Dear Friends,

I would like to welcome and thank Sh Rajiv Malhotra and Dr Vijaya Viswanathan to the VIF once again for today’s Vimarsh discussion.

You would recall that on 30 Sep last year, the VIF had organized an event to release their much-celebrated and talked about book Snakes in the Ganga : Breaking India 2.0. The 800 pages well-researched book exposes the expanding ecosystem of Hinduphobia in the Western academic and media circles. Unfortunately, Indian scholars, universities, and other institutions are also being roped into this. The book has raised awareness in India about the complex ongoing information warfare that impacts Indian society and India’s national security.

Today’s event is in continuation of the previous discussion. Sh Rajiv Malhotra and Dr Vijaya Viswanathan are going to speak on the ‘Seven Tectonic Forces undermining India how to confront and Defeat them’.

Sh Rajiv Malhotra is the founder of the non profit Infinity Foundation which is dedicated to researching civilisation from historical, social sciences, and mind sciences perspectives. Initially, trained as a physicist and a computer scientist, Sh Malhotra became an entrepreneur and ran several IT companies before he founded Infinity Foundation. He is the author of numerous books on the subject. Several years ago he had written a book Breaking India which alerted the readers to the highly motivated and dangerous academic researches going on in the western academic circles with the aim of dismantling Indian society.

Dr Vijaya Viswanathan holds an MBA degree from Wharton Business School and has had a successful career in manufacturing and finance in USA, Singapore and Europe. Her core area of work is education. She has studied Vedanta, Dharmic and Civilisational thought. She serves on the Board of the Infinity Foundation.

In addition, we have two eminent discussants on the panel. They will offer their comments on Sh Rajiv Malhotra’s thesis. Amb Kanwal Sibal is a former Foreign Secretary, India’s former envoy to Turkey, Egypt and France.

Prof Sujit Dutta is a Distinguished Fellow and the Editor of VIF’s quarterly journal National Security. He was senior professor and Mahatma Gandhi Chair, Peace and Conflict Studies at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

I request Sh Rajiv Malhotra and Dr Vijaya Viswanathan to take the floor.