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This paper presents five founding ideas of Indian ethos leading to five principles of Indian Management. These include (1) Oneness (2) Two types of human beings: (Thought-Action) Positive and (Thought -Action) Negative (3) Three Gunas or Qualities of Nature represented by Violent, (Vibrant and Silent energies (4) Four Purusharthas (Goals) of life and (5) Panch-koshas: Five sheaths model of human personality. Paper explores implications of these five principles for 'Practical Spirituality' in individual, social and organization contexts.
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The Hindu worldview has all through been accepted as a commitment to higher possibilities like dharma, karma and moksha; a foundational orientation towards "Brahman", who is formless, limitless, all-inclusive and eternal; a real entity that encompasses everything (seen and unseen) in the universe. From a Western lexical standpoint, Hinduism like other faiths is often referred to as a religion. But in India the term dharma (righteousness, moral law, right conduct and duty) is preferred, which is broader than the western term religion. Hindus view it as Sanatana (the eternal), which shapes the basic constitution of reality and provides the bedrock on which the adherents live and move, and have their being. Ironically enough, the Hindu viewpoint in particular and the Orient in general is viewed as otherworldly, transcendental and irrational. In this paper "the Other" image, so stipulated, is challenged.
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This introduction develops the idea of 'Global Theory' - a form of theorising that draws on, contrasts, and meta-theorises from diverse cultures. Itt looks at the use that has been made of Indian ideas, and develops a theory of 'choral hermeneutics' (rather than merely dialogical hermeneutics) that cross-references multiple worldviews to "produce a simultaneous vision of many positions in relation to each other." The rest of the book "Hindu Worldviews" explores theories of self, action, thought and community in classical Hindu sources such as the Upanisads, Sutras, and Bhagavad Gita. The result is a portrait of the Self in Indian thought as something that can shape itself, altering its embodiment, reshaping personality, expanding its scope across concepts, and connecting to other selves. Far from the fixed self usually associated with the Atman, this is a fluid and flexible self with a profound creative power over its own identity.
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‘Gods on Earth: Immanence and Transcendence in Indian Ideology and Praxis.’ The Indian Journal of Anthropology. Inaugural Issue 1(1), pp. 1-20.
Questions concerning the relative importance to Indian civilisation of the Brahmanadominated model of religious status hierarchy and the royal model of divine kingship and associated hierarchies of state power have been referred to as 'the central conundrum of Indian social ideology'. These two models of hierarchy nonetheless derive from a broader Indian worldview and both shape, and are shaped by, the existential realities of Indian social life and of life in general. They represent an attempt to respond to a 'central conundrum' of human sociality-how to differentiate between the members of a society in terms of status-and a central dilemma of human existence-how to be at once engaged with the world and elevated beyond the ordinary conditions of embodied existence. This paper endeavours to achieve a more unified perspective on Indian kingship and Brahmanism by exploring their relation to the world of social action, and action more generally. Indian civilisation has struggled for millennia with the fundamental existential conflicts of 'being in the world.' Hence what is to be gained from unravelling the products of this struggle is not only a better understanding of Indian culture alone but of human experience in general.
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