Rudra’s red Banner – Marxism and Moksha..................................................
Introduction
The overall aim of this essay is to present a new trans-
ethnic, trans-national, trans-sectarian, trans-Hindu and
trans-Buddhist understanding of religious Tantrism and
Advaitic philosophy – showing them to be complementary
to secular European Marxism and Dialectical philosophy
respectively. To begin with I contrast the opposing secular
and religious concepts of ‘liberation’ signified by the terms
‘Marxism’ and ‘Moksha’, respectively – subjecting this
apparently irreconcilable dualism to both philosophical and
historical deconstruction, and showing the common
understandings uniting Advaita and Dialectics. I then move
on to stating the central claim of the essay, namely that the
true locus of ‘Moksha’ – understood as both spiritual and
political ‘liberation’ – is neither the body politic or
community nor the individual in isolation but rather a ‘third
realm’ identified by the Jewish thinker Martin Buber –
namely that of immediate human relations between
individuals in both social and communal contexts.
It is in this context that I argue that the essence of the
Indian religious philosophy of Advaita or ‘non-duality’ is
nothing but relationality as such – both between human