Revisiting T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land through the Lens of Indian Knowledge Systems

This Blog is written as part of the Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir from the Department of English, M.K.Bhavnagar University (MKBU). The aim of this post is to explore The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot through the lens of Indian Knowledge Systems, this post summarizes at least two scholarly articles that examine how Indian philosophical traditions inform and enrich our understanding of Eliot’s poem. 

The Indian Knowledge System in The Waste Land: A Journey from Chaos to Enlightenment

“Eliot’s Vision of the Still Point: The Spiritual Quest in His Poetry and Drama”

Summary of the Article: “Eliot’s Vision of the Still Point: The Spiritual Quest in His Poetry and Drama”

This article explores the spiritual philosophy and metaphysical unity underlying T. S. Eliot’s poetry and plays, with particular emphasis on the “still point” concept in Four Quartets. It demonstrates how Eliot’s later works move from despair and fragmentation toward spiritual illumination and the apprehension of timeless reality. Drawing upon Vedantic and Buddhist thought, the critic argues that Eliot’s poetry embodies a synthesis between Eastern philosophy and Christian mysticism, portraying the human journey from illusion (maya) toward the eternal Word (Logos).

1. The Still Point and the Turning World

In Four Quartets, Eliot’s “still point of the turning world” symbolizes a moment of spiritual transcendence beyond the flux of time. The poet’s creative Word parallels the divine Logos that brings order from chaos. The “turning world” represents the illusory domain of maya, where humans live in delusion, “centers of their own,” unable to bear the light of ultimate reality. The still point, though momentarily apprehended, allows vision “in the light of eternity,” uniting temporal and eternal orders.

2. Maya and the Human Condition

The article interprets Eliot’s frequent use of darkness as both ignorance and divine mystery  a metaphor drawn from Upanishadic and Buddhist traditions. The “darkness of God” can dispel the false darkness of maya. Eliot’s vision, therefore, implies liberation through spiritual insight: release from illusion through self-knowledge and submission to divine will.

3. The Family Reunion: Escape from the Wheel of Maya

In The Family Reunion, Harry’s struggle mirrors the soul’s journey from delusion to enlightenment. His family lives “in sleep,” bound to appearances, while Agatha and Mary act as spiritual guides who see beyond time-bound illusion. Harry’s confrontation with “shadows” and “phantoms” parallels the mystical process of self-realization  recognizing that the phenomenal world is illusory. His final liberation, as the Furies turn into “bright angels,” signifies the triumph of vision over ignorance.

4. The Cocktail Party: The Two Paths of Redemption

In The Cocktail Party, the doubleness of human existence is dramatized through Edward and Celia. Edward discovers his divided self the temporal, desiring ego and the silent, observing self (a direct echo of the Upanishadic twin-bird parable). Celia, through renunciation and sacrifice, follows the path of the contemplative mystic, achieving spiritual transfiguration. Eliot presents two complementary ways to salvation: the path of householder duty (grihastha) and the path of detached contemplation (sannyasin).

5. The Confidential Clerk and The Elder Statesman

Later plays like The Confidential Clerk and The Elder Statesman continue this theme of self-realization. Colby’s longing for a “real” world that unites inner and outer realities reflects the need to reconcile spiritual insight with practical life. Similarly, Lord Claverton’s confrontation with his “ghosts” leads to the death of his false self and an awakening into truth. Both characters represent ordinary individuals gaining partial enlightenment  an echo of Eliot’s belief that spiritual awareness is possible even in mundane existence.

6. The Doubleness of Action and Poetic Drama

Eliot’s dramatic philosophy, as noted in his essay on John Marston, involves a “doubleness of action”  characters act simultaneously on the temporal and spiritual planes. This structural “pattern behind the pattern” pervades all his plays, reflecting the same dual reality of time and eternity found in Four Quartets. The reader gradually perceives this hidden pattern and recognizes, along with Eliot’s protagonists, the coexistence of temporal struggle and eternal peace.

7. Tiresias and the Universal Consciousness

The article also revisits The Waste Land through the figure of Tiresias, seen as the poet’s spiritual self across multiple reincarnations. All characters are extensions of Tiresias’s consciousness fragments of a single soul seeking liberation from the cycle of birth and suffering. This reinterpretation aligns the poem with Hindu-Buddhist karma theory, transforming it into an allegory of spiritual evolution toward Brahman, or ultimate reality.

Conclusion

The critic concludes that Eliot’s enduring significance lies in his fusion of Western and Eastern mysticism, his poetic dramatization of humanity’s bondage to illusion, and the search for redemption through spiritual awareness. His characters  from Becket to Claverton  evolve from ignorance to enlightenment, mirroring the soul’s progress from maya to the eternal Word. The apprehension of the “still point” represents not escapism but the moment of transcendent insight when the human self participates in divine order.

Eliot’s art thus reveals the “pattern behind the pattern”  a metaphysical structure uniting time and eternity, appearance and reality, illusion and truth giving his poetry and drama their universal, timeless power.

“Shantih” in The Waste Land  An Indian Knowledge Systems Reading

1. The Enigma of “Shantih”: The Final Word of a Fragmented Poem

K. Narayana Chandran begins by foregrounding the mystery surrounding Eliot’s final line 

“Shantih shantih shantih.”

This closing chant has long unsettled critics. Scholars such as George Williamson viewed it as a form of “mad raving,” unable to locate its meaning within a Western framework, while A. D. Moody assumed that Eliot’s Sanskrit was intentionally obscure, meant to remain beyond Western comprehension.

Others, like David Ward, expressed perplexity that a poem so distant from the Upanishadic spirit could end with what appears to be a Vedic benediction of peace.

Chandran interprets this critical confusion as symptomatic of the poem’s own tension between knowledge and ignorance, a tension articulated by Eliot himself: “We know and do not know.”

Thus, Shantih serves as both a semantic and spiritual riddle, demanding that readers look beyond the surface annotation and into the symbolic world of Indic cosmology where peace is not mere tranquility, but the state of spiritual realization.

2. The Upanishadic Context of the Śānti Mantra: Peace as Cosmic Balance

indu ritual practice, the Śānti mantra is not a casual invocation but a sacred closure a spiritual seal that concludes every Vedic recitation.

Traditionally, the chant is uttered as:

Om Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ.

The threefold repetition represents the triple plane of peace sought by the seeker:

1. Ādhyātmika Śānti – peace within oneself, release from inner conflict;

2. Ādhibhautika Śānti – peace in the external world, harmony with nature;

3. Ādhidaivika Śānti – peace in the divine realm, freedom from cosmic disturbances.

Crucially, Chandran notes that Śāntiḥ achieves its full spiritual resonance only when preceded by “Om” the pranava, the sacred syllable symbolizing Brahman, the Absolute.

The mantra thus unites sound and meaning, individual and cosmos, in one holistic vibration of existence.

By invoking Om Śāntiḥ, the Upanishadic sage affirms universal harmony and transcendental unity.

3. Eliot’s Deliberate Omission of “Om”: Silence as a Sign of Spiritual Barreness

Chandran’s most striking observation lies in Eliot’s intentional exclusion of Om in the final line of The Waste Land.

While Eliot’s notes show he understood the ritual and symbolic depth of the Śānti mantra, he chooses to end not with “Om Śāntiḥ” but with “Śāntiḥ” alone  a deliberate fracturing of completeness.

This absence becomes profoundly meaningful.

In the Upanishadic worldview, Om is the cosmic sound of creation, order, and unity; it integrates the diverse elements of existence into harmony.

In The Waste Land, however, such unity is impossible the poem is defined by spiritual fragmentation, “a heap of broken images,” and disjointed voices that cannot cohere.

Eliot’s omission of Om thus becomes an act of modernist irony:

The modern soul can repeat the syllables of peace, but cannot invoke the cosmic source of peace.

As Chandran points out, in a world of “broken images,” Om  the sound of wholeness “does not and cannot find a place.”

It is a silence that signifies loss, the sacred syllable withheld from a world unfit to utter it.

4. “Om” in Vedic Cosmology: The Symbol of Totality

To illuminate the magnitude of this omission, Chandran turns to the Chāndogya Upanishad (I.i), which unfolds the metaphysical genealogy of Om.

The text declares that Om is the essence of all being:

“The essence of beings is the earth,

The essence of earth is water,

The essence of water is plants,

The essence of plants is man,

The essence of man is speech,

The essence of speech is hymn,

The essence of hymn is chant,

The essence of chant is Om.”

 

This poetic hierarchy portrays the universe as a single continuum of sound and being  everything emanates from, and returns to, Om.

It signifies the unity of material and spiritual existence, the perfect equilibrium between creation and consciousness.

When juxtaposed with The Waste Land, the contrast is devastating: Eliot’s poem depicts a universe in dissonance, a cosmos where language, humanity, and divinity are severed from their source.

Chandran’s insight here deepens the IKS dimension  the Upanishadic cosmos vibrates in harmony, while Eliot’s modern world echoes only with fragmentation and sterility.

The absence of Om is, therefore, a metaphor for cosmic disconnection and the loss of the sacred Word (Logos).

5. The Irony of the Benediction: “Peace, Peace; When There Is No Peace”

Chandran concludes that Eliot’s final Śāntiḥ is devastatingly ironic.

It resembles the formal ending of an Upanishad, but only in structure, not in spirit.

What was once a living benediction has become a hollow echo  a ritual gesture emptied of its sacred power.

“Śāntiḥ” in The Waste Land is not “wished” but “wished for.”

 

The repetition becomes a mantra of yearning, an articulation of the soul’s hunger for the very peace it cannot achieve.

Eliot’s own gloss  “the peace which passeth understanding”  gains a tragic literalness: peace truly “passes understanding” because it has passed away from the human condition.

Chandran reinforces this irony with a biblical echo from Jeremiah 8:11:

“They have healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” 

 

Thus, Eliot’s Shantih becomes a symbol of spiritual failure  a modern incantation in which the Word survives but its meaning perishes.

The fragmentation of The Waste Land continues to its final syllable, turning the sacred mantra itself into the poem’s last broken fragment.

6. Indic Knowledge Systems Perspective: Wholeness vs. Fragmentation

From the perspective of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS), Chandran’s essay exemplifies how The Waste Land functions as a cross-cultural dialogue between the Upanishadic ideal of unity and the modernist reality of disintegration.

• In the Upanishadic vision, Om and Śāntiḥ express cosmic coherence  the alignment of self, world, and divine.

• In Eliot’s modernist vision, the same mantra signifies the absence of coherence  a civilization that repeats sacred sounds without inner realization.

• The Śāntiḥ mantra thus becomes a mirror of cultural contrast: between the wholeness of ancient Indic thought and the alienation of twentieth-century modernity.

Eliot’s engagement with Indian philosophy, therefore, is neither imitation nor superficial borrowing. It becomes a spiritual and philosophical contrast  he uses the Upanishadic peace to measure the depth of modern despair.

The mantra that once sanctified closure now closes a poem of desolation.

Conclusion: The Last Word of the Modern Mind

In conclusion, K. Narayana Chandran’s essay transforms our understanding of Eliot’s “Shantih.”

It reveals that the word, though drawn from the Upanishads, operates in Eliot’s poem as a lament for lost sacredness rather than as a realized benediction.

The omission of Om, the ironic invocation of peace, and the cultural displacement of the mantra all signify the modern soul’s estrangement from its own spiritual source.

Eliot’s Shantih, therefore, is both prayer and parody a final whisper from a world yearning for meaning but unable to invoke the divine sound that unites all existence.

“Shantih” — the Word remains,

but the World that once vibrated with it has fallen silent.

The Waste Land : An Upanishadic Reading

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) is one of the most celebrated works of modernist poetry, widely acknowledged for its fragmented structure, polyphonic voices, and rich intertextual references. The poem captures the moral, cultural, and spiritual dislocation of post-World War I Europe, portraying a world exhausted by war, materialism, and the collapse of traditional values. 

While much critical attention has been devoted to Eliot’s use of Western literary, mythological, and historical references, Grenander and Narayana Rao (1971) present a compelling argument for understanding the poem through the Indian Knowledge System, particularly the ethical and philosophical teachings of the Upanishads. 

According to their reading, the poem’s ultimate resolution lies in the Eastern philosophical vision, which provides ethical guidance and spiritual renewal amidst the pervasive modernist despair depicted throughout the text. Eliot’s use of Upanishadic wisdom is not merely ornamental; rather, it underpins the poem’s structure, guiding the reader from chaos and fragmentation toward a vision of moral and spiritual regeneration.

Spiritual and Moral Desolation in The Waste Land

Eliot’s modern wasteland is a landscape not just of physical decay but of profound spiritual barrenness. The poem’s fragmented narrative and disjointed voices mirror the disintegration of social and cultural coherence in post-war Europe. 

In the opening section, “The Burial of the Dead,” Eliot presents images of sterile lands and lifeless seasons, where nature and humanity alike seem devoid of vitality. Grenander and Rao argue that this desolation can be read in terms of the Upanishadic concept of avidyā, or ignorance, which represents the human separation from ultimate truth and ethical consciousness. 

The modern individual, according to Eliot, is estranged not only from spiritual values but also from meaningful social connections, resulting in an ethical void that parallels the barren landscapes he describes. The poem’s pervasive imagery of drought, sterility, and death symbolizes a society disconnected from moral and spiritual guidance, emphasizing the urgency for a corrective ethical framework.

 The Thunder’s Threefold Command

The final section, “What the Thunder Said,” is central to understanding Eliot’s engagement with Indian philosophical thought. Here, Eliot incorporates the threefold thunderous command derived from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad: Datta (give), Dayadhvam (sympathize), and Damyata (control). Grenander and Rao argue that these injunctions form the ethical core of the poem, providing a path toward personal and societal regeneration amidst the devastation of modernity.

3.1 Datta – The Principle of Giving

The command Datta emphasizes selfless giving and action. It aligns with the Upanishadic principle of renunciation (tyāga), which stresses detachment from material possessions and selfish desires. In the poem, Eliot uses this injunction to suggest that generosity and ethical responsibility are essential antidotes to the pervasive moral fragmentation he depicts. 

By advocating selfless giving, Eliot points toward the restoration of human solidarity and ethical order, highlighting that moral action is the foundation for spiritual renewal.

3.2 Dayadhvam – The Principle of Compassion

Dayadhvam calls for compassion and empathy toward others. In Eliot’s wasteland, individuals are isolated, alienated, and disconnected from one another. By introducing the Upanishadic injunction of compassion, Eliot proposes a moral corrective to this estrangement. 

The principle emphasizes the ethical responsibility to recognize the interconnectedness of human beings, resonating with broader Indian ethical teachings that stress the importance of dharma and social responsibility. Compassion thus becomes a means of bridging the spiritual and ethical gaps created by modern disintegration.

3.3 Damyata – The Principle of Self-Control

The third injunction, Damyata, emphasizes self-control and discipline. In the context of the wasteland, where desires run unchecked and moral boundaries are eroded, self-mastery is critical for achieving inner stability and moral integrity. This principle resonates with Upanishadic teachings on meditation and ethical self-discipline, which are prerequisites for spiritual insight and liberation (moksha). 

Eliot presents self-control as a mechanism for reclaiming ethical and spiritual order, suggesting that inner mastery is inseparable from social and moral renewal.

4. Shantih: The Mantra of Peace

Eliot concludes the poem with the Sanskrit mantra “Shantih shantih shantih,” which Grenander and Rao interpret as more than a decorative flourish. This invocation represents the attainment of spiritual peace, signifying the cessation of desires and the reconciliation of the self with ultimate reality. In Upanishadic philosophy, such peace is the realization of the unity of atman (self) with Brahman (universal consciousness). 

Eliot’s inclusion of this mantra signals the culmination of the ethical and spiritual journey articulated through the thunder’s commands, suggesting that the resolution to modern disillusionment lies in the disciplined practice of generosity, compassion, and self-control. The poem, therefore, moves from depicting spiritual desolation to offering a vision of transcendence and moral restoration, framed by the ethical and philosophical insights of the Indian Knowledge System.

5. Indian Knowledge System as a Philosophical Framework

By integrating Upanishadic thought, Eliot constructs a philosophical architecture for The Waste Land that extends beyond mere literary technique. The poem’s structure, rich in literary allusions and fragmented narratives, is unified through these ethical and spiritual principles. Grenander and Rao highlight that Eliot’s engagement with Indian philosophy is deliberate, forming a framework for addressing the ethical and existential crises of modernity. 

The Upanishadic principles of renunciation, compassion, and self-discipline function as a moral compass, guiding the reader toward both personal and societal regeneration. In this sense, Eliot’s poem is not only a critique of Western civilization but also a meditation on the universal human capacity for ethical action and spiritual insight.

 Conclusion

Through the lens of the Indian Knowledge System, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land emerges as more than a portrayal of modernist despair; it becomes a meditation on ethical responsibility, spiritual discipline, and the potential for regeneration. Grenander and Rao (1971) demonstrate that the Upanishadic injunctions Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata offer a practical and moral framework for overcoming the spiritual and ethical crises depicted in the poem. 

The closing mantra, Shantih, represents the ultimate attainment of peace and transcendence, achieved through adherence to these principles. Eliot’s synthesis of Western modernist form and Indian philosophical insight transforms the wasteland from a symbol of desolation into a site of moral and spiritual rebirth, underscoring the enduring relevance of Indian ethical and spiritual wisdom in understanding the human condition.

 References

Sri, P. S. “Upanishadic Perceptions in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Drama.” Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 62, no. 2, 2008, pp. 34–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479528. Accessed 11 Jan. 2026. 

Chandran, K. Narayana. “‘Shantih’ in The Waste Land.” American Literature, vol. 61, no. 4, 1989, pp. 681–83. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2927003. Accessed 11 Jan. 2026.

GRENANDER, M. E., and K. S. NARAYANA RAO. “The Waste Land and the Upanishads : What Does the Thunder Say?” Indian Literature, vol. 14, no. 1, 1971, pp. 85–98. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23330564. Accessed 11 Jan. 2026.