🛡️ Dharma in the Crossfire: Reclaiming Higher Education from the Anartha-Kuśalāḥ

When Śrī Rāma cautioned his brother Bharata with the words:

"कच्चिन् न लोकायतिकान् ब्राह्मणामः तात सेवसे |
अनर्थ कुशला ह्य् एते बालाः पण्डित मानिनः ||"

“I hope you are not engaging with Lokāyatika Brāhmaṇas, my dear brother, for these immature men, thinking themselves wise, are only skilled in causing harm.”
— Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa 2.100.38

he wasn’t merely describing a group of misguided thinkers. He was giving us a civilizational alert — one that echoes today with startling relevance.

Prof. Santishree’s recent critique of the “woke-jihadi academic complex” in Indian higher education institutions must be understood in the light of this ancient warning. At stake is not just pedagogy or ideology — it is the soul of the nation’s intellectual future.

🎓 From Śāstra to Subversion: How Did We Get Here?

Indian knowledge traditions were once centered around the pursuit of truth (satyānveṣaṇam), not power. The guru-śiṣya paramparā was built not to propagate ideology, but to unfold the self, to align individual thought with ṛta — the cosmic order.

Contrast this with what we are witnessing today in some of the country’s most prestigious institutions. As Prof. Santishree rightly points out, departments once built to promote ethical reasoning and cultural literacy have become intellectual garrisons — where ideologues preach Western-imported binaries (oppressor/oppressed, faith/science, tradition/progress) with missionary zeal.

And in this distorted landscape, ancient philosophical insights like anartha-kuśalaḥ — “those skilled in producing harm” — return to relevance.

⚠️ The Rise of the Anartha-Kuśalāḥ

Today’s anartha-kuśalāḥ wear many masks:

• The cultural theorist who sneers at Upaniṣadic wisdom as “Brahmanical hegemony.”

• The sociologist who filters Indian history only through the lens of caste or colonial guilt.

• The technocrat who views AI and data science as value-neutral while ignoring the intentionality behind the algorithm.

• The activist-academic who builds global solidarity with foreign forces, while denigrating Indian civilization as regressive.

These are not fringe actors. They dominate hiring committees, guide doctoral research, control conferences, and curate reading lists — creating echo chambers where only the loudest among the like-minded thrive.

🧬 Why This Matters: Academia Shapes Tomorrow

Ideas are not harmless. Today’s university seminar is tomorrow’s policy draft.
If Indian youth are fed a version of this country that is irredeemably oppressive, fractured, or insignificant, why would they:

• Choose to serve in its civil services?

• Build technologies that solve uniquely Indian problems?

• Protect it with pride in uniform?

Without pride, there can be no sacrifice. Without rootedness, there can be no innovation that serves the nation.

🌍 The Globalist Irony

Ironically, while Indian academia rushes to deconstruct its own civilization under the banner of globalism and critical theory, countries like China, Iran, and even many European nations actively protect their civilizational narratives.

Only in India does “unlearning India” seem to be a career booster in academic circles.

Meanwhile, Western institutions are beginning to realize the excesses of their own woke ideologies — seen most recently in the Trump 2.0 administration’s initiative to defund and dismantle educational bodies overrun by ideologues. It is high time India, too, confronts its own soft-cultural subversion.

🛠 What Needs to Be Done

We do not need to dismantle our institutions. We need to reclaim them with integrity, and do so by:

1. Reforming recruitment: Merit must return as the gold standard. Ideological networking should be flagged, not rewarded.

2. Reviving Bharatiya knowledge systems: Not as a token course, but as the epistemic foundation for social sciences, ethics, and policy thinking.

3. Supporting parallel scholarship: Civil society must fund independent institutes where critical inquiry meets dhārmic grounding.

4. Protecting students: From ideological coercion, subtle discrimination for holding nationalist views, or being silenced for quoting the Gita.

5. Ensuring accountability: Track foreign influence, opaque fellowships, and networks that openly campaign against India’s integrity.

🕯 Why Dharma Must Lead

India is not just another postcolonial state. It is a civilization with an unbroken philosophical lineage, one that has gifted the world with yoga, āyurveda, nāṭyaśāstra, śilpaśāstra, jyotiḥśāstra, and profound moral texts like the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.

Any education system that ignores this, erases it, or vilifies it is not merely incomplete — it is dangerous.

And those who participate in this erasure, knowingly or unknowingly, fit Rāma’s description: immature, self-congratulating, and skilled only in producing harm.

🔔 Conclusion: Dharma Will Not Be Dismissed

We are in the midst of a civilizational tug-of-war, where one side wears the armor of ancient wisdom and moral courage, while the other hides behind jargon, grants, and globalist doublespeak.

Let us be clear: this is not a struggle of left vs. right, or science vs. religion. It is a struggle between:

• Truth vs. ideology

• Śāstra vs. slogan

• Bharat vs. its internal colonizers

And as students, scholars, and citizens, we have a choice to make:

Do we walk with Rāma — clear-eyed, compassionate, and rooted in truth?

Or do we serve the lokāyatikāḥ — clever, but dangerous; educated, but unwise?

India’s destiny will be decided by the answer.

Author’s note: I write this not to attack any scholar or institution, but to uphold the timeless principle that education must be in the service of truth. May our future be guided by clarity, not confusion — by dharma, not dogma.