yes, then Chaitanya Chandra Charan is right when he says that Vaishnavas must submit to the demands of the Russian government if it sends them to war. The fact is that Bhishma, Drona, Karna, and so on, had a legitimate opportunity to fulfill the duty of a kshatriya, fighting on the side that waged an unjust war, but those who are now fighting on the side of Russia against Ukraine do not have such an opportunity, either from an ethical or practical point of view. I will now explain why.

From an ethical point of view, it is impossible to fulfill the duty of a kshatriya on the side of criminals who unleashed a war of conquest for no purpose or reason. Moreover, Russia is not only waging a war against Ukraine, but also conducting a separate special military operation, as Putin called it, which has resulted in mass terror of the inhabitants of Ukraine and which makes no sense from a military standpoint. That is, anyone who fights on the side of Russia becomes involved in crimes against civilians. There are discussions on this issue among Vaishnavas on social networks and references to scriptures prove that participation in a criminal war cannot be justified by fulfilling the duty of a kshatriya.

From the point of view of spiritual practice, it is impossible to carry out the kshatriya duty on the side of Russia due to the peculiarities of Russian military philosophy. In the spiritual domain, one needs to follow one’s path in a conscious way, which is the condition under which it is even possible to advance along the spiritual path. Therefore, in the Bhagavad-gita, the performance of the duty of a kshatriya is considered to be a path to liberation only on the condition that it becomes a conscious choice. The differences between the Ukrainian and Russian armies lie in different military philosophies. In the Ukrainian army, a soldier is a subject of military action, who must make his own decisions according to the situation. This corresponds to the philosophy of war in the Mahabharata, where all the warriors, regardless of which side they fought on, independently made decisions and were responsible for them, that is, they acted as subjects both on the battlefield and in the dramatic history of the Mahabharata as a whole. The success of the Ukrainian army is ensured by the initiative shown by the military at all levels. Therefore, for the Ukrainian army, the life of a soldier is of the highest value, and the entire military strategy is built in such a way as to save the lives of soldiers as much as possible.

In the Russian army, on the contrary, a soldier is not a subject, but an object of military action, he is perceived only as a resource that has a certain life span, just like military equipment, which also has its own calculated life on the battlefield. Moreover, this period of life is entered in accounting calculations from the outset, so that the planned death of soldiers is perceived as a necessary condition for the normal supply of the Russian army. This means that from the very beginning a Russian soldier is forced into a position not of a subject, but of an object. Accordingly, under such conditions he cannot carry out the proper duty of a kshatriya. Krishna instructs Arjuna in his kshatriya duty as a living being who is endowed with freedom of choice and therefore responsible for his own actions. But Krishna does not call Arjuna to be a thoughtless cog in a military system.

In conclusion, Vaishnavas in the West, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, are exploring the contemporary war in that part of the world in terms of the religious, mythological, ideological, ethical and spiritual-practical understanding of war through the lens of the Mahabharata. In accordance with the Vaishnava tradition, each person has his own duty, and this determines his place in the war. The duty of a kshatriya stems from the inner nature of a person and is realized in the spiritual practice of karma yoga, which leads to liberation in the religious sense. The ethical meaning of kshatriya duty is revealed under certain social conditions as a duty to one’s country or a duty to protect one’s people. At the same time, one’s religious duty can be understood as an inner relationship with God that allows one to act without the influence of external circumstances. All of this said, in the end, it can be argued that there is neither ethical nor practical possibility to fulfill the duty of a bona fide kshatriya if one fights on the side of Russia against Ukraine. On the contrary, if one fights on the side of Ukraine, the possibility of fulfilling such a duty is not only available, but beckoning.

Appeal to the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi from Prof. Nikolai Karpitsky

To the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi

Dear Mr. Prime Minister!

In the year 2011, the Russian authorities tried to ban Bhagavad Gita as extremist literature. India was the only country in the world that supported Vaishnavas in Russia and showed that defence of Dharma is more important than political gains. Now Dharma in Russia is in even greater danger. So we again hope for the support of the government and people of India. The Russian government has created a quasi-religion of hatred to justify new colonial wars - expansion of the “Russian world”. The Russian Orthodox Church leadership was the first to fall under its influence and for this reason supported the persecution of Vaishnavas in 2011 and now supports the war. However, many members of the Russian Orthodox Church disagree, they have openly defended the Bhagavad Gita, and now they refuse to pray for Russia's victory. For this reason they are being persecuted and suffer repression. Now the Russian government is imposing a quasi-religion of hate on all faiths. Many Vaishnavas have been forced to leave Russia, but many remain and out of fear support the quasi-religion of hatred and the war against Ukraine. But they still remain alien to the adherents of the ‘Russian world’, so, sooner or later Vaishnavism may again be banned in Russia. Your authority in the international arena may persuade many to abandon moral relativism and evaluate the war against Ukraine from the position of the universal moral law of all humankind, which in India is called Dharma. You can convince the international community that this is not the age of archaic colonial empires, and therefore, all countries need to unite to issue an ultimatum to Russia. Either Russia will abandon the imperial form of state structure and transform itself into a democratic federation safe for the world, or it will cease to exist as a single state.

A participant in the defence of the Bhagavad Gita trial in 2011 Prof. Nikolai Karpitsky

Registration Number : PMOPG/E/2024/0149253

Nikolai Karpitsky. Followers of Hare Krishna go to fight for Ukraine. War has changed Krishnaites

Source: PostPravda.info 2024-09-23

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/reports/followers-of-hare-krishna-fight/

War is rapidly changing people’s consciousness. These changes are visible as if through a magnifying glass in religious communities that previously distanced themselves from political life and preached pacifism, but now support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. If before the war Russian and Ukrainian believers of Hare Krishna were unaware of their differences, now it is as if they live on different planets. Having lost their common language of communication, they no longer understand each other.

The Hare Krishna movement: pacifists or warriors?

The Hare Krishna movement preaches the principle of non-violence – ahimsa. Its representatives, the Vaishnavas or, as they are called, Krishnaites, are vegetarians and refuse to kill not only humans but also animals. Therefore, the Ukrainian government has recognized their right to alternative civil service. The Hare Krishna movement originated in Bengal in the 16th century, and in the second half of the 20th century it spread throughout the world, including Ukraine. Its largest association in Ukraine is the “Society for Krishna Consciousness,” but there are others related to it.

They all come from the same root and there is no contradiction between them. They differ only in their “religious flavor.” Krishnaites preach love for one God, whom they call Krishna, and practice repetition of the Hare Krishna mantra. Everything a Krishnaite does in his daily life, even when he takes a shower or cooks a meal, he does it for Krishna, to please God. There is simply no room for violence in such a life. Before the war, it was hard to imagine that these peaceful people dancing in Indian costumes on the streets of Ukrainian cities would become warriors.

How many of them are now in the Ukrainian Armed Forces? It’s hard to say exactly, because the Krishnaites don’t have records of members. Ukraine’s spiritual leadership claims to know exactly about 80, while Mykhailo Tashkov, head of the Spiritual Matter Project, a supporter of the Hare Krishna movement and an Officer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, claims to have identified 136 Krishnaite warriors, and there may be more than two hundred in total. For a relatively small “pacifist” religious community, that’s a lot, as there were about 40,000 of them in Ukraine before the war, and perhaps twice as many now.

Mykhailo Tashkov says that 29 Krishnaite warriors are already known to have died, four more are missing, and one is in captivity. His “Spiritual Matter” project aims to promote a theological justification for the need to defend one’s country with weapons, and from this position he and his fellow warriors are engaged in a fierce polemic with the community’s leadership. So what motivates members of a “pacifist” religion to voluntarily go to war with an aggressor?

Hare Krishna followers who died during the war in Ukraine. Photo: Facebook

A view of war in the Hare Krishna movement

The Hare Krishna movement is one of the strands of Hinduism. According to Hindu ideas, the world is governed by a universal moral law – dharma, which at the same time manifests as an inner duty, and each person has his own, according to his inner nature. For spiritual people, dharma is to know the truth, to devote oneself to the service of God, for warriors – to protect the weak, for peasants and merchants – to ensure material life.

In line with this, there is the concept of warnas in India. They are something like social states. The varna of priests – brahmins, the varna of warriors – kshatriyas, the varna of peasants and merchants – vaisyas. In some strands of Hinduism, the varnas are believed to be defined by birth, but in the Hare Krishna movement the varnas are believed to be an indicator of a person’s personal qualities, which do not depend on the family into which they are born. Because of this understanding, people of different nationalities from all countries can join the movement.

“Hare Krishna” is a brahminical movement oriented exclusively toward spiritual life, with the goal of devotional service to God. Therefore, its followers had little participation in public life, since such participation is the duty of a kshatriya, not a brahmin. The political beliefs of the Krishnaites are generally the same as those they held before joining the movement, and generally reflect public sentiment. Religious leaders tend to take a neutral stance on political issues and try to keep any political disputes out of community life. They viewed wars as an inevitable evil. According to Vedic ideas, we live in the age of wars, viz. in Kali-yuga, and salvation can only be achieved through devotional service to God.

However, when the February 24, 2022 the large-scale Russian invasion began, it became clear to Ukrainian Krishnaites that this was not just one of the Kali-yuga wars on the outskirts of their country, but a genocidal war against all Ukrainians, a war of annihilation. No one is safe in Ukraine now; Krishnaites are dying just like other Ukrainians. The occupiers have destroyed three Krishna temples. In the Kherson region, a drunken Russian soldier shot a Krishnaite family in their home for no reason. At the moment, the deaths of five civilian Krishnaites are known, but how many were killed in total is still unknown.

If in the past total focus on God and detachment from material problems was seen as a sign of spirituality, in the context of genocidal war it is seen quite the opposite – as moral relativism. After all, such complete detachment when people, children are dying all around, shows indifference to suffering and unwillingness to take responsibility for what is happening around us. Does God need such an irresponsible follower?

Thus, a division has emerged among Ukrainian Krishnaites between those who believe it is necessary to lead a religious life as before and those who believe it is necessary to take an active part in defending their country. The fierce polemic between the two is sometimes accompanied by unfair mutual accusations. However, both are opposed to Russia’s aggression, they only argue about whether and in what form this aggression should be fought. Ukrainian Krishnaites do not even enter into discussions with supporters of an openly pro-Russian position, so the split between Ukrainian and Russian Krishnaites cannot be overcome.

Relations between Ukrainian and Russian Krishnaites

Before the war, Ukrainian and Russian Krishnaites felt no differences between them and paid no attention to the fact that a dictatorship had been established in Russia. At least until 2011, when the Russian government made a clumsy attempt to outlaw the Krishna Consciousness Society. To that end, the FSB initiated a trial in the Siberian city of Tomsk to admit the Krishnaite holy book as extremist. At the time, there were still remnants of civil society in Tomsk that supported the Krishnaites, but the support of the public and the Indian government played a decisive role. The holy book managed to be protected.

Ukrainian Krishnaites morally supported their Russian co-religionists, and it came as a shock to them that their spiritual brethren, who themselves almost became victims of repression by the Russian government, supported the occupation of Crimea and the 2014 military invasion of eastern Ukraine. Initially, Ukrainian Krishnaites tried to reach the minds of their Russian co-religionists, but now such attempts have finally ceased. The fact is that the existential experience of war between the two is so different that they simply don’t understand each other, even if they both advocate for Ukraine and against the war.

It is clear to Ukrainian Krishnaites that Russia is waging a war against all Ukrainians for the purpose of destruction, that this is a special war that differs from any other war in that it is being waged not for any political gain, but for the purpose of destroying Ukraine and Ukrainian identity. However, even for those Russian Krishnaites who oppose the war and wholeheartedly sympathize with their Ukrainian co-religionists, this is just one of the Kali-yuga wars, which is being waged not by Russia, but by the Russian government, supposedly separate from Russia. This gap in perceptions of the war prevents communication even among those who oppose the political regime in Russia.

Hare Krishna followers in Ukraine. Photo: Facebook

Most Russian Krishnaites try to maintain neutrality, which easily degenerates into moral relativism and equating the victim with the aggressor. The most common opinions are: “Everyone is to blame for the conflict, Russia, Ukraine and the West”; “Vaishnavites should not get involved in politics”; “Demons fight demons, and Vaishnavites should remain neutral”; “War is a punishment for meat-eating people, everyone is guilty, there are no innocents.”

Along with supporters of this neutral position of moral relativism, there are many among Russian Krishnaites who trust Russian propaganda. They blame the war on either Ukraine, where Russians are allegedly oppressed, or the West, which is allegedly fighting Russia with Ukraine’s hands. There are also those who see it as a global conspiracy of “architects” who secretly rule the world. The ideas of pro-Russian Krishnaites about what is happening in Ukraine are absurd and grotesque. For example, I know a Russian Krishnaite who claimed that Russians are being caught in Kharkiv, and then Russian passports are nailed to various parts of their bodies. At the same time, he categorically refuses to communicate with his Ukrainian co-religionists.

However, with the onset of the large-scale war, Ukrainian Krishnaites faced another problem. The fact is that in the Hare Krishna movement, as in Hinduism in general, the guru, or one’s own spiritual teacher, has absolute authority. God Himself is believed to act through him. However, before the war, Ukraine had no teachers of its own, and the initiation of Ukrainian Krishnaites was carried out by teachers from other countries, including Russia, namely Bhakti Vigyana Goswami (Vadim Tuneev), the spiritual leader of the Krishna Consciousness Society in Russia, and also Chaitanya Chandra Czaran das (Alexander Chakimov).

Vadim Tuneev resigned from the leadership of the Russian Krishna Consciousness Society, emigrated and morally supports Ukraine and Ukrainian co-religionists, but Alexander Chakimov took the opposite stance. Not only did he spread the Russian propaganda narrative that Ukraine had been bombing the Donbas for eight years, but he also urged Russian Krishnaites to obey the mobilization decree, saying that it was Krishna’s duty and will to fight, and if a Vaishnav dies fighting against Ukraine, it will be a glorious death that will purify him of karma. Unfortunately, Alexander Khakimov has a large number of disciples in Ukraine, many of whom absolutely disagree with his position, but cannot abandon the teacher, as it contradicts the creed.

So Ukrainian Krishnaites faced a theological challenge – how to explain that a spiritual person, a teacher through whom God Himself acts, takes a demonic position? The situation improved somewhat when, in the spring of 2024, the spiritual leader of the Krishna Consciousness Society in Ukraine and Moldova, Achyuta Priya (Artem Chumachenko), became a guru (teacher) with the right to give initiations, while at the same time recommendations for initiations from Russian teachers were banned. However, what to do with those who have already taken initiation from Alexander Khakimov is an open question.

Dominant trends among Krishnaites

It is difficult to accurately gauge the prevailing trends in the Krishnaite community, but one can certainly speak to the mood among those Krishnaites with an online presence. Yulia Fil, a researcher at the UAN Institute of Oriental Studies, conducted an online survey in April 2024 to determine how the war has affected relations between Ukrainian and Russian Krishnaites. More than a third of Ukrainian Krishnaites do not want contact with Russian co-religionists at all (36.7%), and slightly less than a third are willing to restore relations only if their Russian co-religionists take responsibility for Russia’s crimes in Ukraine.

In other words, two-thirds of Krishnaites take a radically pro-Ukrainian position and are not ready to make any compromises in the name of communication. Before the war, such principledness on political issues could not have been imagined. The war has changed the Krishnaites a great deal. Only 13.3% responded that it was necessary to restore communication with the Russians, leaving aside political issues. If at the beginning of the war Ukrainian Krishnaites actively engaged in discussions on social networks in an attempt to change the minds of their Russian co-religionists, now only 5% express such an intention. This is in line with the general mood throughout Ukrainian society, where the desire to convince Russians has been marginalized.

The position that, for the sake of communication, one should agree with the position of Russians is somewhere within the statistical error – less than 2%. As the survey of Russian Krishnaites in Tomsk shows, the mood there is different. Slightly more than half (52%) take a position of political neutrality and favor restoring communication with Ukrainian co-religionists, without raising political issues. Slightly more than a quarter (27%) believe that it is necessary to meet with Ukrainian co-religionists, recognizing their right. The rest take a pro-Russian stance: a little more than a tenth (11.5%) believe that one should not communicate with Ukrainian co-religionists at all, and another 10% believe that one should try to convince them that Russia is right.

I think these figures reflect the situation of social consciousness in Tomsk as a whole, which is a university city and a cultural center. In Russia’s depressed cities, the situation is probably much worse; I think Russian propaganda of hatred for Ukraine absolutely dominates there. The genocidal war is changing everyone, and it is already clear that neither the Hari Krishna movement nor other religions in Ukraine will remain the same. Disputes and crises within religious communities reflect similar disputes and crises throughout Ukrainian society, and Ukraine’s future will depend on how it overcomes these internal contradictions.

Сonversation of two Indologists Dr Olena Bordilovska and Dr Yulia Fil on their expectations of PM Narendra Modi visiting Ukraine

Decoding PM Modi's Visit To Kyiv | What Ukrainians Hope From PM Modi Visit | India Today 

The same message PM Modi carries to this place during his first visit ever to Ukraine. Special ground report

Religious beliefs in the face of modern challenges during the war

Representatives of most religions in Ukraine serve in the Armed Forces. These include Christians (Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants of various denominations), Jews, and Muslims. The Institute of Military Chaplains was established in the Armed Forces to meet the religious needs of servicemen. However, there are religions whose teachings prohibit believers from harming or killing other beings. In the context of the army, this means not taking up arms. These include Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Krishnaism. Watch Ukraine in flames #642 to find out about the meaning of religious identity in the context of the war and the participation of representatives of religious minorities, particularly Krishnaites, in the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Guests:

Oksana Horkusha, Senior Researcher at the department of religious studies at the Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy Mykhailo Tashkov, Officer of the assault aviation brigade, Head of the preaching and volunteer project "Spiritual Matter" Mykolai Karpitsky, Professor of the Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University Timecodes

00:00 - Intro

02:38 - (Horkusha) “Religion as a tool to build the “Russian world””

07:36 - (Tashkov) “What divides Krishnaites in Ukraine?”

12:33 - (Karpitsky) “We must unite around good”

15:32 – Outro

Devotee Couple Killed in Ukraine, Suspect in Custody

Published for the first time By ISKCON News Staff   |  Nov 11, 2023, but then for unknown reasons the publication was removed from the site 

ISKCON News is sad to report the deaths of two devotees, Sanatana Goswami Dasa and his wife Kalavati Devi Dasi, disciples of HH Partha Sarathi Das Goswami, who were shot and killed by a Russian soldier in the village of Nechaevo near Oleshek.

According to residents of the area, the incident occurred on Saturday, November 5th. Locals discovered their bodies, and a suspect was taken into custody. According to one report, he confessed to the crime. A specific motive is still not known, and there is no official acknowledgment by the Russian occupying forces. 

Local devotees said Sanatana Goswami and Kalavati lived a simple life, caring for a cow and gardening on their village land. They regularly held namahatta meetings in their home, loved participating in harinam, and frequently participated in nagara kirtan. 

Devotees from the local area gathered for a memorial service and kirtan.

Drugs culture in South Asia. Linas Tavaras (Vilnius University)

Mukunda das. Reliability Of The Leaders. Time For New Spirituality

Yulia Fil. Why Russia is not a Victim? Point of view from within the war (to my Indian friends but not only)

What I see in Indian media now is the dominant position which can be described as "Poor Russia, NATO threats it, expend its influence to the East so that it did not have another choice as to start protecting itself, start to react, start the war".  This narrative is contradictory from the very beginning.

From one side Russia exposes itself as a world superpower, storing the second most powerful army in the world, but at the same time declares itself as a victim of some superior powers. I want you to ask the first question: 

Is someone powerful will shout from every corner that he is threatened by half of the world? 

I propose the mental operation here: please, imagine the US is crying that China is threatening it, or imagine Great Britain complaining that someone becomes a threat to her. At least imagine India in such a role. Do you accept such a country as a superpower? Just try to feel it: would you respect such a person/country and treat it as strong? Is it a modus operandi for a real superpower? 

So, it is what Russian Federation does. Victimizing itself but at the same time claiming its strengths. And now I will try to explain why the so-called "expansion of NATO on East" exists only in Mr. Putin's head and Russia's victim position is a myth, an empty bubble to justify the war and its brutal actions on the territory of the sovereign neighbor state. 

Yes, Ukraine does take help from NATO. Yes, Ukraine does develop its army after 2014 when Russia occupied the part of its territory – Crimea, and a great piece of Donbas. The war there had been waged all these 8 years. Ukraine's biggest neighbor – Russia – showed clearly that it is a dangerous neighbor, which intends to dictate to Ukraine how to provide its domestic and foreign policy, which will not lose a chance to establish the puppet government in Ukraine and simply rule it from Moscow. So, in your opinion, how Ukraine should act in such a situation? To sit calmly and passively in the hope that Russia will not dare to come to Ukraine's land again?

I will tell you more. Truthfully saying Ukraine didn't expect Russia to proceed with its imperialistic march. Otherwise, we would have been much more prepared. But we simply could not be unprepared at all in such a situation – of course, our government did some steps "in case" because doing nothing would mean giving up, or that we are not ready to fight for ourselves. At least, doing nothing would mean that we are naïve and stupid not to accept the thread coming from Russia. So, at this stage, I would ask you to think about another question:

Would you sit passively on your ass doing nothing if someone threatens you? Don't you try to take some measures "in case" this threat will turn into action? 

So, what Russia calls "NATO expansion to East" Ukraine calls "natural right to protect itself facing the threat". From this point of view "Russia is a victim" has no sense.

Who is protecting itself here?

This wrong precondition that "Russia is protecting itself" turns into the conclusion that Russia as a victim has the right to brutally intervene in the sovereign state, occupying its territories, destroying its cities, and killing its civilians. Is everything ok with such a conclusion? My dearest, are you sure? 

Furthermore, this wrong precondition that Russia has a right to do it leads to the point that “we have to stop to escalate the conflict, we have to give Russia what it wants”, "It would be unwise on the part of Biden and the Western alliance to escalate the Ukrainian crisis by waging a proxy war with Russia” © *

What you call  “escalation" here is called the fight for existence. Existence of sovereign and independent Ukraine. “Stop escalating” means accepting the fact that the world, which is, I still hope, strives for democracy and keeping universal human values, just allows such atrocious and brutal things to happen right in front of its door. It looks like the situation when you, a vegetarian, following ahimsa, see someone is beating the dog and not only pass by but observe the scene saying: "I have to stop this dog to provoke the conflict somehow, he is probably barking so loud". 

I do not want to victimize Ukraine in any sense; I do not want to put Ukraine in any victim position because it will mean that I accept the absence of Ukrainian subjectivity. There are enough such things in media, where the Ukrainian voice is hardly heard (and I agree that it is partly Ukrainian fault). But do not you think that such Indian and Western experts, whose quote I put above, made a little confusion about victims here? 

*Thomas Mathew is a retired civil servant who has served in the Indian Defence Ministry, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis and writes on security issues. His article on the topic was published in Indian Express on the May 31, 2022 under the title “The West must not test Putin’s resolve”.

15.07.2022

Nikolai Karpitsky. The Asymmetric Dialectics in ISKCON Tradition

Karpitsky Nikolai. The asymmetric dialectics in ISKCON tradition // До 150-річчя від дня народження академіка А. Ю. Кримського: матеріали Міжнародної наукової конференції (Київ, 19–20 жовтня 2021 року). Одеса: Видавничий дім «Гельветика», 2021. С.207-216.

   

Nikolai Karpitsky

The Asymmetric Dialectics in ISKCON Tradition Annotation

Annotation. The academic approach involves a critical attitude towards the sacred text and comparative work with interpretations emerging in other traditions. However, ISKCON Vaishnava literature is based on the authority of spiritual teachers. This creates a barrier between secular scholars and Vaishnavas, so ISKCON needs its philosophy with the system of concepts, methods, and principles of critical thinking to overcome this barrier. The first attempt to create such a philosophy was undertaken by Vaisnava sanyasi Bhaktivedanta Sadhu Swami, the author of the book “Code of Absolute: Way to the perfect mind”. It was the first philosophical book in Russian in the ISKCON tradition. The article considers asymmetric dialectics as a philosophical methodology by Sadhu Swami concerning sacred texts as well as human’s attitude to life. 

Keywords: asymmetric dialectic, shabda, pratyaksha, ISKCON, Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Vedic tradition

The Vedic tradition includes the developed philosophy of Vedanta. It functions not only as philosophy but also as theology. In European tradition philosophy and theology are strictly secluded even though they are both of a rational type of knowledge and can have similar instruments of reflection over a person's spiritual experience, namely – general terminology system and general theoretical methods. The rational type of knowledge presupposes critical perception and asking new questions. Whereas philosopher theoretically develops knowledge system based on intuitive foundations, theologian develops knowledge system based on foundations verifiable by revelation implying whole church collective experience. Revelation can manifest itself in sacred texts and in traditions that are authoritative and shouldn't be doubted. The philosopher can be critical, while theologian should not be critical to religious revelation and collective church experience but only to their expression forms. Here we can draw a parallel between theology and science, which is also a rational type of knowledge and developing by asking new questions. Science preconditions, such as axioms, postulates, and primary concepts are not objects of doubt, because any change in them will lead to the emergence of new alternative science.

A critical attitude to knowledge ensures the possibility of a dialog, however, the circle of that dialog is limited to those people, who use the same knowledge preconditions and don't doubt them. For example, the scientific dialog is possible if scientists are using the same postulates. And if postulates differ from each other, then scientists are working in different scientific paradigms and their dialog is problematic. To make it possible one should step outside concrete sciences. This is something achievable through the philosophy which problematizes science's preconditions and by doing so creates a new basis for dialog. The same thing could be said about theology. Theology discussions are limited to those people who accept the authority of the same revelation, sacred texts, or religious tradition. That is why the debate between members of different religious traditions is problematic. But it is quite possible to make a philosophical debate, as philosophy implies a critical attitude to any knowledge and experience. That is why in Indian tradition disputes between different schools could be conducted by philosophical means. That circumstance stimulated philosophy development but due to specifics of Indian thought development, there was no strict seclusion between philosophy and theology as it was in Europe.

Vedic tradition is based on Veda's authority, which is recognized as sacral. Although they could not be changed, they can be commented on. Commentator could become Acharya-founder of a new tradition himself, and then his commentaries will also be recognized as authoritative and sacral for his followers but could be ignored in other traditions. As Ravi Gupta believes: «Laying a secure foundation for devotional practice is a task common to all schools of Vaishnavism, and the materials for such an enterprise usually come from the realm of Vedanta philosophy» [Gupta  2007, 2]. In practice, adepts mostly read works of Acharya-founder and rarely – works of his predecessors. So the philosophy of Vedanta and Veda's themselves are known mostly through the works of Acharya-founder. That limits the dialog between members of different Hinduism branches, while simple adepts don't even see value in such dialog.

For the last half-century one of the Gaudiya Vaishnavism branches founded by Shrila Prabhupada namely ISKCON became the most prominent among Hindu movements outside India. ISKCON adepts «perceive their tradition as integral and self-sufficient, not needing any additional justification in Western culture. But they also cannot completely ignore the rational criticism and scientific knowledge that they use in practice. Among modern Vaishnavas, some believe that all rational knowledge that is not derived from the scriptures is useless. But some believe that it is necessary to strive for mutual understanding in interreligious and intercultural dialogue, taking into account modern knowledge and rational methods of cognition» [Fil 2021, 71]. 

In modern ISKCON movements the trends denying not only philosophy but also a rational way of learning in religion are quite strong. Vaishnava Kala Chandra Das (Moscow) in polemic with the author of this article said: "The main thing for bhakti is faith (shraddha), while intellectuals measure everything by logic. This is the difference in approaches. Logic is powerless in obtaining a transcendental experience, which can only be obtained through proper communication with truly exalted Vaishnavas" [Fil 2021, 72]. However, as Ravi M. Gupta shows, such attitude toward rational knowledge had its place also at the beginning of the Gaudiya Vaishnavism history: «Despite its foundational role in the Hindu theistic traditions, Vedanta found itself on uncertain ground during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, due largely to the rise of influential devotional movements across North India. Some of these movements established their influence by deliberately set themselves apart from the Vedantic pursuits of earlier Vaishnava schools. They saw the emphasis on Vedanta as the hallmark of knowledge-oriented systems, in contrast to their exclusive absorption in devotion (bhakti). Indeed, some traditions rejected any kind of intellectual engagement as a diversion on the path of pure devotion» [Gupta 2007, 3].

Moreover, R.M. Gupta is a scientist and representative of the intellectual movement in Gaudiya Vaishnavism himself. He studies the philosophical basis for Vaishnava practice as a philosophy historian. His goal is to explain Vaishnava's teaching to the modern reader, which is an authoritative knowledge for himself. And indeed, among scientific approaches one most suited to reach that goal is a philosophy-historical approach. Nowadays many ISKCON adepts conduct philosophy-historical researches of Vedanta and the history of Gaudiya Vaishnava thought.

However, contradictions inevitably arise in a process of interaction between scientists and adepts.

 «The academic approach implies a critical attitude to the scriptures, the authority of which is absolute for Vaishnavas, and this imposes restrictions on cooperation between secular and Vaishnava researchers of the Vedic tradition. To reach a new level of mutual understanding and cooperation, we need our philosophy of the ISKCON tradition with its own system of concepts, methods, and principles of critical thinking, which would not only allow other people to have meaningful discussions with Vaishnavas and adequately understand the Vaishnava tradition, but also rethink it not as something imported from outside, but as an integral part of the multifaceted culture of their own country. The first such purely philosophical book in Russian in the ISKCON tradition was The Code of the Absolute by Bhaktivedanta Sadhu Swami, published in 2012. It is possible to discuss these or other ideas of the book, but the author has proposed a language and a method of Asymmetric Dialectics, thanks to which such a discussion becomes generally possible» [Fil 2021, 71 –72].

Bhaktivedanta Sadhu Swami in his book offers the result of his reflection on Vedic logic, based on more than twenty years long apprenticeship in Vedic tradition – parampara. The book aims to give the way of learning that allows overcoming both skepticism and dogmatism.

The sensual way of learning gives knowledge about specific facts. This way of learning is called pratyaksha in the Vedic tradition. There were attempts to build a system of knowledge based only on empiric experience in European philosophy. However, as it turned out such a system of knowledge is easy to doubt. Empiric experience gives us only fragmentary knowledge about objects, so it is unreliable. To avoid skepticism we need to base our knowledge either on rational principles or authority-based principles.

In the Vedic tradition, the way of learning based on the authority of the scriptures is called shabda. And the way of learning based on this logic is called anumana. “Pratyaksha allows us to perceive the external, visible aspect of objects and phenomena, and shabda informs us of their inner essence, an invisible background. Ignorance means judging things superficially, not knowing what they are in reality. Shabda, from wherever we have received such knowledge, either from the ancient scriptures or as revelation during prayer, means contact with God, and pratyaksha is contact with material nature” [Бхактиведента Садху Свами 2012, 26].

In European philosophy the place of the scripture's authority is taken by intuition-based premises of mind that are the basement for a theoretical way of learning, which is a system of logical conclusions based on those premises by its nature. However, there is still a danger of substitution of true knowledge by random forms of reasoning. How can we make sure that our forms of reasoning are not abstractions of intellectual fantasy, but a basement for true knowledge? "As for anumana, the logic of our intellect is determined by the type of contact we have had. Since we have been subject to the material nature for a long time, material logic is firmly rooted in our intellect and does not allow us to understand the true nature of things. This book attempts to explain a different form of logic based on shabda. We call it Asymmetric Dialectics, or simply Vedic Logic” [Бхактиведента Садху Свами 2012, 26].

There is an answer to these doubts in Vedic tradition: one must base their reasoning on the authority of the Vedas – shabda. In the basement of shabda lies intuitive knowledge that is revealed in Vedic tradition. However, a person can easily approach this authority as a formality, and in that case, shabda will be viewed as dogma. But how can we make the authority of the past live in the present? To overcome the danger of dogmatism, the author of this book develops a special way of learning – "asymmetric dialectic". This way of learning allows us to re-examine authority in the way that we can see intuitive knowledge that is a base for this authority and has its root in a living experience of communicating with the Ultimate Being.

Spiritual experience is infinite in its diversity, and it cannot be captured in some specific form, so there is a need in such a strict way of understanding that can compensate for the ambiguity of spiritual experience. Bhaktivedanta Sadhu Swami, in line with Vedic tradition, managed to formulate a new kind of dialectic that is based on shabda. This method consists of harmonizing two types of knowledge: those which is getting from practice and those which is based on spiritual experience. That allows the author to overcome both skepticism and dogmatism.

Firstly author formulates a thesis resting on authority-based knowledge and puts it versus another thesis that was formulated on the basis of practical knowledge. Then two kinds of knowledge are to be harmonized: one based on shabda and another based on pratyaksha. However, these two theses are not equal. Shabda-based thesis gives a foundation of understanding and pratyaksha-based – of critical re-examination. However, the critical analysis leads not to negation, but rather to find a deeper kind of knowledge that is based on authority, and so the formal side of authority had been overcoming. Thanks to that, based on that knowledge, the depth of spiritual life is revealed.

In Hegel’s dialectic, thesis and antithesis are sublated, or in other words, two equal contradictory claims are overcoming in favor of some new way of understanding. But in an Asymmetric Dialectic of Sadhu Maharaj thesis based on shabda is not sublated, but rather purified from its dogmatic form. As a result of such purification, intuitive living knowledge that is based on religious experience is revealed.

So, the author of this book managed to connect Vedic tradition and the modern philosophical way of thinking. In “Code of Absolute” we encounter not just another way of thinking or another kind of dialectic, but spiritual experience that was acquired in a connection with spiritual tradition – an uninterrupted lineage of guru-apprentice succession – parampara.

Sadhu Maharaj starts his philosophy with dialectical consideration. The first thesis is based on shabda, that is authoritative knowledge – "object exists". The second thesis is based on sensibly perceived pratyaksha – “object doesn’t exist”. In case we are talking about the theological concept, firstly we should deal with the first thesis and only then start to analyze the second one based on undoubted truth reveling in it. However, Sadhu Maharaj in his book builds not a theological but exactly philosophical system, so he starts with a less reliable thesis demanding critical review and then corrects understanding under the second thesis based on shabda. Thanks to such a dialectic way of understanding statement which is based on shabda is offered not as formal truth that denies any alternative understanding, but as a principle that corrects the process of philosophical understanding itself. And so, Sadhu Maharaj states that external experience leads us to the conclusion that object doesn't exist. That means that our empirical knowledge is variable and unreliable, and should we be consistent, we naturally end up either with D. Hume skepticism, or Buddhism concept of shunya. Most of the people are not so consistent of course, so their position implies that empiric learning should be corrected. And Sadhu Maharaj includes opposing, based on shabda, thesis for that purpose. In accordance to shabda "Being or existence is primary and absolute, and non-being or non-existence is dependent on existence, so it is relative. Let us explore the following example: while looking into a room, a child may say "there are no mum and dad". However, the child means that mum and dad are not at home, not that they do not exist at all. The assertion "there are no" relates to the absence of the parents from the home» [Бхактиведанта Садху Свами, 34]. He reveals dialectic of others antinomies in a similar way, by going from consideration of less reliable thesis to more reliable one: «The Object is Unity» / «The Third Thesis: The Object is Distinguishable»; «The Object is Multiple» / «The Object is Singular»; «The Object Changes» / «The Object is Unchanged».

Asymmetric dialectic becomes an instrument of conceptualization not only of Vedic knowledge but of all modern people's life aspects. Concepts that we use to comprehend life could be reduced to basic philosophy categories that could be systemized differently. Sadhu Maharaj considers categories by pairs in such a way that one would rely on absolute content, while the other relies on relative one.

Absolute Concepts/Relative Concepts: Spirit / Body, Mind, Intelligence, Ego; Consciousness / Unconsciousness (Subconsciousness); Cause / Consequence; Means / Goal; Faith / Doubt; Whole / Parts; Male / Female; Disciple / Teacher; Contents / External Form; Light (energy) / Shadow (matter); Form / Formlessness; Duty / Right; Hear / Listen; Abundance / Deficit; Devotion / Love; Revelation / Sense Perception.

So Sadhu Maharaj proposes an instrument of philosophical conceptualization that allows the critical review of any knowledge including Sadhu's Maharaj own position. For example, he claims that duties are primary and rights are secondary. In my opinion, Sadhu Maharaj mistakenly connects rights and the concept of self-profit while a person's rights are results of existence, and so their content is absolute, while duties – are relative. However, I can express my disagreement in categories and logic that were proposed by Sadhu Maharaj himself, which opens a possibility for discussion of different positions, and in a broader context – the possibility of dialog between people of different religious and cultural traditions and beliefs. That is the main advantage of his philosophical system.

Sadhu Maharaj substantiates that asymmetric dialectic naturally leads to an understanding of an Absolute. The new thing about this conclusion is that asymmetric dialectic allows understanding how exactly absolute reveals itself to a person, which makes it possible to substantiate religious experience and Gaudiya Vaishnavism practice:

 «Since the Absolute is the unity of shabda and pratyaksha, He is pratyaksha as unity is the definition of pratyaksha. But since He is different from both shabda and pratyaksha, He is the Super Consciousness as far as discernibility is the property of consciousness» [Бхактиведанта Садху Свами, 127 – 128]. From that Sadhu Maharaj concludes: «The Vedic logic of pratyaksha leads us to the conclusion that the Absolute has certain attributes, precisely, His Names and His External Forms. Yet, one should treat them as a revelation. In contrast to the material, spiritual pratyaksha is not a denial, but rather the expression of shabda, Spirit. For the perception of God in Image and Sound, in addition to the eyes and ears, conscious devotion to Him known as bhakti is needed» [Бхактиведанта Садху Свами, 131].

However, it was not clear enough for many ISKCON devotees why philosophical substantiation for the religious revelation opening itself in religious practice is needed. ISKCON Russian department leader Bhakti Vijnana Goswami in his preface for the “Code of Absolute” book wrote that he was troubled with such free Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophical terms usage, for example, pratyaksha and shabda: “It was absolutely unclear why it was necessary to reassign and extend the meaning of simple and concrete words, to transform them into some kind of universal explanation categories. Such an approach, as I see it, had a threat to our graceful, consistent and at the same time disarmingly rational spiritual philosophy, lacking any shadow of a hint for mystical fog”. Nevertheless, he supported Sadhu Maharaj and gave a positive recommendation to his book. 

However, Sadhu Maharaj not just substantiate Vaishnava's religious experience, but also reveals such broad understanding of an Absolute, that this opens possibilities for interreligious dialog:  «The Truth is not just one of teachings that are well known to the mankind at present because the Truth is a Complete Whole, the Absolute. The Absolute is manifested in different teachings to varying degrees, but the Absolute does not belong to any of them. The sadhu is devoted to the Truth, not religiosity. The general masses of people identify themselves with their mundane religion or modern science, i.e., they identify with their social institutions, rituals, and teachers» [Бхактиведанта Садху Свами, 175]. In 2011 in Tomsk Sadhu Maharaj, following such understanding of the truth, initiated Interreligious dialog with the involvement of members from nearly every confession in Siberia, and also scientists – philosophers, culture researchers, religion researchers, sociologists, and historians. Soon after the trial over Shrila Prabhupada's book "Bhagavad-Gita as it is" has begun in Tomsk. If the court acknowledged the book as an extremist ISKCON practice on Russian territory would be prosecuted. Scientists as well as members of different confessions gathered at interreligious meetings stood in a book's defense. The victory in this trial delayed the start of religious persecution in Russia. So, one must admit that theoretical conclusion about the truth Sadhu Maharaj substantiate with asymmetric dialectic method became an ideological basis not only for communication between people of different believes but also for cooperative activity in defense of religious freedom, that substantially influenced the situation in the whole country.

Literature

1. Gupta  Ravi  M. (2007), The  Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Vedānta  of  Jīva Goswāmī: When  knowledge meets  devotion, Routledge, London and New York. 

2. Fil Yu., Karpitsky N. (2021) Bhaktivinoda Thakur in modern rational criticism of traditional beliefs, Ad verbum (Literally), May, No. 2.

3. Бхактиведанта Садху Свами (2012), Код Абсолюта: Путь к совершенному разуму, Москва, Философская Книга.