印度不仅仅是一个民族国家。它也是一种独特的文明，其哲学和宇宙论与我们时代的主流文化——西方——截然不同。印度的精神传统源于佛法，在西方的框架中没有确切的对等物。不幸的是，在匆忙庆祝印度在世界舞台上越来越受欢迎的过程中，其文明母体被纳入了西方普遍主义，从而稀释了其独特性和潜力。
在《与众不同：印度对西方普遍主义的挑战》一书中，思想家兼哲学家拉吉夫·马尔霍特拉（Rajiv Malhotra）通过扭转视线、将印度从被观察者重新定位为观察者，以及从达尔米克的角度看待西方，来应对直接和诚实地参与差异的挑战。在这样做的过程中，他挑战了双方对自己和对方的许多迄今未经检验的信念。他强调，虽然独特的历史启示是西方宗教的基础，但佛法强调此时此地身体的自我实现。他还指出了支撑佛法形而上学的整体统一，并将其与西方思想和历史作为综合统一进行了对比。
博学且引人入胜的《不同》批评了流行的还原翻译，并分析了西方对差异的焦虑和对秩序的执着，这与混沌在佛法中的创造性作用形成了鲜明对比。文章最后反驳了西方的普遍主义主张，同时提出了多元文明的世界观。
Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism
India is more than a nation state. It is also a unique civilization with philosophies and cosmology that are markedly different from the dominant culture of our times – the West. Indian spiritual tradition spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in Western frameworks. Unfortunately, in the rush to celebrate the growing popularity of India on the world stage, its civilizational matrix is being co-opted into Western universalism, thereby diluting its distinctiveness and potential.
In Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, thinker and philosopher Rajiv Malhotra addresses the challenge of a direct and honest engagement on differences by reversing the gaze, repositioning India from being the observed to the observer and looking at the West from the Dharmic point of view. In doing so, he challenges many hitherto unexamined beliefs that both sides hold about themselves and each other. He highlights that while unique historical revelations are the basis for Western religions, dharma emphasizes self-realization in the body here and now. He also points out the integral unity that underpins dharma’s metaphysics and contrasts this with Western thought and history as a synthetic unity.
Erudite and engaging, Being Different critiques fashionable reductive translations and analyzes the West’s anxiety over difference and fixation for order which contrast the creative role of chaos in dharma. It concludes with a rebuttal of Western claims of universalism, while recommending a multi-civilizational world view.
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