Sauvik, Do you have to look to westerners to find out about Indian society? What a terrible misunderstanding of Indian society!!! You mention Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha were all considered valid pursuits, yet you say Indian society focused only on moksha? What actual evidence do you have other than some ignorant statement from some unknown western philosopher? Have you studied the Thirukural that deals only with Dharma, Artha and Kama leaving Moksha out? Indian society also considered the four-fold division of society as Sudra (Labor class), Vaishya (business class), Brahmin (academic class) and Kshatriya (administrative or warrior class). Have you investigated the traditional Vaishya class in India or have you looked at Indian trade since ancient times before making such ignorant statements? Renunciation of desires does not mean a vegetative state. It means detachment and dispassionate evaluation of all phenomena. Karma among other things means action and the ideal is to act towards a goal without an expectation of the fruits of that action (detachment rather than attachement). There are many things we Indians can learn from the West, but ignorance and misinformation about our own past is not one of them.