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[Digest is still being compiled and edited, Introduction incomplete – Sunthar]
This digest
was made available by the good graces of Shri
I have inserted introductory comments to contextualize some of the posts [Do let me know if your views have been inadvertently omitted or distorted: this is an evolving archive!]. Having decided to make this archive available to the public, I would like to offer some concise clarifications—a conceptual grid as it were—of my own take on the various perspectives that are under scrutiny in this discussion:
Related threads at svAbhinava:
Science and Hindu Nationalism: How Postmodernism Aids Vedic Science
Is ‘Hinduism’ a ‘religion’? dharma, transcendence and the ‘human sciences’
Sushanta Goonatilake's
review of
Does Hinduism exist?
This compilation will
be eventually complemented by others including those listed above; in the
meantime please check out the (incomplete)
Index to threads below on “Is Hindutva a
‘legitimate’ expression of ‘Hinduism’” dialogue:
Message to
Meera Nanda from Ashok Chowgule
The Uncalled
for Defence of Science
Message from
Nanda to Vamadeva
Response of
Ashok Chowgule to Nanda
Breaking the
Spell of Dharma - Case for Indian Enlightenment
A Rejoinder
to Meera Nanda’s Article “Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and Vedic science”
"Dangers
Of Religious Environmentalism In India"
Dharmic
Ecology and the Neo-Pagan International:
What Is So
Dangerous about Religious Secularism in India?
A Rejoinder
to Meera Nanda’s Article “Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and Vedic science”
Hinduism,
Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey: A Preliminary Reply to Ms. Meera Nanda
The doublespeak of Vedic science
By
The Week,
http://www.the-week.com/21jun24/cover.htm
The leading Hindutva ideas-men go around calling
themselves "intellectual Kshatriyas". But Kshatriyas were only
supposed to defend dharma as a way of life.
Why, then, are our Kshatriyas so bent upon defending dharma
as science? Why must they insist upon declaring astrology, and the
entire Vedic tradition, 'scientific'?
But first, get over whatever mental blocks you may have against this oxymoron
called 'Vedic science,' which pairs the archaic, mystical, and unfalsifiable
worldview of the Vedas with science. Instead, get used to the doublespeak of
'Vedic science'. Be prepared for a flood of books, TV-shows and even new
computer programs extolling the virtues of Hindu sciences. After all, big money
is behind it: tax-payers' rupees and large grants from private foundations are
pouring into "research centres" dedicated to showing the
scientificity of Hindu scriptures.
Everything Vedic—from yagnas
to the gods of all things, to reincarnation, karma and
parapsychology—will make a claim for the status of 'science'. And everything
scientific—from the knowledge of quantum physics to the laws of molecular
biology and ecology—will be declared to be already there in the Vedas. Modern
science will be treated as a western corruption of the non-dualist Vedic
sciences which can synthesise science with god, facts with values. We are
heading toward a schizophrenic national culture in which the technological
products of modern science will be eagerly embraced, but the secular culture
which science was supposed to help create will be strenuously denied. Symptoms
of such schizophrenia are already evident: The nuclear bomb tests in 1998 were
justified and packaged in dharmic terms. Hindu ideologues celebrated the bomb
by invoking gods and goddesses symbolising shakti and vigyan. This is how the
secularist dream ends: with nuclear bombs in the silos, and the Vedas in the
schools; with satellites in space, and horoscopes in our lives down here on
earth. This secularist nightmare is Hindutva's dream-come-true. From Bankim
Chandra to Vivekananda to today's Sangh parivar, the neo-Hindus have dreamt of
uniting the industry and technology of the West with the dharma of
If it is given the cultural authority as a superior way of knowing, modern science has the potential to demystify the hallowed truths of Hinduism itself, to say nothing of the countless miracles and superstitions that are a part of everyday life of average Indians. It is thus imperative for Hindutva that science remains limited to technological gizmos, and does not spill over into the larger culture.
Hindutva is in the process of creating a myth of "Vedic science" which can co-opt and absorb modern science into Hindu traditions by declaring these traditions to be scientific. Hindutva ideologues argue that just as modern "western science" is scientific from a Judeo-Christian perspective, Hindu traditions of astrology, yagnas, ayurveda, Vastu Shastra, Hindu ecology, Hindu meteorology, etc., are scientific from a Hindu perspective. 'Vedic science' is declared to be ahead of modern science, as it treats all entities in an integrated whole—never mind that many of its "entities" (atman, the gunas, "hot" and "cold" substances) and "subtle forces" (of mantras, meditation, planets, karma) can't even be defined with any precision, let alone measured and tested empirically with appropriate controls. But "mere" definitions, measurements, and controlled tests are declared to be western. Hindu sciences use "their own" methodology of meditation and direct realisation.
So now we know why the saffron Kshatriyas are so keen on defending the Vedic lore as science. This is their way of taming what threatens Hinduism the most, i.e. modern science. Hinduism has always protected itself from the new and the alien by turning it into an inferior aspect of itself, quietly metabolising it until it is absorbed into the existing belief structure. Turning modern science into just a part of Hindu wisdom is merely a continuation of this classic Hindu tradition of self-defence and self-perpetuation.
But there remains a philosophical problem. How to convince the sceptics that the Vedas are as scientific—and indeed, even more "objective" and even more "advanced"—than modern science? Our Kshatriyas need some arguments to back up their bold assertions. These arguments have been obligingly supplied by the secular, academic critics of modern science and the Enlightenment. The leading trend in sociology of science in the last couple of decades has been to deny that modern science is a distinctive body of knowledge, which has succeeded in attaining higher standards of objectivity and reliability than other, pre-modern, magical-religious ways of understanding nature.
Hindutva is in the process of creating a myth of
'Vedic science' which can co-opt and absorb modern science into Hindu
traditions by declaring these traditions to be scientific. Abusing the ideas of
Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, two well-known scholars of science, radical
critics have claimed that non-western, traditional ways of knowing are as
scientific in their social context as modern science is in the western context.
These ideas have found great favour among prominent left-oriented critics of the
west in
They see the content of science—and not just its application—to be western or Orientalist, and believe that real decolonisation will only come with development of indigenous sciences.
Take for example the argument for scientificity of astrology. It is the neo-Gandhian Ashis Nandy and his followers who have long argued that astrology can't be condemned as a superstition. On the strength of the argument that all "ethno-sciences" are equal, and that modern science has no greater claim to objectivity, Nandy has argued that modern science is the myth of the imperialist west, and astrology is the myth of the weak, who are the victims of the west. If that is granted, Nandy argues, the weak should have the right to challenge the "myth" of science.
One finds a similar argument in the Hindutva
literature. They criticise scientists for being closed-minded and westernised
for not allowing Hindu science a chance to challenge the western idea of
science, and for writing off astrology without studying it!
The more sophisticated Hindutva advocates,
including US-based/returned scientists like
Secular intellectuals and progressive social movements have for too long decried it as a ploy of westernised elites. At a time when modern science needed to establish its cultural authority so that it could set new norms for public discourse and provide a more rational worldview, it remained besieged from all sides. Ever since the scientific temper debate in early 80s, which marked the beginning of the end of the Nehruvian consensus over secularism and modernity, there have been few voices that have actively challenged the many signs of unreason and arbitrary authority in our society.
(
Why Hindutva Loves "Science"
(Note received from Nanda:
Dear
friends: I noticed that you have posted an article of mine (The
Doublespeak of Hindu Science, The Week,
I was
wondering if it would not serve your readers better if you could post the
original, unedited version of this article, instead of the badly cut version
that the Week ran? I believe that the original argument is much more
cogent and forceful than the published version.
Let your
readers get a more complete understanding of the dangers of erasing the
boundaries between science and myth. It they still disagree—which I suspect
they will—let them at least disagree on the full strength of my argument.
If am
sending the original piece as an attachment and I'd appreciate if you would
include that in your website.
with my
best regards
We
can understand why the leading Hindutva ideas-men go around calling themselves
"intellectual Kshatriyas": they are at home in a varna-defined world.
But the Kshatriyas were only supposed to defend dharma as a way of life. Why, then, are our Kshatriyas so bent upon defending dharma as science? Why is it not
enough for them to have pulled off a coup against higher education in
Why
this sudden love for "science" in the saffron camp?
We will solve this mystery as we go
along. We will also unearth a curious, although entirely unintended alliance
between our Vedic warriors and our postmodern Brahmins in universities and
social movements, both in
But
first: some friendly advice to help you cope with what lies ahead…..
Get
over whatever mental blocks you may have against this oxymoron called
"Vedic science," which pairs the archaic, mystical and unfalsifiable
worldview of the Vedas with science. Put away whatever residual hopes you may
still cherish that science could help demystify and liberalize our culture…..
Instead,
get used to the doublespeak of "Vedic science," for we are going to
hear a lot more of it. Be prepared for a flood of books, TV-shows and even new
computer programs extolling the virtues of Hindu sciences. After all, big money
is behind it: tax-payer's rupees and large grants from private foundations
(Hinduja Foundation, Infinity Foundation) are pouring into "research
centers" dedicated to showing the scientificity of Hindu scriptures. If you
thought that Vedic astrology was merely a personal idiosyncrasy of Murli
Manohar Joshi and a handful of UGC bureaucrats, think again!
Everything
Vedic – from yagnas to the gods of all things, to reincarnation, karma and parapsychology will make a claim for the status of
"science." And everything scientific – from the knowledge of quantum
physics, to the laws of molecular biology and ecology – will be declared to be
already there in the Vedas. Modern science will be treated as a Western corruption
of the non-dualist Vedic sciences which can synthesize science with god, facts
with values, etc. Mother India will be called upon to heal the wounds inflicted
on the entire world by the "violence" of soul-less modern science.
But
– and here the plot begins to thicken – this will not stop the BJP government
from acquiring the most violent and the most destructive products of modern
science and technology. We are heading toward a schizophrenic national culture
in which the technological products of modern science will be eagerly embraced,
but the secular culture which science was supposed to help create will be
strenuously denied. Instead of a genuine secular culture, which denies the
existence of gods in nature and the authority of god-men in culture, the intellectual
Kshatriyas are intent on declaring the dharmic worldview, with its nature-gods
and miracle-working gurus, to be the essence of a "higher" science
and "authentic" secularism. Symptoms of such schizophrenia are
already evident:
1.
The nuclear bomb tests in 1988 were justified and packaged in dharmic
terms. Hindu ideologues claimed that the bomb was foretold by Lord Krishna in
the Bhagwat Gita when he declared himself to be “the radiance of a thousand
suns, the splendor of the Mighty One. ..I am become Death." They
celebrated the bomb by invoking gods and goddesses symbolizing shakti and
vigyan. Even Ganesha idols turned up with atomic halos around their heads and
with guns in their hands!
2.
In April 2001, the Indian Space
Research Organization made history by successfully putting a satellite into the
geo-stationary orbit, 36,000 km. above the earth. This same "space
power" that takes justified pride in its ability to touch the stars, will
soon start educating its youth in how to read our fortunes and misfortunes in
the stars and how to propitiate these stars through appropriate karmakanda. For all we know, the
satellites launched by the much-celebrated GSLV might some day carry internet
signals that will make horoscopes easier to match!
This
is how the secularist dream ends: with nuclear bombs in the silos, and the
Vedas in the schools; with satellites in space, and horoscopes in our lives
down here on earth.
This
secularist nightmare is Hindutva's dream-come-true. From Bankim Chandra to
Vivekananda to today's Sangh-parivar, the neo-Hindus have dreamt of uniting the
industry and technology of the West with the dharma
of
This
Hindu modernity, incidentally, bears a frightening similarity with the
reactionary modernism of Hitler's
But
the Hindu ideologues face the same problem as the Nazis faced: how to reconcile
technological modernization with cultural conservatism? How to prevent the
science that goes into making the technology from challenging the worldview
sanctioned by religion and traditions? The problem is truly serious for
Hinduism, because modern science, if taken seriously, can challenge the most
fundamental axioms of dharma which are based upon such "laws
of nature" as karma, rebirth and hierarchy of beings determined by karmic
cause-and-effect. If it is given the cultural authority as a superior way of
knowing, modern science has the potential to demystify the hallowed truths of
Hinduism itself, to say nothing of the countless miracles and superstitions
that are a part of everyday life of average Indians. It is thus imperative for
Hindutva that science remains limited to technological gizmos, and does not
spill over into the larger culture.
Like
the Nazi myth of "Aryan science," Hindutva is in the process of
creating a myth of "Vedic science" which can co-opt and absorb modern
science into Hindu traditions by simply declaring these traditions to be
scientific. Hindutva ideologues argue that just as modern "Western science"
is scientific from a Judeo-Christian perspective, Hindu traditions of
astrology, yagnas, ayurveda, vastu shastra, Hindu ecology,
Hindu meteorology etc. are scientific from a Hindu perspective. Indeed
"Vedic science" is declared to be ahead of modern science, as it
treats all entities in an integrated whole – never mind that many of its
"entities" (atman, the gunas, "hot" and "cold"
substances) and "subtle forces" (of mantras, meditation, planets,
karma) can't even be defined with any precision, let alone measured and tested
empirically with appropriate controls. But "mere" definitions,
measurements and controlled tests are declared to be Western. Hindu sciences
use "their own" methodology of meditation and direct realization.
So
now we know why the saffron Kshatriyas are so keen on defending the Vedic lore
as science. This is their way of taming what threatens Hinduism the most, i.e.
modern science. Hinduism has always protected itself form the new and the alien
by turning it into an inferior aspect of itself, quietly metabolizing it until
it is absorbed into the existing belief structure. Turning modern science into
just a part of Hindu wisdom is merely a continuation of this classic Hindu
tradition of self-defense and self-perpetuation. Hindutva gets a good name for
"openness" and "tolerance," while the end-result is as
conservative as the Taliban could've hoped for. In the end, the old decides
what parts of the new will be fitted where, and what parts will be
unceremoniously thrown out. In the end, the old has always won in
But
there remains a philosophical problem. How to convince the skeptics that the
Vedas are as scientific – and indeed, even more "objective" and even
more "advanced" – than modern science? Our Kshatriyas need some
arguments to back up their bold assertions.
These
arguments have been obligingly supplied by the secular, academic critics of
modern science and the Enlightenment. The leading trend in sociology of science
in the last couple of decades has been to deny that modern science is a
distinctive body of knowledge, which has succeeded in attaining higher
standards of objectivity and reliability than other, pre-modern,
magical-religious ways of understanding nature. Abusing the ideas of Thomas
Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, two well-known scholars of science, radical critics
have claimed that non-Western, traditional ways of knowing are as scientific in
their social context as modern science is in the Western context.
These
ideas have found great favor among prominent left-oriented critics of the West
in
Interestingly,
Hindutva intellectuals make exactly the same arguments in support of Vedic
sciences that abound in the alternative/postmodern science literature. Indeed,
they often even cite the same sources (especially the much-maligned late Thomas
Kuhn), but only replace "the people" or "the oppressed"
with "Hindu" ways of knowing.
Take
for example the argument for scientificity of astrology. It is the neo-Gandhian
Ashis Nandy and his followers who have long argued that astrology can't be
condemned as a superstition. On the strength of the argument that all
"ethno-sciences" are equal, and that modern science has no greater
claim to objectivity, Nandy has argued that modern science is the myth of the
imperialist West, and astrology is the myth of the weak, who are the victims of
the West. If that is granted, Nandy argues, the weak should have the right to
challenge the "myth" of science.
One
finds a similar argument in the Hindutva literature. They criticize scientists
for being closed-minded and Westernized for not allowing Hindu science a chance
to challenge the Western idea of science, and for writing off astrology without
studying it! (One wonders how many more refutations will it take to satisfy the
Hindu ideologues? Astrology must the most rigorously falsified body of
"knowledge" in the entire history of ideas).
The
more sophisticated Hindutva advocates, including US-based/returned scientists
like
Secular
intellectuals and progressive social movements, which should have been at the
forefront of defending scientific temper, have for too long decried it as a
ploy of Westernized elites. At a time when modern science needed to establish
its cultural authority so that it could set new norms for public discourse and
provide a more rational worldview, it remained besieged from all sides. Ever
since the scientific temper debate in early 1980s, which marked the beginning
of the end of the Nehruvian consensus over secularism and modernity, there have
been very few voices in the public sphere that have actively challenged the
many signs of unreason and arbitrary authority in our society. Vedic sciences
are only the chickens coming home to roost.
A
recovery of secularism will need a recovery of respect for science and
scientific temper. The Vedic astrology episode ought to be a wake-up call to
all who are concerned about the future of a secular
Message to Meera Nanda from Ashok Chowgule
To:
From:
Date: 06 November 2004
Dear Ku
Nanda,
Pranam,
We
will certainly post your full article as per your request, with a proper link
to the abridged version as published by The Week.
Very
frankly, we do not see in what way The Week version has mutilated or altered
the basic issues that you have covered.
We would like to know so that this information can also be posted on our
website. We would also be interested to
know if you have informed The Week about your opinion about their
editing.
At
the time when the article came in The Week, we had received two responses (one
from Shri Sumeet Saxena and one from Shri David Frawley) to your article as it
was brought out by The Week.
We are enclosing both of them for your reference. At this moment, I am not sure if these
responses were posted on our website.
So, we are taking the liberty of sending them to you. Please excuse us for using your bandwidth if
you have already come across them before.
We
do not have Shri Saxena’s address with me, and so will not be able to send him
your full article. However, we will send
it to Shri Vamdeva Shastri (aka David Frawley).
And we are also marking this message to him as cc.
We
think that it is a measure of our success that our ideas are finally being read
by our opponents, in which ranks we include you. Until now our views were being dismissed as
being irrelevant, and our opponents, who thought they were commanding the means
to influence the mind of the educated people, thought that they were getting
away with the nonsense that was being written.
Of course, like your article, the nonsense is still being sent out. The tragedy is that there is a huge
bankruptcy of intellectualism amongst our opponents, and thus their arguments
in response to the points being made by us are banal at best.
For
example, your labelling of Dr Subash Kak and Dr N S Rajaram, and your
statement: “After all, big money is behind it: tax-payer's rupees and large
grants from private foundations (Hinduja Foundation, Infinity Foundation) are
pouring into "research centers" dedicated to showing the
scientificity (sic) of Hindu scriptures.”
We
do not know why Dr Kak and Dr Rajaram are at the receiving end of being
specifically targeted by our opponents.
Is it perhaps they are on the right track, and that the only way to deal
with them is not to respond to their points, but to hurl abuses? The tactics that you are using has also been
used by Prof Michael Witzel, of
(We
are using the word ‘had’ with due consideration, because we think that Prof
Witzel has knocked himself from his pedestal by the methods he has chosen to
adopt in his programme of abuse.)
Secondly,
we would like to know something specific here.
How big is the money behind it? I
am sure you would not make a statement like this without basis, and that you
would have the information on the subject.
And
also can you let me know how big is the money that is behind trying to debunk
the position taken by the Hindutvavadis?
We find it amusing that many of our opponents in
We
would also like to know how much grant has the American Council of Learned Societies
given you for your project. I am sure
you will appreciate that since you have brought out the issue of ‘big money’
this information that we are seeking is quite legitimate. Rest assured we do not object the way the
council decides to spend (or waste) the money that is available to them. We would just like to know the numbers.
You
have said: “So now we know why the saffron Kshatriyas are so keen on defending
the Vedic lore as science. This is their way of taming what threatens Hinduism
the most, i.e. modern science.”
You
would be most displeased to read what Prof Klaus Klostermaier has to say on the
subject, some time before the intellectual Kshatriyas came on the scene. He says:
“Hinduism will spread not so much through the
gurus and swamis, who attract certain
number of people looking for a new commitment and a quasi-monastic life-style,
but it will spread mainly through the work of intellectuals and writers, who
have found certain Hindu ideas convincing and who identify them with their
personal beliefs. A fair number of leading physicists and biologists have found
parallels between modern science and Hindu ideas. An increasing number of
creative scientists will come from a Hindu background and will consciously and
unconsciously blend their scientific and their religious ideas. All of us may
be already much more Hindu than we think.” Klaus
K Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism, p 414.
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd,
Another
thing that amuses us is that our opponents think that they are getting away
with answering issues of accountability.
We think that at least until 1990, our opponents were determining the
agenda of the educated Hindus, and there has been a huge campaign to denigrate
and calumny Hinduism. You yourself seem
to admit to this fact when you talk about what you call the ‘Nehruvian
consensus’. After all, Nehru was a major
patron of our opponents, and created a space for them, to the exclusion of
those wanting to talk about an alternative.
Is
there not an admission on your part that your programme of the ‘Nehruvian
consensus’ has miserably failed to influence the educated Hindus, who have now
turned to Hindutva as an ideology which contains framework for finding
solutions to our problems? According to
our perspective, we think that our opponents are today indulging in a campaign
of creating confusion, with a hope that the cosy network of being parasites in
our society will be continued. We think
that they are just incapable of doing any honest work.
Before
we end, we would like to point out to you that there is perhaps a typographical
error in your article. You have said
that the nuclear test was conducted in 1988.
The date should either be 1974 or 1998.
We think that in the context of the article you are referring to 1998,
since the use of the 1974 event would go against the basis of your
article. After all, Smt Indira Gandhi
was part of the ‘Nehruvian consensus’.
We
would like to point out to you that it was Dr Oppenheimer himself who had used
the phrase that you talk about. And we
think that it was taken from the Vedas and not the Bhagwat Gita. We are not too sure about the latter part,
and so would like you to check. If we
receive a confirmation from you about the typo within the next two days, we
will post your article with the correction.
Else we will stick to the date that you have given. We think that it is academically proper to
use the phrase ‘(sic)’ in such cases.
As
an aside, given your position on India possessing nuclear weapons (which we are
implying since you have not said anything explicitly) we would like to know
your opinion about the fact the country you are living in today has an arsenal
which would be enough to destroy the world many times over. Are you comfortable, physically and mentally,
in your present position?
Apart
from the two responses to your The Week article, we are enclosing a few
more items which we think you should be aware of. Not that it will change your position—we
think that you are too much committed to your present masters to undertake this
change. However, we would like you to
know that the intellectual Kshatriyas of Hindutva are aware of these happenings
as mentioned in these articles.
We
are going to forward this message to Infinity Foundation, since you have specifically
taken their name. We do not know anyone
in the Hinduja Foundation and so we are not forwarding them this message. However, if you know anyone there, please
feel to send them your views as well as ours.
We are also going to forward this message to Prof Klostermaier, Dr
Subash Kak, Dr N S Rajaram, and a few others, whose identity we do not wish to
disclose here.
If
you wish, we would be happy to receive a response from you.
Namaste.
The Uncalled for Defence of Science
Sumeet Saxena
I
refer to
While
defining the role of Kshatriyas as "defenders of Dharma as a way of
life", and accusing the "Hindutva ideas-men" of flouting the
charter of duties set by her, she reveals her limited understanding of the
tradition of Chaturvarna. I don't want to explain Chaturvarna here, but it
should be sufficient to say that if the Bhagwad Gita has anything to do with
Hinduism, then we must accept its definition of a Kshatriya as one who is
endowed with the qualities of "heroism, power, determination,
resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity, and leadership"
-B.G.18.43. (1) Nowhere does it speak of the Kshatriya as even a
"defender", leave alone a "defender of Dharma as a way of
life". So, the distortion of the word, "Kshatriya" to mean a
"defender of Dharma as a way of life" is unwarranted. It is not that
as popular a text as the Bhagwad Gita is out of reach of either her hand or her
mind, so the fact that she has chosen to sideline it should tell a lot about
the 'intellectual honesty' and the 'secular prejudice' of the author, her
article, and her ilk.
This
distortion tells us one more thing. By speaking of "Dharma" and
"science" as two separate, unrelated entities, by speaking of
"facts" and "values" as two separate, unrelated entities,
she shows her shallow understanding of all of the above. Religion and Rationality,
Science and Spirituality, Ethics and Experimentation go hand in hand in
Hinduism. There is no dichotomy between the two. And so we see the Hindu
priestly class also the seers of even the physical realm, and the most revered
"religious" texts called as "Vedas" or knowledge. The
compartmentalization of religion into one water-tight compartment and science
into another water-tight compartment is not a feature of Hinduism. And if
secularism is a vivisectional attempt to apportion human life among Religion
and Governance, then Hinduism, that stands for a holistic life, is in no need
of any such variety of secularism.
It
is this peculiarity of Hinduism, that looks at both Science and Religion as
one, calling both of them Vidya (knowledge), that makes it holistic. The lone
distinction that it makes is of gradation. Knowledge of ones own self is
regarded as the 'higher persuit', and given the name of 'paravidya', while
knowledge of the outer world is regarded as 'next in order', calling it
'aparavidya'. Moreover, whatever constituted their scientific knowledge during
the protohistoric period was called by a suffix - Shastra, meaning scripture
and their treatises - Sutra, the same names that they used for all their
spiritual and religious knowledge. So complete and indistinguishable was the
union of Science and Religion, so indepth were the insights of the Vedic seers
that even the 'primordial sin' (sex) was regarded as worship (refer the
Kamasutra).
Hence,
people commenting on Hinduism should first shed this tendency to create a rift
and thus, strife between the two urges of man, i.e. Religion and Science.
Alternatively, if they hold Religion and Science as inherently irreconcilable,
they should first, desist from speaking on Hinduism, and second, declare that
they believe that all science is true and all religion false.
So,
her question as to "why Kshatriyas are so bent upon defending dharma as science, upon declaring astrology, and the entire Vedic tradition,
scientific" is actually a non-question. The Intellectual Kshatriyas are
actually translating the Vedas and their "flowery words" - as the
Bhagwad Gita calls them- B.G. 2.42 (2) - into easy to understand vocabulary.
The
use of her coinage, "Neo-Hindu", even if not implicit in its Neo-Nazi
suggestiveness, is still a false concoction. There has always been a continuity
of Hindu thought right from prior to the composition of the Vedas, down to the
present age, and its essential all-encompassing, non-dogmatic nature has not
altered one bit. So, the question of either "Neo-Hindu" or of
"Neo-Hinduism" does not arise, except in the mind of a person whose
technique does not include substantiating conclusions with facts. But, reading
between lines being a fairly common skill, anti-Hindu opportunists have
developed its most useful complement - writing between lines.
Even
science, in all its glories, does not claim what the author claims, i.e. to
know everything, and the author hides behind no such apologies that what is
beyond her grasp may yet be true, pending either its comfirmation or its
refutation. She seems to be convinced that she has the intellectual material to
declare everything she hasn't understood as false. And this is not an isolated
point in question. This enormous self-righteousness, this bloated
self-confidence is the common meeting ground for diverse anti-Hindu packs.
Her
assumption that the mere mention of "Yagnas (...) making a claim for the
status of science" will horrify the reader, makes her guilty of taking the
intelligence and the wisdom of the reader for granted. The doors of science are
open on all sides, so it has grown. And by demanding that Vedic science be
dismissed without a reasonable investigation, the author is doing a grave
disservice to science. But, the gaudy presentation of pre-fabricated
conclusions instead of facts, leaving no scope for the reader to use his gray
matter is the time-tested formula of the anti-Hindu polemicists. They compel
their readers to lap up not just what they drool, but what they throw up too.
In
one place, the author expresses her fear that Vedas will usurp science, and in
another, she says that the two are contrary. In doing so, she only bares her
and her petty anti-Hindu mob's slack who always fail to realize that
fabricating a false theory is more difficult than understanding the true one.
It is not enough to merely contradict the truth. Rather, it is equally
important to see that the fabrication itself is not self-contradictory.
If
there is any truth in her claim that modern science has the "potential to
demystify (debunk) the hallowed truths of Hinduism itself", and by
implication, that it is "imperative for Hindutva that science (...) does
not spill over into the larger culture", then she has reason to welcome
the fling of Hinduism with science, so that science turns to account the "potential"
that the author endows it with - viz. the demystification (debunking) of the
hallowed truths of Hinduism. Instead, she bemoans this very affair saying that
this might lead to the annexation by Hinduism of science as a whole. Not only
is this an example of phobia and terror-mongering, but also a tacit admission
that Hinduism can be shown to encompass all of science - something that even a
devoted Hindutvadi does not claim, and that science is so weak in its
foundations that a mumbo jumbo that she says Hinduism is, can engulf it. On the
other hand, if she means that science has the potential to rationalize
Hinduism's hallowed truths, then, she has reason to worry at this coming
together of modern science and Hinduism. For, if science is successful in
rationalizing Hinduism, then it also legitimizes it. This, I believe, is the
case, as the author has wailed aplenty about this synthesis. But,
self-contradiction, we have already seen is a chance these anti-Hindu bawlers
take, banking on their readers' discernment.
Advocates
of even their opinionated versions of science, before calling the lack of
precise definitions as unscientific, are more than aware of the scientific
definition of "ether", into which, worthies of modern science, after
enough pondering, included a word called "imponderable", without
becoming any the less scientific for it. The double blind is but one technique
of observation, which, however refined has not yet proved all other techniques
of observation fallacious. But the author, assuming the mantle of a savant of
science makes such sweeping statements that even genuine scientists are shy of
making. This donning the garb of rationality, science, freedom and progress is
an old ploy hidden behind which is "the cause", and by now even a
curious onlooker has gained the ability to see through these monkey tricks of
the anti-Hindu clowns.
Her
demonization of Hinduism's all-embracing and non-rigid philosophical system,
into a demonic trait of "metabolizing" the new and alien, "until
it is absorbed into the existing belief structure" is symptomatic of
paranoia. Any metaphysical quest relies on all fields of knowledge, and so does
Hinduism. Calling this a tradition of "self-defence and
self-perpetuation" can only be the deed of a morbid mind.
I
don't even feel the need to defend Ashis Nandy whose example the writer quotes
as being very much like the "Hindutva ideologues'". Perhaps, she
could not find any "Hindutva ideologue" ludicrous enough to rival the
ludicrously ludicrous phantom of Hindutva in her mind, so, she had to choose a
"neo-gandhian's" example to describe a Hindutvadi's mentality. The
same anti-Hindu tribe, elsewhere, does not even blink twice before accusing the
same "Hindutva ideologues" of being the murderers of Gandhi. But, we
only need to shed all the mental blocks that we may have against this
inconsistency to realize that doublespeak, multiple standards,
misrepresentations and outright lies, for the sake of propaganda are not
exceptions, but the cardinal rules of Hinduism or Hindutva bashing. The only
concern for such anti-Hindu stragglers is "the cause", the forwarding
of which justifies all means fair and foul.
That
the modern scientific progress has come without its ills of environmental
catastrophies is but a cherished myth close to the anti-Hindu tribe's heart,
which they find tough to negotiate. And, unflinching faith in this mythology is
the one barrier between their own archaic world view and the strides science
has taken in the recent few years, in many cases, starkly reversing its own
stand on so many issues. While medicine is finding herbs and leeches as more
effective than proven modern medicines, "measured and tested empirically
with appropriate controls", while people once again are prefering the
natural fibre of cotton as healthy clothing after their over-indulgence with
man made fibres, and the world is coming a full circle in practically all
aspects of human life, people such as the author, who are on the other side of
the circle, lonely as they may feel, seem to want us with them for the sake of
company.
Science
was always and even now is the methodification of techniques understood by
observation first, then study and experimentation. It is not the last word in
either human knowledge or human experience, nor does it make any such claims.
It is only the self-appointed guardians of all modern values who pick up the
sword on behalf of a very unconcerned science, for defending it from ghosts of
their own creation. Isn't it time the scientific community come out openly and
declare that it depends not on such petrified xenophobes as the author for its
survival?
In
conclusion, I want to say that it is because of a pseudo-scientific psychology,
such as the author abundantly represents, that science risks turning into yet
another dogma. Let us not lose precious years like we did by ignoring Mendel or
by ridiculing
Footnotes:
(1)
The Bhagwad Gita- 18:43
Heroism,
power, determination, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity, and
leadership are the qualities of work for the kshatriyas. (The Bhagwad Gita As
It Is. The Bhaktivedanta Trust, pp. 827-828)
(2)
ibid- 2:42-43
Men
of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Vedas,
which recommend various fruitive activities for elevation to heavenly planets,
resultant good birth, power, and so forth. Being desirous of sense
gratification and opulent life, they say that there is nothing more than this.
(The Bhagwad Gita As It Is. The Bhaktivedanta Trust, pp. 129-130)
Response by David Frawley
PO Box
8357
Santa Fe
NM 87504-8357 USA
Editor
The Doublespeak of Vedic Science
I
introduced the idea of an "intellectual kshatriya" that her article
begins with in my 1998 Voice of India book Awaken Bharata. The book was not
written merely to defend dharma as science, though the ancient
concept of dharma does reflect many great laws of the universe.
The
basis of the intellectual kshatriya idea is that
That
there is much in Indian civilization, particularly its spiritual traditions of
Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism, that is helpful worldwide I think is beyond
dispute, except for the likes of
In
my writings about
What
I have argued is the Upanishadic view that there is a lower knowledge or
science (apara vidya), which deals with the outer world of name and form,
matter and energy, and a higher, spiritual or yogic science (para vidya) that
reveals the inner realm of consciousness, the eternal and the infinite (the
Atman). While the West has better developed the outer science through modern
technology, the East, particularly
Nanda
also denigrates my colleague
Clearly,
Nanda, who claims to represent the intellectual (Nehruvian) elite of modern
Nanda
also wrongly describes me as a "US-based-returned scientist," when I
am an American born Vedic scholar, Ayurvedic doctor and president of the
American Council of Vedic Astrology.
In
closing, I would like to thank the Week for most of the articles in this issue,
which show the continuing popularity of the ancient knowledge, in spite of all
such concerted efforts to discredit it. Satyam eva jayate!
David
Frawley
Kak’s note to Nanda
Ashok,
Here's my note to
-S.
======================
Ms Nanda,
Someone
just drew my attention to your characterization of my work as "Hindu"
science in an article in some Indian magazine. I haven't seen the article, but irrespective
of what is in the article, I am unable to comprehend the term
"Hindu", or by extension "Christian" or
"Islamic", for science of any kind. I thought one could speak of "bad"
science or "good" science. I would like to imagine I do
"good" science because it has been published in peer-reviewed
journals. I am not aware of any peer-reviewed papers that contradict my work on
qm, or information theory, neural networks, or history of science. If you or others think my work is
"bad" science, assuming that is what you meant, the proper place to
make that call would be a journal on the subject. Don't you think?
-
For
history of science and general works: www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/books.html
For some
recent qm, neural networks papers: www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/recent.html
Nanda’s
response to Prof. Kak
From:
"
To:
<kak@ece.lsu.edu>
Cc: "
Subject: My
response to Prof. Kak
Date:
Dear Prof.
Kak:
I apologize for taking this long in
responding to your note, which I received last Friday. I had some prior family
and work-related commitments to take care of.
Time constraints apart, I did not want to
fire off a response from the top of my head, in the heat of the moment. I
wanted to reply to you with the seriousness you deserve. After all, as you
yourself and your friends have been eager to point out, you are a scholar of
great repute, with numerous publications in international journals to your
credit.
I have read a big enough chunk of your
writings - including the "Cradle" and your many papers, articles and
interviews over the internet and in academic journals. I realize that you are
one of the chief architects of the neo-Hindu/Hindutva doctrine, namely, the
Vedas are a "way of science."
Just so we are clear, this is what I
understand by the statement that "Vedas are a way of science" :
By claiming Vedas to be scientific, you and
your colleagues mean that the Vedas contain a full-fledged body of knowledge
which includes all that modern science has learnt about nature. You are claiming for the Vedic
tradition all that makes modern scientific explanations uniquely rational and
universally persuasive to any thinking man, woman and child.
"Vedas-as-science" theorists go even further and claim that Vedic
sciences offer a "unity" of reason and intuition, a
"synthesis" of the material and the spiritual that is supposedly
missing in the "materialistic" science of the West. So,
Vedas-as-science position not only encompasses the best of modern science, but
even exceeds and supposedly "humanizes" the former.
**** **** **** ****
Let me address the substance of your
complaint against me. I hope to show in my response that that whole edifice of
Vedas-as-science is a dangerous deception that abuses the rhetoric of reason
and universalism to present the most irrational, the most magical and the most
undemocratic ways of knowing known to the entire Hindu tradition as the very
epitomy of universal human reason.
You claim that I have "characterized
your work as "Hindu science." You take the epistemological
high-ground and proclaim science to be universal, which can be "good or
bad but not Hindu or Islamic or Christian etc."
But your complaint against me is entirely
misplaced. Nowhere in the article do I suggest that the putative "Vedic
sciences" are merely "Hindu sciences." I challenge you to find a
single place where I characterize your work as "Hindu science." I
very clearly state that Vedic sciences are "co-opting and absorbing modern
science into Hindu traditions by declaring these traditions to be scientific..
Vedic science is ahead of modern science as it treats all entities in an
integrated whole." In other words, I am clearly acknowledging that the
classical Hindu knowledge-traditions are being invested with all the attributes
- and then some! - of modern science. The sacred traditions and books of
Hinduism are themselves being declared scientific and rational, at par with the
best of modern science. That is very different from saying that you are
creating special sciences that are true only for Hindus.
Indeed, to think that you (and your
colleagues) would settle for special "Hindu sciences" would totally
underestimate your ambitions for Hinduism. After all, you subscribe to the
"cradle" theory: if Vedas are to be considered the
mother-of-all-sciences, and if the presumably Aryan civilization of the Indus
Valley has to serve as the origin of all other known civilizations, then it is
necessary that the "sciences of the Vedas" be valid for the whole of
humanity, for all of time and not just for the Hindus. I understand
perfectly why you would want to claim universalism for Vedic ways of knowing.
But - and here is a catch - you and your
colleagues in the Vedas-as-science camp use the metaphysics of Vedic Hinduism
to establish the "scientifically" of the Vedas. You, in other words,
use the cultural relativist and postmodern arguments to claim the status of
universal and objective knowledge for the Vedas. So while I have never said
that Hindutva is creating a Hindu science, I HAVE said that Hindutva ideologues
USE Hindu metaphysical and cultural concepts to present the Vedas as objective
and universally valid.
In fact your work is a good example of a
cultural relativist argument being put to work in constructing "alternative
universals." You have called yourself an "archeologist of texts"
and you have labored hard to find natural laws discovered by modern physics
-down to the precise numerical values of speed of light, the distance between
the earth and the sky, the exact period of the moon -- to be "coded"
in Rig Veda and other Vedic texts.
And how do you explain how the Vedic
"seers" arrived at this universally valid knowledge?
Your entire argument for the scientificity
of the Vedic scientists hinges on your assumption that the Vedic
"method" of intuitive envisioning of equivalences between inner world
of consciousness and the outer world of nature is a valid scientific method -
as universally valid as the experimental method of physics.
What gives you the basis for saying that
the method of intuiting equivalences is scientific?
Here you bring in the Vedic metaphysics
which assumes that, to quote your own words, " the material and the
conscious are aspects of the same transcendental reality."
The gist of the argument is that just as
the Judeo-Christian worldview, with its transcendental God allows the
separation of matter from spirit, and demands that matter be studied only in
naturalistic terms, the Hindu worldview with its monism of spirit, must equally
sanction a methodology that does not allow a separation of matter and spirit.
The metaphysics of Hinduism permits explanation of physical natural phenomena
through an intuitive, yogic contemplation of inner consciousness. Just as
modern science claims universalism, even though it is actually a
Judeo-Christian way of looking at the world, so should Hindu intuition and
equivalence be granted the status of universal logic.
This is what I mean by using a cultural
relativist argument to claim universal status for Hinduism..
*** *** *** *** ***
I hope the foregoing has clarified my
position. I am making a nuanced argument for how mythic, proto-scientific
religious cosmology is being dressed up as modern science. I am NOT accusing
you of a simplistic relativism. Please read the article for yourself and see.
(You can read more of my critiques of postmodern-Hindutva connection. I am a
colleague of Alan Sokal who deconstructed deconstruction of science in a famous
parody. I recommend one of my most recent papers for your perusal:
"Breaking the Spell of Dharma: A Case for Indian Enlightenment."
Economic and Political Weekly,
In
conclusion I must point out the great danger of this whole project of reading
modern science into primitive myths.
Equivalence and intuition are not
scientific methods. Equivalence is the methodology of magic, and intuition is
the methodology of charlatans and godmen whose "special insights" can
never be publicly shared or tested by anyone else. To claim these as
"scientific" is to legitimize the most undemocratic and superstitious
ways of comprehending the world. The
whole point of modern science has been to combat these ways of knowing, to show
their fallacies, to free the human mind form the control of superstitions these
methods have bred for centuries.
I fail to understand why anyone who loves
With my
best wishes
Sincerely
Philosophy
dept.
Comments by Gautam Sen
Pranam,
Dear Ashok,
Hindutva is espousing. She is especially ignorant of the historical-cultural
basis of national and social cohesion, which, in every society, contains myth
and fact. Such contradictions and inconsistencies (e.g. the rapid
institutionalisation of "creationism" in the
concerns of so-called western science. She implicitly make a gift of science
to the West, but Asian women operating in the West are totally committed
personally and ideologically to these white societies. They, in turn, reject
our humanity and have used their science to commit mass murder against us.
You should see the behaviour of such Indians in the
Ashis Nandy is another silly man, who having failed to gain admission to
medical school, become anti-science in a way which the enemies of
as convenient for keeping it backward and vulnerable. The hatred towards
and its apparent economic success. Of course I am a sceptic where astrology
is concerned, but I have no problems with it being investigated and taught,
especially because it annoys these secular bastards (oops!). I wonder if
you
heard my debate on the BBC world service science programme with the
India-baiter David Gardener of the Financial Times and that disgraceful
professor of physics from
Namaste,
Gautam
Nanda’ repsonse-- part I
From:
"
To: "
Subject: My
repsonse-- part I (Repeat)
Date:
Dear Ashok
Ji:
I have read
your email, I apologize for not responding sooner, but I had some prior
commitments to take care of.
In what
follows, I will respond to the issues you have raised, pretty much in the order
they appear in your note. My responses
to Dr. Frawley and Prof. Kak will
follow separately.
1. The
original version of the article and how it differs from the published version.
You say that "you fail to see in what
way The Week has mutilated or altered the basic issues." Let me point out some salient omissions which
diluted the full impact of the case I wanted to build against the peddlers of
Vedic astrology and assorted superstitions dressed up as Vedic "sciences."
The Week completely deleted the two
examples of "synthesis" of modern technology with cultural
obscurantism I had cited. The editors dropped all references to the phenomenon
of "reactionary modernism" these examples were meant to illustrate.
And the editors removed all references I made to the historical connections
between the neo-Hindu, reactionary modernism to its ignoble historical
precedents in Nazi Germany.
Part of the reason I sent you the original
version was to draw your readers' attention to the Nazi connection, so that
they would know the full extent of my contempt for what is going on under the
cover of scienticizing the most obscurantist elements of Hinduism.
I bring in the Nazi connection most
advisedly. It is not a term I EVER use lightly.
So please don't think I am just
trying to incite. Rather, I bring up fascism because I am concerned that
Hindutva intellectuals are irresponsible peddling ideas which have brought
untold misery upon millions of human beings -- ideas which have a proven record
of the worst barbarism humanity has every known.
This whole idea of "synthesizing"
mysticism and science, of consummating a
"union" between a spiritualized understanding of nature with modern
technology that neo-Hindu intellectuals
from Bankim, Aurbindo, Vivekananda down to the contemporary Hindutva
stalwarts keep on harping upon, was first tried out in Nazi Germany. As you and your Hindutva friends well know,
but perhaps don't want to be reminded of,
the Nazi ideologues were heavily influenced by a "monism of the spirit" very similar
to, and partly borrowed from, Vedantic monism. Like Bankim dreaming of the
Hindus "becoming gods...by marrying dharma
with technology,"
the Nazi's too ,(as I wrote in my original essay) " assumed that
While the advocates of Vedas-as-science
love to cite, ad nauseum, the
Oppenheimers and the Schrodigners and the Capras, they gloss over the OTHER
"lovers of Indian wisdom" -- the Rosenbergs, the Himmlers, the
Bormanns -- who talked the language of Vedanta in making it a special virtue of
Nordic Aryans to live in accordance with the "life force" (Brahman)
immanent in nature, who talked the language of Karma and reincarnation, picked
straight out of the Bhagwad Gita, to declare Hitler an avatar meant to end
Kaliyuga. Hitler, too, insisted that the
Nazi understanding of "life-force" immanent in nature was not
spiritual but scientific. Eroding the boundaries between science and Aryan
spirituality gave the Nazis the cover of scientific reason and technological
modernity. (For a fuller analysis, read the first chapter of my forthcoming
book, "Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and the
Rise of Reactionary Modernism in
I wanted to draw the attention of the
readers to these connections in my piece in The Week -- even though I could not
hope to elaborate upon these issues in a short article. These parts were cut
out.
Of course, I have expressed my displeasure
with the editing. The sub-editor who I was working with for this issue, Mr.
Samuel Abraham, knows fully well that I was not satisfied with the final
version. I had to sign on to it, as the deadline was approaching and I did not
want to hold up the issue for which he had worked so hard. After I saw the
final copy, I was aghast to note that while the magazine had devoted 20 printed
pages to the glories of Indian science and barely 1.5 pages to my piece, which
was commissioned with the purpose of bringing "balance" of view
points. I wrote to Mr. Abraham, complaining of the magazine's sense of
"balance." (Lest I be
misunderstood, I have no complaint against Mr. Abraham: he was most helpful,
courteous and he worked with me to give me as much space as he could. He was working
under the editorial guidelines of the magazine. )
2. The
gloating.
You write, " it is a measure of our
success that our ideas are finally being read by our opponents, in which rank
we include you."
First, I am honored to be recognized as "your
opponent." I wouldn't have it any other way!
Yes, I read your website, and I read your
publications. I read them for the same reason you decided to carry my article
on your website : we are both trying to find out what the enemy is thinking and
saying. That is perfectly fair in a war.
As for as your great "success”: your
side has stooped to the lowest instincts of Indian people to grab power. You have engineered a coup against all that
was decent, and generous and humane in the secular
Unfortunately, you have been aided in this
coup by well-meaning but misguided Gandhian-postmodernists who claim to speak
from the "left", secular and progressive perspective, but who have
been speaking your language of "critical traditionalism," of
"local knowledges," of "reductionism and violence" of
"Western science." The postmodern-Gandhians condemned any attempt to
rationally criticize the superstitions and oppressions sanctioned by Hinduism
as "Western", "colonial" and "Orientalists." Some
have gone as far as excusing caste and sati as Western innovations. They have
done your dirty work for you.
For more on this romantic, postmodernist
"left's" unintended but real support of Hindutva ideas, you can refer
to my article titled "Breaking the Spell of Dharma: A Case For Indian
Enlightenment." in
The rest of the response follows in part
II, continued in a separate email.
MN
Nanda’
repsonse-- part II
From:
"
To: "
Subject:
Fw: My response -- part II.(repeat)
Date:
Continuing
with our conversation...
Before I
proceed, I want to emphasize that the reference to the "left " in the
last sentence of Part I is STRICTLY limited to the postmodernist-neo-Gandhian
elements of the academia and the populist new social movements. These
intellectuals and activists have
appropriated the language and the ideals of the left, but
"deconstructed" them into the language of irrationalism, community
and traditions. Be that as it may, the voices of the left in
Moving
on...
3. The
question of funds:
You have asked if I knew "how big is
the money behind [Hindutva intellectuals]" ? and you have challenged me to
disclose "how much grant has the American Council of Learned Societies
given me for my project."
The answer to the first question is I don't
know and I will try to find out. The answer to the second question is: the
entire record of ACLS of who-gets-what-for-doing-what is posted on the web. Go figure.
Understandably, you and your fellow-travelers
may not be sufficiently familiar with ACLS. But one thing that is relevant to
the question you have raised is this: the American Council of Learned Societies
holds an annual, national-level competition for grants in a variety of
disciplines in the humanities, ranging from classics to religion to sociology
and philosophy. My grant proposal has gone through the highly competitive peer
-review that ACLS is famous for.
So, I have a question to you, Mr. Chowgule:
how many open competitions for grants does the Hinduja Foundation hold? Or
Infinity? Where are these competitions advertised? How many projects have they
funded that question the Hindutva views that have come to prevail in the Indian
educational system, the media and the government? (ACLS is funding my work
which IS questioning the prevailing orthodoxy of postmodernism in the American
academia).
4. You cite
Klaus Klostermaier to argue the hackneyed old saw about the "parallels
between modern science and Hindu ideas."
I will
respond to this issue separately in my responses to David Frawley's letter to
The Week, and to
5. My
editing error. You are right about that. The correct date is 1998 and not 1988.
I made a mistake.
Please use
the correct year of 1998 for the nuclear test.
I will now
address the questions raised by David Frawley and
with my
best regards
Chowgule’s initial response
To:
From:
06 November 2004
Dear
Meeraji,
Pranam,
Thank you
for your messages. I will wait to
receive your other messages, before I send them to my fellow Hindutvavadis for
comment. However, there are some points
that I would like take up with you.
You say:
QUOTE
This whole idea of "synthesizing" mysticism and science,
of consummating a "union" between a spiritualized understanding of
nature with modern technology that neo-Hindu intellectuals from Bankim,
Aurbindo, Vivekananda down to the contemporary Hindutva
stalwarts keep on harping upon, was first tried out in Nazi Germany.
UNQUOTE
You being a
member of ‘American Council of LEARNED Societies’ may be more correct than a
member of a group which has stooped to lowest instincts of Indian people. But I thought that Bankim Chowdhary and Swami
Vivekanand died before the Nazi experiment came to be tried out. Could you please enlighten me of the
chronology? I am sure others of my ilk
will be just as confused as I am, and so I am seeking enlightenment from a
learned member of the society.
You talk
about ‘misguided
Gandhian-postmodernists’ who ‘have done your dirty work for’ us
Hindutvavadis. This is the first time I
am hearing that such a group exists. And
all this time I thought we did all the dirty work by ourselves. You have really brought me down quite a few
notches in my own self-esteem. Anyway, I
guess we have to work harder than we thought.
But more importantly, can you give me a list of these misguided
persons. I would like to warn them to
stay off our territory, and not to take any credit away from us.
To my question of how big is the money behind the intellectual
Kshatriyas, you say:
QUOTE
I don't know and I will try to find out.
UNQUOTE
I don’t know about you, but I find this statement truly amazing. A learned member of the society makes such a
statement without first finding out the facts?
Surely, you are being modest when you say that you don’t know. Please, please, take me out of my agony and
say that you DO know, and let me know the amounts!
In your message to me you compare Hindutva to Nazism. Have you come across an article by Marzia Casolari entitled 'Hindutva's
Foregin Tie-up in the in the 1930s - Archival Evidence', published in the
I look forward to receive your other messages that you have promised in
your second message.
Namaste.
==============================
Message from Vamadeva
From:
<Vedicinst@aol.com>
To:
<ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in>
Subject:
Re:
Date:
If she
wants to discuss any of these issues directly with me I would be happy
to do so.
It is curious that such writers want us to post their complete
articles
when they only refer to our views according to stereotypes and
distortions,
not representing what we really say and attributing to us ideas
we don't
have - like her article which doesn't reflect what we really think
or have
said!
Vamadeva
Message from Nanda to Vamadeva
From: Meera Nanda
To: Ashok Chowgule
Sent:
Subject: Response to Dr. Frawley
Dear Dr. Frawley:
I have had the opportunity to read the original, unedited version of the letter you wrote to The Week in response to my article, "The doublespeak of Vedic Science." Let me respond to some of the points you have taken me to task for in that letter.
It was not I, but the editors of the magazine who dubbed my article the title of "doublespeak of Vedic science." But I can see now how well the title describes two of your central claims, one that your intellectual Kshatriya was not meant to "merely defend the Vedas as science," and two, that you have never claimed that science must be organically related to the rest of the culture.
You are right. Nowhere in your chapter "A call for an Intellectual Kshatriya" (www.vedanet.com) do you come out explicitly and ask Hindu intellectuals in so many words to defend dharma as science. No, you "only" ask them to "set forth their ideas in a modern and rational way that appeals to people, just as great risihis did of yore." And for an ideal modern rishi you choose Vivekananda, who practically invented the whole nonsense of the " conclusions of modern science being the very conclusions Vedanta reached ages ago…." Etc What room is there between these two statements for any confusion about the task you are setting for your brain-soldiers for dharma?
Indeed, I am in very good company in the interpretation of intellectual kshatriyahood I used in my article. At least one of your own fellow Hindutvawadi, none other than N.S. Rajaram, acknowledges you as an inspiration and goes right ahead to defend Hinduism as nothing more than scientific method in his A Hindu View of the World.: Essays in the Intellectual Kshatriya tradition.
I refer you to your own words in your River of Haven where you repeatedly and simplistically present the Vedas to the Western audiences are the fundamental theory of knowledge of all levels of natural reality, and Yoga as the empirical method of Vedic knowledge. Not much distinction between science and the rest of the culture there. If you believe that science and culture are distinct and should not be confused, then why is that the only "science" you discover in modern science is the one that has vague, poetic, unverifiable parallels with Vedic couplets? There is plenty of modern science –yes, even quantum physics – that completely contradicts the foundations of Vedic view of nature and human life. The ONLY criterion you and your fellow-travelers have of deciding what is science is the what you defend in the Hindu scriptures. Is this not a de facto conflation of science and culture?
Of course, as you yourself admit, presenting the Vedas in
the most rational and modern language is the preferred sale pitch for
intellectual Kshatriyas. Makes perfect sense for those who peddle "Eastern
wisdom" to burnt-out yuppies in the
Sincerely
Vamadeva’s
message to Nanda
From:
<Vedicinst@aol.com>
To:
<meerananda@home.com>
Cc:
<ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in>
Subject:
Re: Response to Dr. Frawley
Date:
Namaste
Mira,
It is curious that only now do you bother
to read the article of a person
you already
attacked by name in a public magazine! You make your conclusions
first and
then you examine the information! That does not appear much like
the science
you claim to represent!
You continue to sidestep my main contention,
which is a distinction of
two forms
of sciences, and instead accuse me of trying to place Hindu culture
on par with
modern science as you see it today. It is my view (which is the
view of
most Hindus in this regard) that Hinduism, particularly in its
Vedantic
essence, is a scientific in the sense that it offers a way of true
knowledge,
which is the original meaning of the term Veda. However, its goal
is not
simply understanding the outer world (though it does have much to
offer in
this regard) or apara vidya as in the case of modern science, but
understanding
the inner Self as the highest goal of knowledge or para vidya.
You reject this higher level of science out
of hand as fraudulent. This
is the crux
of the entire issue. Because you cannot recognize such a higher
level of
science, Vedic science appears to you as a doublespeak that only
masks
political prejudices. You are like an entity of only two dimensions who
finds talk
of a third dimensional object to reflect only confusion and
contradiction.
As for affinities between Vedanta and
modern science, you can find them
with a
number of physicists, starting with Oppenheimer. You might want to
look at the
popularity of books connecting modern science and eastern
spirituality
in the West, which include several national best sellers, to see
how
pervasive such ideas have become (though certainly not all scientists
accept
them).
Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma contains art,
music, literature, etc. which
all flow
from the same dharmic vision of the universe, as well as occult
sciences
like astrology and vastu. Clearly these aspects of Hindu knowledge
and culture
are not sciences like modern science, but they do have a basis
in a higher
level of knowledge that modern science can be made into part of.
I am honored that you criticize
Vivekananda, a great sage, with the same
rudeness
that you criticize me, which only indicates your bias. Do you really
have
nothing good to say about Vivekananda? Can you quote any Hindu leader or
teaching
that you actually like? No doubt you are much more intelligent,
kinder and
better able to find the truth than such great yogis and are above
the need
for any practices of yoga or meditation to improve your state of
mind!
Not every one who follows Indic traditions
in the West are "burnt-out
yuppies"
to use your rather demeaning characterization, but include people of
all types
and ages, and the number is growing. It is not only Vedic sciences
that are
gaining such recognition but also similar disciplines like Chinese
medicine,
Tai Chi and Taoist Meditation, Tibetan practices, Native American
practices,
even western astrology which you are all probably opposed to as
well.
As for snake-oil, Nehruvian socialism did
little to help
forty years
it dominated the country and the same socialist policies failed
everywhere
else in the world. Communism was the greatest cause of genocide
and
cultural destruction in the twentieth century. Western materialism and
consumerism
are showing their limits in various social and environmental
problems.
The dharmic traditions of
limitations
of these materialistic ideologies.
As has been the long tendency of Indian
Marxists, you characterize Hindus
who don't
agree with you as Fascists and Nazis, though Hindus have never
invaded any
country or ever tried to convert the world to their belief! This
stereotyping
is the characteristic of the communist mindset which follows
such
demonization of its enemies with actually physically eliminating them
when it
can. You should note that people like myself who follow Hindu
spiritual
traditions in the West like yoga, ayurveda and astrology are
generally
allied with causes like vegetarianism, animal rights, native
rights,
environmental rights, the cause of religious pluralism, etc. that
must also
be fascist if your views are correct.
You might want to look at the examples of
modern Hindu women gurus like
Anandamayi
Ma or Ammachi (who presently has a large following in the West) if
you really
want to discover how to influence people to a better life.
It is sad that as an Indian with a good
mind you have so utterly failed
to
understand the treasures of your own tradition. Certainly some of this
heritage
must have been in your own family background, which you have also
betrayed.
Your intellectual arrogance must be quite a burden for you. You
should give
it up if you want to find inner peace.
One thing you can be certain is that Vedic
knowledge, which has been with
us for
thousands of years, will outlive such intellectual theatrics.
Jai Durga!
Vamadeva
Vamadeva’s message to Ashok
From:
<Vedicinst@aol.com>
To:
<ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in>
Subject:
From Vamadeva
Date:
Namaste
Ashok,
I hope I
wasn't too hard on
is. She
aroused Durvasa in me. I hope she gets the message. At least she
knows that
she has an opposition to deal with!
Jai Durga!
Vamadeva
Calrification
From:
"
To: "
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 3:42 AM
Subject: Calrification
Dear Ashok ji:
Let me clarfiy the sentence that you are taunting me for:
This whole idea of
"synthesizing" mysticism and science, of
consummating a "union" between a spiritualized understanding of
nature
with modern technology that neo-Hindu intellectuals from Bankim,
Aurbindo, Vivekananda down to the contemporary Hindutva stalwarts keep
on harping upon, was first tried out in Nazi Germany
When I say that the idea of synthesis favored by Bankim, Vivekanada was
first tried out in Nazi Germany, I obviously don't mean that Bankim and
Vivekananda learned it from the Nazis. Of course, they were dead by the
time the Nazis came to power. But what bearing does that have on my
argument? Where have I said that they *borrowed* the ideas form the Nazis?
All I have said is that programs very similar to Hindutva calls for
synthesis of mysticism with science, backed in part by Hindu sacred
texts, were put to work by Hitler's Aryan scientists and philosophers.
I think my statement is clear enough and I stand by it. You may of course
want to confuse it by bringing in totally irrelevant objections.
----- Original Message -----
From: "
To: "
Sent:
Subject: Initial response to your two messages
To:
From:
Dear Meeraji,
Pranam,
Thank you for your messages. I will wait to receive your other
messages, before I send them to my fellow Hindutvavadis for comment.
However, there are some points that I would like take up with you.
You say:
QUOTE
This whole idea of "synthesizing" mysticism and science, of
consummating a "union" between a spiritualized understanding of
nature
with modern technology that neo-Hindu intellectuals from Bankim,
Aurbindo, Vivekananda down to the contemporary Hindutva stalwarts keep
on harping upon, was first tried out in Nazi Germany.
UNQUOTE
You being a member of 'American Council of LEARNED Societies' may be
more correct than a member of a group which has stooped to lowest
instincts of Indian people. But I thought that Bankim Chowdhary and
Swami Vivekanand died before the Nazi experiment came to be tried out.
Could you please enlighten me of the chronology? I am sure others of
my ilk will be just as confused as I am, and so I am seeking
enlightenment from a learned member of the society.
You talk about 'misguided Gandhian-postmodernists' who 'have done your
dirty work for' us Hindutvavadis. This is the first time I am hearing
that such a group exists. And all this time I thought we did all the
dirty work by ourselves. You have really brought me down quite a few
notches in my own self-esteem. Anyway, I guess we have to work harder
than we thought.
But more importantly, can you give me a list of these misguided
persons. I would like to warn them to stay off our territory, and not
to take any credit away from us.
To my question of how big is the money behind the intellectual
Kshatriyas, you say:
QUOTE
I don't know and I will try to find out.
UNQUOTE
I don't know about you, but I find this statement truly amazing. A
learned member of the society makes such a statement without first
finding out the facts? Surely, you are being modest when you say that
you don't know. Please, please, take me out of my agony and say that
you DO know, and let me know the amounts!
In your message to me you compare Hindutva to Nazism. Have you come
across an article by Marzia Casolari entitled 'Hindutva's Foregin
Tie-up in the in the 1930s - Archival Evidence', published in the
says that Hindutva was influenced by fascism of Mussolini. If you do
not have a copy, I will be happy to send one to you. A learned member
of society should not miss it in the campaign to warn the people about
those who have stooped to lowest instincts of Indian people
I look forward to receive your other messages that you have promised
in your second message.
Namaste.
==============================
Klostermaier’s message
From:
"Klaus K. Klostermaier" <kklostr@cc.UManitoba.CA>
To:
<ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in>
Subject:
Your recent communication re
Date:
Pranam,
thank you
for transmitting
responses.
I found the article confused and self-contradictory. It seems
the author
is neither a scientist nor a historian. By comparison, the
11th century
Muslim scholar Al-Biruni had a much better grasp and much
greater
respect for Hindu science than this writer has. What I found
particularly
odious is the frequent paralleling of present day
Nazi
everything
connected with it.
her
poltiical opponents and not caring for the historical truth in their
statements.
Her treatment of Vedic Science reeks of the Nazi contempt of
"Jewish
Science" (which included Albert Einstein's Theory of
Relativity!).
While some proponents of Vedic Science admittedly did and do
make
untenable statements, on the whole the subject deserves a more
serious
treatment. To equate "Vedic Science" with the "Aryan
Science" of
the Nazis
is simply monstrous. There is no racial connotation in Hindu
science and
no anti-modern or anti-semitic animus in it.
By
coincidence. the same day your communication arrived, I received
an
invitation from the editor of the forthcoming Macmillan Encyclopedia of
Science and
Religion to contribute a 2.500 word article on the mutual
relation
between science and religion in
something
to be said here quite different from what
One can
only shake one's head at the kind of literature that makes it into
print if it
only attacks a position that an editor loves to hate!
Pranam!
Klaus
Klostermaier, F.R.S.C.
Dear
Meeraji,
Pranam,
Here is
Prof Klostermaier's comments on your article. I have not sent him the message
that I had sent to you giving the quote from his book. I will be doing so
in the very near future.
Namaste.
Response of Ashok Chowgule to Nanda
To:
From:
06 November 2004
Dear
Meeraji,
Pranam,
I was
waiting to receive some response to the points in my earlier messages, and
hence the delay in writing. Of course, I
have not received the information so far. Even so I thought I would plunge
along anyway.
First of
all, I am happy to note that you, a member of the learned society, agree with
me, one who has stooped to the lowest level of the Indian society, on the issue
of the chronology of the death of Swami Vivekanand and Bankim Chowdhary, and
the beginning of the Nazi experiment. I
have not accused you to say that you say that the Nazis ‘borrowed’ the idea
from these two great personalities of our country. Just as you interpreted my wording to say
that I am accusing you, so also I interpreted your wording to put a meaning on
the basis of which I asked you the question of chronology. Anyway, as they say, all is well that ends
well.
Of course,
this raises another issue. Perhaps you
should have said that the Nazis borrowed their ideas from these two great
personalities of our country. I think
chronologically this is the right way to look at the way you are trying to
do. Just as it is right to say that
Machiavellie is the Chanakya of Italy and Shakespeare is the Kalidas of
England.
Your
contention would then put you in the company of the likes of Shri V T
Rajshekar, editor of Dalit Voice, who has been identified as an authentic dalit
intellectual by none other than the then
The same
Shri Rajshekar has also come out with the concept of the Barhminical Social
Order, which effectively says that the Brahmins have infiltrated the
non-Hindutva parties as well and there is whole programme in which the latter
pretend to hit the former, and the former pretend to get hit. In the process, the actual power will always
remain with the Brahmins, who will ensure that nothing will be done which will
adversely affect the interests of the Brahmins as a class, irrespective of
which spectrum of the political space they have planted themselves in. All this must be correct, since The
Washington Post, being a member of the learned society, cannot be wrong if they
say that Shri Rajshekar is an authentic dalit intellectual.
This theory
has also been certified by no less a personality like Smt Gail Omvedt,
professor of sociology at
Second, I
really must protest at your cruelty in NOT admitting that you DO know how big
is the money behind the intellectual kshatriyas. And it is not me alone, there are others who
are in as much agony on this issue about the fact that you have said that there
is big money without knowing how much it is.
I am sure a member of the learned society is not cruel. This characteristic is the special feature of
persons of my ilk who have stooped to lowest instincts of Indian people.
Thirdly, I
had asked you the list of the ‘misguided Gandhian-postmodernists’ who ‘have
done your dirty work for’ us Hindutvavadis.
I am sure that being a member of the learned society you are busy
preparing the list, and I look forward to receive it soonest. As I had said in my earlier message, I do not
take kindly to people who thread on our turf.
They may well become a competition to the big money that is today going
exclusively to the intellectual kshatriyas.
In your
message you have said, “I am honored to be recognized as "your
opponent."” People of my ilk cannot
bestow any other honours than these, and so we are happy that you are honoured.
You have
said that you never use the term Nazi connection lightly. I am sure no member of the learned society
would ever do a cruel thing. This is the
prerogative of people my ilk. In this
connection, however, I would like to bring to your notice the two books by Dr
Koenraad Elst – The Saffron Swastika (in two volumes) and Decolonising the
Hindu Mind. The first one deals
extensively with the charge of the Nazi connection, and as a bonus you will
find it also deals with the charge that we Hindutvavadis have received our
inspiration from Mussolini as well. Or
perhaps, given the chronology on which we both agree, Mussolini also put in
place ideas that were propagated by the earlier great Hindu personalities.
But, why am
I saying all this? Surely, a member of
the learned society would not have missed these two books which also have
stooped to the lowest level of the Indian society. I am sure you are on heightened guard, and
surveying the scene with an eagle eye, to prevent the great damage that people
of my ilk are bent on doing.
Oh, let me
share a secret with you. Prof Gerald
Larson thinks that Dr Elst is being handsomely funded by people of my ilk. So he may well be a source where you can find
an answer to the question of how big is the money behind the intellectual
kshatriyas.
Incidentally,
let me point that people of my ilk are tickled pink when we see the photos of
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, adorning the meetings, public and private, of the
Communist parties in
Relevant to
the above, I have a question to ask. You
have said: “I have nothing but great admiration for my comrades in the
egalitarian, secular, Enlightenment traditions of the left.” Could you let me know if the following
persons are included amongst your comrades:
Praful
Bidwai, Mishurul Hasan, Achin Vanaik, Vijay Prashad, N Ram, Irfan Habib, Dileep
Padgaonkar, Shekar Gupta, Romila Thapar, K N Panikar, Brinda Karat, Biju
Mathew.
I think
that people of my ilk will be able to figure out who the other members of the
learned society are, if you could give a yes or no answer against the above.
In your
earlier message you have said: “For a fuller analysis, read the first chapter
of my forthcoming book, "Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of
Science and the Rise of Reactionary Modernism in
Again
people of my ilk are really very bad on chronology, and hence a
clarification. You have asked me to read
(present tense) of a chapter of a forthcoming (future tense) book. Really, please tell me how the members of the
learned society manage such a feat? Of
course, you may not wish to divulge your secrets, because we will then be able
to use them to create even more mayhem than what are doing today. I will understand if you do not respond,
because if I were in your place I would do the utmost not to make my own work
any more difficult than what it is today.
Anxiously
looking forward to hear from you.
Namaste.
==============================
Breaking the Spell of Dharma - Case for Indian
Enlightenment
Author:
Publication: Economic and Political Weekly
Date:
I
What Is Enlightenment?
Apicture, they say, is worth a thou-sand words. I came across one
such picture recently that speaks far more eloquently about the
roots of the crisis of
tome. I urge you, dear reader, to take a long hard look at this
picture - and weep.
It is a black and white wire photo, first printed in The Times of
book, The Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist
Movement. The picture shows a crude wooden platform, about five
feet high, with an emaciated, half-naked and unkempt old man
dangling one leg over the wall of the platform. Underneath stands
a middle-aged man clad in all white, with his bowed head touching
the foot of that leg dangling from the platform. The owner of the
leg is a "holy man" by the name of Sant Devraha Baba of
Vrindavan. The bowed head belongs to none other than Balram
Jakhar, former speaker of the Lok Sabha. The
representative-in-chief of the house-of-the-people of this, the
secular-democratic
alleged god-man with his forehead, seeking his blessings.
This picture troubles me. I wince every time I see it. Why?
Haven't I seen it all before? Aren't utterly humiliating,
hierarchical and non-reciprocal gestures of self-effacement
before power - sacred and profane, in private and in public
institutions alike - a routine part of social life in
the very fact that such sights are so commonplace, and that we
have continued to accept them as facts of life, is exactly what
troubles me. Indeed, the banality, the utter
taken-for-grantedness of our elected representatives, in their
official capacities, bowing, prostrating and in other ways
displaying their helplessness and inferiority before religious
authorities ought to trouble all secularists.
I read these displays of public religiosity as signs of a
democracy under the spell of dharma - a
democracy without
democrats, a secularism without secularists. Unfortunately,
whatever little discomfort we felt at such sights is fast
disappearing: we do not even play at being secularists any more.
Instead, elected representatives bowing before sadhu-sants is
being touted as the Hindu ideal of 'dharma rajya',
where "the
Rishis, through the authority of dharma, have the right to remove
a king who defaults on his duty", where "dharma
is higher than
both the legislature and the judiciary" [Upadhyay 1965]. Reality
has caught up with our schizophrenic national culture: we no
longer profess to be secular in public and intensely religious in
our private affairs; we now indulge in conspicuous religiosity in
both public and private spheres. What is more, we claim that it
is a good thing too!1
Move now, for a moment, from late 20th century
century
one Robert Covelle to genuflectand listen to a reprimand for
having fathered an illegitimate child. Covelle refused to kneel
and turned to Voltaire, the leading light of the French
Enlightenment, for help. Voltaire was outraged at the idea of
religious authorities daring to make a citizen kneel: "An
ecclesiastical assembly that presumed to make a citizen kneel
would be playing the part of a pedant correcting children, or of
a tyrant punishing slaves", Voltaire wrote in a pamphlet against
genuflection. The rest of the philosophes rallied behind
Voltaire, and after six years of agitation, succeeded in having
genuflection abolished in
It is of numerous such refusals to kneel before authority that a
public sphere worthy of a secular, liberal democracy is created.
Because the 'ecclesiastical authority' is dispersed, localised
and self-enforced in our society, it calls for many more - not
fewer - refusals. Where are the million mutinies that we need,
every day, at every level to create a society where no one can
dare demand, or expect, citizens, or citizens' representatives,
to kneel? Where is the outrage against the everyday tyrannies,
fears and inhibitions perpetrated in the name of dharma
that make
our social institutions unfit for a free, equal and democratic
people? Where are our Voltaires? Or is the impulse that propelled
Voltaire and the rest of the members of the 'Party of Humanity'
to take up the cause of critical reason in the service of an open
society, a 'western' impulse, inapplicable to India, where
religion is a 'total way of life', a matter of 'innocent' faith
that cannot be questioned without losing the essence of being
Indians?
A society where citizens do not kneel before the authority of the
church and the state2 did not emerge in the west without a
protracted struggle against the cosmopolis sanctified by the
church and traditions. The secularist doctrines of separation of
church and state and the liberal idea of 'rights of man' did not
suddenly appear in 17th and 18th century Europe, fully formed,
either as an unintended "gift of Christianity", or as an
expression of 'cultural genes' coding some special western
propensity for freedom and individual conscience, as the
culturalist from both the west and non-west alike like to claim.
Nor was it an automatic unfolding of universal law of progress,
as vulgar materialists would have it. Instead, secularism in the
west was an eminently political achievement. The liberal idea of
rights-bearing individuals, including the right of conscience,
had to be fought for against the medieval cosmology of
Christianity, against all those institutions that embodied that
cosmology, and against the classes whose privileges this world
view legitimated. In a sense, human rights, secularism and
liberalism are "post-traditional" for they are objects of active
effort and cannot be simply derived from any religious doctrine
or metaphysics.
Yet, while cultural essentialism is false, culture does matter.
Religious and cultural traditions - and the metaphysics they are
rooted in - are not irrelevant to the content, breadth and depth
of acceptance of post-traditional norms. Where cultural
traditions and religion do make a difference is how they either
aid or impede the struggle for human liberty, equality and
fraternity. Religious answers to questions of fundamental human
importance - What the world is like? How has it come about? What
makes us human? What is the goal of human life? How best to
attain these goals and what errors to avoid? - constitute a kind
of meta-reality or world-image which guide the social and ethical
life of individuals, often at an unconscious level [Kakar 1981].
Different religious traditions differ in those elements of the
meta-reality which make the idea of equal dignity of all human
beings in here-and-now more, rather than less, easily acceptable.
Going against the grain of current trends in Indian sociology,
which has either ignored or glorified the role of religion in
Indian society, I will argue that there are elements of Hindu
meta-reality - indeed, its central axioms of dharma, karma
and
moksha - which continue to impede the development of a liberal
and secular civil society which respects the fundamental equality
of right-bearing individuals. As the mere mention of the
influence of Hindu world view on social life in
flags of "essentialism" or "Orientalism", let me emphasise
that I
am not arguing that there is a single unchanging Hindu
meta-reality which will always and forever override the play of
material interests, power, customary laws, other local traditions
in society. All I am suggesting is that the multitude of local
social institutions in India have had to engage with the central
axioms of brahmanical Hinduism, which have set the standards of
all that is deemed ideal and desirable, even for those castes and
sects of Hindus who do not actually live by these ideals: even
the aspiration to achieve these ideals (as in Sanskritisation),
to construct an identity explicitly in defiance of these ideals
(as in 'dalitisation') is an indication of the power of these
ideals. The 'little traditions', and their customary laws cannot
be adequately understood without understanding their relationship
with the 'Great traditions' of brahmanical Hinduism, for the
former gain their ethical bearings, their sense of right and
wrong, from the latter. It is as sources of ideological hegemony,
and not as the ultimate, unchanging motor of Indian history, that
the content and uses of the central philosophical concepts of
Hinduism bear a serious and critical examination.
While cultural meta-reality exerts a powerful influence on the
structure of feeling, thinking and relating to nature and
society, this meta-reality is not beyond rational examination and
critique. A powerful case for the 'reach of reason' into our
sentiments and attitudes has been recently stated by Amartya Sen
[Sen 2000]. In a response to those who would rather depend upon
the supposedly spontaneous human emotions and the goodness of
basic human instincts, than on supposedly cold and harsh light of
reason and analysis, Sen argues forcefully that the inner world
of unconscious fears and affects can be "influenced and
cultivated through reasoning". Citing Adam Smith's The Theory of
Moral Sentiments, Sen argues that even our instinctive reactions
to particular conduct rely on "our reasoned understanding of
causal connections between conduct and consequence...[and that]
our first perceptions may also change in response to critical
examination..." Lest one takes such propensity for critical
examination to be a uniquely western cultural trait, Sen provides
an interesting reading of Akbar's insistence on exposing
prevailing attitudes and social norms to critical reasoning. As I
will argue throughout this paper, it is this continuous, open and
rational critique of a culture's meta-reality, including its
affective reality, and not some relativist gender, class or
caste-indexed "epistemology of the oppressed" that best serves
the interests of the oppressed.
Indeed, Sen provides a useful framework to understand the
Enlightenment as that period in European history when the reach
of critical reason extended into the meta-reality of the age. The
18th-century Europe saw many changes in social manners, modes of
address, assembly and social discourse, all increasing the level
of civility and egalitarianism in everyday discourse in the
public sphere. These changes in social manner were the outward
signs of a fundamental change in temper that questioned the
validity and methodology of the knowledge of the natural world
inscribed in myth, theology and inherited traditions. If there
was one single passion that defined the 18th century
Enlightenment - that "revolt against superstition," as Kant
called it - it was a passion for critical reason in the service
of demystification of church doctrines, supernatural beliefs,
miracles and other such magical-religious practices. The network
of otherwise quarrelsome philosophes that extended from
purpose from a belief in the redemptive power of new ways of
knowing the world. The new philosophy of knowledge was
exemplified above all by
philosophical expression by John Locke's empiricism. It demanded
publicly testable evidence based on experience and reason, the
natural capacity of which is equally available to all,3
demolishing all claims of a priori knowledge available only to a
select few through the grace of god or through their privileged
social status. Of course, all people, all societies, at all
times, reason, and reason critically, as the critics of
Enlightenment like to point out. But the Enlightenment marks a
culmination of a process that, through renaissance, the
reformation and the scientific revolution and propelled by the
forces of nascent capitalism, revolutionised what reason meant
and what role it had in how men and women related to nature and
to each other. "The purpose," wrote Diderot, the author of the
Encyclopedia, the remarkable compendium of the European
Enlightenment, "is not only to supply a certain body of
knowledge, but also to bring about a change in the mode of
thinking" [quoted from Cassirer 1951: 14].
This "change in the mode of thinking" lay broadly in a change
from a contemplative, deductive reasoning from
intuitively-grasped, god and tradition sanctioned a priori
beliefs to an insistence on deriving any claim regarding nature's
order from the data of experience alone. Knowledge was no longer
to proceed from concepts and axioms to phenomenon, but vice
versa. At its core, the Enlightenment was an attempt to
popularise and institutionalise modest procedural principles of
knowledge that insisted on breaking apart all existing claims of
cause and effect derived from earlier metaphysical systems and
rationalist schemes, and to test them against observation and
experiment. If there was a dogma of Enlightenment, it was that
there were to be no dogmas, no a priori truths and no privileged
'Sources of Affirmation'. All dogmas could be queried by private
citizens, who have the right to come together in the public
sphere, as equals, to pursue truth through open critical debate.4
Needless to say, in actual practice, these ideals were marred by
myriad inequities of class, gender and citizenship. The
philosphes themselves were not free from what we would today
reject as grossly elitist prejudices. But an exclusive,
hyper-critical concern with these contradictions can blind us to
the momentous implications of winning public legitimacy for new
norms for public reason. These more democratic, naturalistic and
secular norms were, in time, to expand to take in the excluded
segments of society, leading both towards a more egalitarian and
simultaneously a more rationalised, instrumental society.5
Such a change of temper towards nature, knowledge and society was
not an automatic response to the change in material conditions -
rising literacy, growing affluence, increasing class mobility -
associated with the coming of industry and capitalism. It is a
mistake, commonplace in Marxist writings, and unfortunately in
Marx's own writings,6 to reduce the Enlightenment's view of
rights and negative freedoms to an expression of purely material,
class interests of the bourgeoisie. This is a serious
misunderstanding of the Enlightenment, both because it fails to
do justice to the actual concerns that motivated the rising
middle classes of 18th century western Europe, especially France,
and because such a narrow materialist reading does not allow one
to look for homologues of the European Enlightenment in
non-European societies. As we shall see in the course of this
paper, a class analysis fails to understand the Indian
Enlightenment which, I will contend, finds its intellectual and
political motivations in the quest for recognition of their
humanity by the oppressed castes, as castes, rebelling not merely
for their material/class interests, but against the social and
existential insults heaped upon them. A purely economic
motivation does not explain the hard-fought battle in the
cultural realm against the dogmas of the age.
The Enlightenment's call for reason at the service of "
Equality and Fraternity" is best understood as a call to arms in
a struggle for recognition of equal dignity of all, regardless of
origins and station in life. The Enlightenment counterpoised the
idea of honour in the ancient regime with that of dignity:
whereas for some to have honour, it was necessary that not
everyone has it, the underlying principle of dignity is that
everyone shares in it by the virtue of being human [
Seen in purely class terms, the interests of the bourgeoisie in
all that different from the class interest of the nobility. Like
the nobility, the rising middle classes of the Third Estate also
aspired to accumulate proprietary wealth in land, office or
rents, which involved a minimum of risk and could safely be
handed down in the family. The capitalist entrepreneur,
speculating with borrowed capital and few fixed assets, was not
typical of the upper middle classes. What the well-heeled
bourgeoisie resented was not so much economic frustration, as
social disparagement at the hands of the nobility, which claimed
to derived its status from lineage. The rising bourgeoisie were
motivated not by a desire to revolutionise the economic basis of
society but to dismantle those social ideologies and attitudes
that denied them full recognition of their own worth. Not just in
France but in most of Europe, the 18th century bourgeoisie
revolutions were struggles waged between relatively well-off
minorities - "a revolt of the privileged", as Norman Hampson
(1969) calls it - with hardly anyone contemplating the full
enfranchisement of the urban and peasant masses.
The fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers - reason
as a distinguishing mark of humanity and a basis for entitlement
to equal respect, and nature as devoid of divine purpose and
hierarchy and amenable to human understanding and control -
struck a chord with the bourgeoisie. These ideas enabled them to
challenge the superstitious acceptance of the prevailing order
personified by the priests and the king. Man was henceforth, at
least in theory, to be free to create for himself the social and
political conditions necessary for his own development. True,
this "man" was cast in the image of white, male and bourgeoisie
man. But the underlying conception of reason and nature of the
Enlightenment contained within it the seeds for its own
self-universalisation. In time, the Enlightenment philosophy has
been embraced not just by the labour movement but all those -
including the suffragists, black liberation and anti-colonial
movements - seeking liberal political reforms [Bronner 1995].
European Enlightenment did not emerge out of shadowy mists of
western culture or traditions. This movement was deliberately
created and set in motion by human beings at a definite point in
time, on the basis of a certain theoretical understanding of man
and nature. Neither the Protestant Reformation of the 16th
century,7 nor the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century,8
alongside the growing forces of industrial capitalism,9 were
sufficient for bringing about the displacement of myth and god
from social life. It took the principled intervention of public
intellectuals of the emerging pan-Euro-American "Republic of
Letters"- journalists, pamphleteers, science popularises,
amateur scientists, mostly men but some women, some well known
and independently wealthy, others provincial and struggling - to
spell out the philosophical and social implication of the
advances in scientific knowledge. The great achievement of the
Enlightenment was to build a political vision-based upon reason,
to transform reason from an arid epistemological position of
interest to professional philosophers alone into a social ethic:
the refusal to accept anything without demonstration and reason,
was simultaneously a refusal to bow to the authority of those who
have hitherto claimed a unique possession of truth.
II
Enlightenment Project Under Fire
One of the most important jobs of intellectuals, whether as
priests, philosophers or activists is to define what is wrong
with their society, and to identify the obstacles that stand in
the way to a desirable future. Identification and articulation of
the causes of our social malaise generate new objects of desire,
longing and hatred and new modes of social activism.
Through a strange and dangerous convergence of
anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist and populist third worldist
impulses in the second half of the 20th century, an influential
segment of left academics and activists around the world have
tended to identify the legacy of the Enlightenment itself as an
obstacle to a desired society. The "progressive" discourse, among
the heirs of Nietzsche, Gandhi and Marx alike, is characterised
by a deep despair over the modern condition engendered by
science-based industry, nation states and increasingly global
markets. The conditions of modern life are seen as deforming and
dehumanising individuals, by turning them into bourgeois,
philistines and last men. One discerns a deep "longing for total
revolution" which will overcome the modern structure of feeling,
thinking and acting [Yack 1992], and lead to a more whole, less
alienated modernity. This longing best explains why a certain
image of "Reason" and "the Enlightenment" have become for
the
postmodern and postcolonial intellectuals what the ancien regime
was to the Enlightenment: an intimate enemy against which the
critics define their own projects of "alternative
modernities".The critics claim that it is in the interest of the
oppressed to challenge the phony "objectivity" of science with
their more "authentic" and holistic ways of knowing which, unlike
modern science, do not tear apart nature from society, the object
from the subject, facts from meanings, reason from affect, etc.
"Oppositional consciousness", it is claimed, must extend to an
opposition to scientific world view and scientific reason
itself.10
This urge to overcome the heritage of the Enlightenment poses a
special set of problems for postcolonial societies where the
Enlightenment project has not yet taken off the ground, let alone
having allegedly reached a point where it has turned into its
opposite. The desire for a total revolution is nothing less than
a disaster for a society like India where cultural nationalism
has allowed an illiberal and segmentary social logic, sanctified
by the core assumptions of Hindu dharma, to continue to serve as
a cultural code, even among the most secular and enlightened
political and intellectual leaders.11 Before the supposed
communitarian, humane and rational elements myth and traditions
can be recovered as the Gandhian neo-romantics desire - they must
first be forced to loosen the deadly grip they have had for
centuries on the Indian imagination. Before the liberal
Enlightenment regime of economic and civic liberties can be
radicalised - as the Marxists desire - they must first be allowed
to win legitimacy over and against the dharmic common sense of
the Indian society.
In
intelligentsia have different conceptions of desirable futures in
whose name Enlightenment is to be indicted. A wordabout my use of
the appellation "left" when applied to intellectuals, activists
and social movements may be appropriate here. What passes as "the
left" in
groups that I call "reactionary modernists."These groups are
mostly associated with neo-Gandhian communitarians, who share the
postmodernist and postcolonial suspicion of reason and the
Enlightenment, but not the postmodernist critique of
essentialism. Thus, while they accept the postmodernist idea of
cultural embeddedness of all ways of knowing (which reduces
modern science to a mere "ethnoscience" of the west), their view
of "Indian mode" of knowing and relating is essentially a Hindu,
non-dualist mode, and their view of Indian community is an
idealised dharmic, wholist community.12 (Can they be called
"contingent postmodernists" or "strategic postmodernists"?)
I
call these intellectuals, including internationally acclaimed
stars like Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri
Spivak (in parts), Gyan Prakash, Dipesh Chakravarty, Veena Das,
Claude Alvares and their numerous fellow travellers and
followers, reactionary modernists because they seek to model
their alternative modernities on the "innocent", "genuinely
archaic" and supposedly subaltern modes of knowing and living,
completely ignoring the fact that these same local knowledges
are, more often than not, patently irrational, obscurantist and
downright oppressive to the same subaltern on whose behalf these
intellectuals claim to speak. Their de facto advocacy of Hindu
tradition notwithstanding, these intellectuals retain an aura of
progressive left politics because of their association with the
classic left causes (anti-imperialism, multiculturalism, feminism
and environmentalism), although in my opinion, they are actually
the bridge between the nationalist elements of the
anti-capitalist left and the full-blown, fascist religious right.
The other component of the left is, of course, the organised
Marxist left which has traditionally stood for a modernist
socialist solution to overcome the inequities and injustices of
capitalism. But this stream of the Indian left, unfortunately,
has allowed its economism to underestimate the value of
non-economistic struggle in the realm of culture and meaning that
the Enlightenment was all about. The more traditional Marxist
left has looked to an as yet unrealised socialist future where
"true" critical reason and "true" human autonomy will be
realised: Enlightenment and its supposed "positivism",
"rationalism" and its supposed self-universalisation stand
indicted because of their historical connection with capitalism
and imperialism.13 The true potential of the Enlightenment, on
this reading, can only be achieved under socialism.14 This
appropriation of Enlightenment project for socialism constitutes
a misreading of the actual history of the Enlightenment Europe
where a relative autonomy of the public sphere from class
interests allowed the institutionalisation of procedural
rationality in public affairs. There is no doubt that the
Enlightenment shared the glorification of work, industry and the
profit motive that marked the Protestant ethic of the rising
capitalist class [Gay 1977: 45-55]. But it would be a mistake to
reduce the Enlightenment to an ideology of capitalism and
imperialism alone. As Jurgen Habermas' influential study of
public sphere has shown, aristocrats, men of property and men of
letters played a formative role in creating the institutions -
salons, coffee houses, newspapers, journals of opinion - where
"common interest in truth allowed 'bracketing' of status
differences" [Calhoun 1992: 13] in public discussions of a
variety of topics ranging from the latest scientific discoveries
to matters of religion and state. It is very likely that "common
interest" was often a cover for class interests, and there is no
doubt that the public sphere was restricted in its initial phase
to only those who could afford the books, the public lectures and
the coffee houses. But however often it was breached, the idea
that the best rational argument, and not the identity of the
speaker, was important to arrive at truth was gradually
institutionalised as the norm for public discourse.
In an open society that admits of a plurality of interests,
identities and self-chosen ends, it is important that the public
sphere and the norms of discourse not be controlled and dominated
by any one class interest: there is no "subject position", no
unique "standpoint" of the proletariat, or dalits, or women or
any chosen group that can liberate the whole of society. Public
reason must be conceived of as a never-ending critical debate
among contending interests where the content of the argument can
be judged through publicly testable experience, independently of
the class/caste/gender identity of the arguer. That is the
essence of critical rationality that the Enlightenment project
was all about, and not the sterile debates about
"foundationalism" or "positivism" or
"Eurocentricity". Marxist
suspicion of universalisable claims of reason and experience
which can transcend class interests have contributed to an
underestimation of the importance of procedural rationality in
social institutions; and conversely, the Marxist priority to
material forces has led it to underestimate the hold of the
dharmic view of the world on social life and how it stands in the
way of equal recognition of the humanity of each and every
person, regardless of ascribed status. I intend a more thorough
critique of the Marxist understanding of modern science and the
Enlightenment in a future publication. This little detour is only
meant to signal my dissatisfaction with Marxist alternatives to
the anti-Enlightenment discourse so common in the indigenist,
postmodernist movements.
If on the other hand, the Enlightenment is a struggle for
recognition (see the previous section), it is not the Indian
bourgeoisie, or the minuscule organised working classes but the
oppressed castes who have been the most principled and consistent
proponents of an Enlightenment-style critique of brahmanical
Hinduism, which provides both the conscious ideology of 'varna
dharma' and the everyday rules of behaviour among and between
castes.15 The largely upper caste Indian bourgeoisie have been
more than willing to embrace an updated and sanitised
neo-Hinduism as their world view, for it allows them to stake out
a claim for recognition from the west as members of a "Great
Civilisation" equal to, if not better than the civilisation of
their erstwhile colonisers. Thus, for all the formal gestures
towards modern ideas of scientific temper, secularism and
liberalism, political leaders and intellectuals have, by and
large, understood these terms in a neo-Hindu, dharmic idiom.16 In
theory, there is nothing wrong with an attempt to seek
indigenous-religious legitimation for modern ideas: indeed,
finding cultural homologues and historical antecedents may be
even be necessary for a new modernist cultural ethos to develop
and take root. But the problem is that Hinduism, both in its
principles and in its practices, directly contradicts the view of
reason and nature that is necessary and adequate for a liberal
polity and culture of the Enlightenment. Given the peculiar
nature of Hinduism, we in
our dominant religious traditions in search for an anchor for
modern ideas. We have no option but to create new traditions on
the foundation of minority, anti-brahmanical traditions that have
been ridiculed and silenced for centuries. It is not only
intellectually dishonest to read back secularism, liberalism,
scientific temper - and even the most revolutionary findings of
modern science - into the ancient "wisdom" of the Vedas, as
neo-Hindus from Vivekananda, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and even Nehru
to some extent have done, and as the likes of Murli Manohar Joshi
continue to do in our own times, or to argue for a specifically
Hindu view of science ("ethno-science"), reason and nature, as
the neo-Gandhian, "critical traditionalists" and postmodernists
continue to do. Such sanitisation of Hinduism or Hinduisation of
modernity is downright dangerous, for it absorbs and disarms all
potential challenges to Hinduism and the illiberal, hierarchical
world view sanctioned by it.
Unlike the political brahmanism of upper-caste nationalists, who
are satisfied with the reformist agenda of eradicating
untouchability but retaining the basic world view and
institutions of varna dharma, the oppressed castes have an
"inherent interest not simply rising in the system but in
overthrowing it" [Omvedt 1994: 31]. Given the long and oppressive
history of
"bourgeois revolution" in
the poor and insulted castes, for it is they who have experienced
both the objective deprivation and the subjective insults of
Hindu social institutions. These castes have natural allies among
those segments of Indian society who have no interest in
preserving the ancien regime and these include, above all, women
of all classes and castes who have been deprived of their full
agency and humanity by Hindu patriarchy. Because the "purity" of
upper caste women has been paid for by the enforced segregation
of the men and women of "impure" castes [Chakravarti 1993] women,
together with the non-brahman castes share an objective interest
in shaking the ideological pillars of Hinduism. Contrary to the
exhortations of ecofeminist and cultural feminists, reason and
science are allies of women in their joint struggle with the
dalits against patriarchy and caste.
Before I move on to the real purpose of this paper - which is to
affirm the relevance of the Enlightenment project or what used to
be called "scientific temper" in India - let me sum up my
discomfort with the contemporary left opposition to the
Enlightenment project. The left intelligentsia in
looked at the Enlightenment through a bifocal lens: one
"anti-materialist" which views the Enlightenment as perpetrator
of Eurocentrism and Orientalism, leading to a "colonialism of the
mind"; and the other "materialist" that sees it as the ideology
of capitalists and imperialists. Both these lenses are equally
distorting for they fail to see Enlightenment for what it was: a
movement to change the way of thinking of a civilisation.
Capitalism and colonialism were contingent features of the
Enlightenment: capitalism facilitated but did not determine the
content of Enlightenment, whereas colonialism, as Robert Darnton
has put it, "was driven by trade, disease, technology, rather
than by philosophy". What was necessary to the Enlightenment was
critical reason or scientific temper, captured by Kant's call of
"Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own reason."
This essential core of the Enlightenment is as relevant to
today, as it was to
to the critics, this essential core of Enlightenment is not a
foreign import at all. The intellectual resources and political
motives for critical reason, or "scientific temper," have been
with us since the Lokayatas, which surfaced again, after
centuries of suppression and ridicule by the Vedantists, in the
naturalism, scepticism and pragmatism of Phule, Periyar and
Ambedkar. These ideas took a bourgeois form in our time in the
Nehruvian idea of "scientific temper". The call for scientific
temper, even though couched in whiggish, Nehruvian terms and
often conducted through a contemptuous, top-down development
bureaucracy, was not contradictory to Ambedkar's call for reason
in the service of "annihilation of caste". Had it not been
written off so hastily under the influence of neo-Gandhians and
postmodernists, there was no reason why middle class,
left-inclined intellectuals and activists who swell the ranks of
social movements could not have created working alliances with
the inheritors of the Lokayatas among the rationalist
Ambedkarites and self-respecters. After all, a substantial number
of these intellectuals and activists were already participating
in people's science movements and were deeply engaged with
science and development policies. A misguided, uneducated and
pseudo-radical critique of critical reason and modern science,
borrowed from the fashionable nonsense that prevails in some
segments of the western academe, has prevented the full flowering
of a radical Enlightenment-style movement in
culturalist understanding of science and reason has diverted the
people's science movements into indigenist and economistic
critiques of imperialism, rather than a self-critique of dominant
and oppressivetraditions. The 'reactionary modernism' of Hindutva
is a direct beneficiary of the left's slide into irrationalism.
III
'Science Wars' and Indian Science Critics
I am a child of the Enlightenment. Those irreverent, spirited,
and courageous men and women of French salons, English
coffee-houses, learned academies and public lecture-halls are my
brothers and sisters in spirit. I came to share their heretical
project long before I had ever heard their names, or read their
works. My provincial, mid-middle class, Punjabi upbringing gave
me good reasons to fight against the patriarchal, upper caste
Hindu traditions that threatened to snuff out all that I held
precious. I had the motive for rebellion, but not the
intellectual tools - until I encountered modern biology and
physics which altered my view of the world entirely. It was the
empowering influence of science that inclined me towards people's
science movements and science journalism. The much trashed idea
of "scientific temper" was not an "elitist" and
"western" fad for
me, but a way of life and a philosophy for social action.
I have watched with great sorrow how modern science, scientific
temper and Enlightenment have been repeatedly trashed by ever
more "radical" intellectuals and activists, and how myth,
traditions and "lived experience" have been elevated as the
source of "liberatory" ethno-sciences. My sense of loss and over
these misguided critiques, however, began to turn into political
concern with the rise of the Hindu right which has been the chief
beneficiary of the erasure between myth and science.
This background should explain why I have taken on a difficult
and personally costly battle on two fronts. First against the
"theorists", located mostly but not solely in the west, who have
produced sociological and philosophical arguments against the
idea of a universal and progressive science of nature, and
second, against the ready embrace of these relativist theories of
science by Indian intellectuals. It so happened that around the
time when I got started with my project, some working scientists
and philosophers of science in the US, led by Paul Gross and
Norman Levitt, a biologist-mathematician pair, also began to
question the dominant paradigm of sociology of science, cultural
studies and feminist critiques of science.17 It was while the
"radical" critics of science were trying to argue their way out
of Gross, Levitt and associates' critique, that the now-famous
Sokal hoax appeared. (The Social Text issue in which Sokal's
contribution appeared was titled "Science Wars" and was meant to
be a response to Gross and Levitt.) My critique of social
constructivism converged with what Gross and Levitt, and Alan
Sokal were saying, even though I had not put the matter as glibly
as the first two, or as creatively (!) as Sokal.18
The science wars in the
Indian scientists and rationalists expressed their support for
Sokal. In 1997, Alan and myself (along with Stephen Jay Gould)
were invited by the Socialist Scholars Conference for a panel on
science wars. The papers we read at that conference were
published in EPW (April 18, 1998). These papers have provoked
much criticism - as well as a great deal of sympathy. First Gita
Chadha took up cudgels in defence of feminist epistemology and
relativism (EPW, April and August 1997, Jan. 1999), followed by
Sundar Sarukkai (March 27, 1999), who made a detailed critique of
my views on the nature of science, its cultural meaning and
relevance for a critique of religious thought in India.
I stand guilty - and proudly so - of most of the sins Sundar
Sarukkai accuses me of having committed in my defence of the
"outmoded" idea of scientific temper. Not only do I hold the
"absurd" view that "one ought to live science and not just do
it", I even think - heaven forbid! - that without allowing the
modern scientific world view to serve as a cultural force in
society, all the talk of "demolishing power structures" and
"empowering the powerless" will go nowhere. I am guilty, as
charged, of the 'facile belief' that the content of our beliefs
about the nature of "things" affects how we treat people, and
that the process of arriving at these beliefs about things
affects how we relate to authority in our private and public
lives. I am guilty as well of not conceding parity between
scientific explanations and local folk beliefs. I am guilty, in
other words, of believing that through the 300-odd years since
the scientific revolution, human beings have learnt how to learn
better, and there is no reason why we should not expose our
ancestral knowledge to what we have learned about the world
through modern scientific methods. And of course, I am guilty, as
charged, of not heeding the siren songs of postmodernism and
postcolonialism. But does this litany of sins mean that I am also
guilty of being "blind to the lived experience" of peasant women?
Or that I see science as a substitute for real material changes
in power structure? Or that I do not appreciate the real local
causes in
and the consequent turn to postmodernism? Or that I am attacking
Indian intellectuals from a position "more American than
Americans"? These accusations I firmly reject.
I decided to continue a conversation with Sarukkai in this paper
because he has raised truly fundamental questions regarding the
relationship between growth of knowledge of nature and the
expansion of human capabilities and liberties, or between the
domains of "things" and "people", respectively, in
Sarukkai's
words. The very essence of Enlightenment lies in the belief that
as we learn more about nature, and as we learn how to learn
better, we also learn how to live without any transcendent
authority, without a fear of the unknown and without fear of
those who think differently. To go back to our earlier concern, a
society where citizens don't kneel before spiritual authority is
possible only when we divest the natural world of final causes
and ultimate ends determined by a super-mundane power and
accessible only to some through the grace of god.19 How we
understand nature and how we treat each other are not two
different, and unrelated "domains," as Sarukkai treats them.
Rather, a naturalistic, secular understanding of the domain of
nature is a necessary precondition for a secular, democratic
society to emerge.
The relationship between the domains of nature and the domain of
society is absolutely basic - but also the most ignored - for
understanding the radical potential of science and scientific
temper in
I will use this opportunity to expound on it at various levels,
ranging from everyday practices to the philosophical tenets of
Hinduism.
IV
Restating Case for Scientific Temper
The first stop in our journey to find the rationale and resources
for Indian Enlightenment will be
Why
decades of living under theocratic rule, Iranian intellectuals
are raising the banner of the Enlightenment. I am referring to
the highly influential writings of Abdol Karim Soroush. Going by
the fear and loathing he brings out in the religious
establishment, and the adulation and enthusiasm he generates
among the Iranian youth, Soroush is clearly one of the most
influential public intellectuals of
Islamic establishment (until recently) and its most feared
critic, a man of faith and a follower of Popper's philosophy of
science, Soroush has been called the Martin Luther of Islam.
I'll be honest. It is partly a sense of personal vindication that
attracts me to Soroush: he is saying in a much more forceful way
precisely what I and other much derided "rationalist secularists"
have been saying all along. It is not out of place, therefore,
that I should enlist his help in making my own views clearer.
Soroush's advocacy for democracy in Islam rests on two pillars.
One, freedom as a precondition for true belief in Islam; and the
second, evolution of human knowledge, that it, science and its
relevance to the interpretation of sharia or the word of God.
Soroush has argued his second principle at great length in his
thesis 'The Evolution and Devolution of Religious Knowledge'
[Soroush 1998].
His basic argument is simple and proceeds in two steps: "Religion
is divine, but its interpretation is thoroughly human and
this-worldly" and two, "[the interpretation of religion] is the
natural product of the evolution of human understanding in
non-religious fields and contexts that forces religion to be
comprehended differently" (1998: 246, italics added). What
Soroush is insisting upon is rather elementary but revolutionary:
since the Scientific Revolution, scientific discoveries of the
natural world have altered the humanity's knowledge of itself and
its place in the world. This altered self-knowledge made possible
by science must influence how we interpret the word of God, or
the dogmas of religious thought, or any other sacralised
practice. As a believer, Soroush is not arguing for an end to the
religious impulse, but he is demanding that this impulse become
contemporaneous, that is, it becomes contingent upon the pursuit
of a systematic, methodical, rational and justifiable inquiry,
best represented by modern science. As long as our understanding
of the truth about nature is evolving, our interpretation of
religion cannot stand still because religious knowledge, too,
makes claims regarding the relationship between man, nature and
society.
On the surface, the religious right and the proponents of
ethno-sciences seem to make similar arguments. For example,
proponents of "Islamisation of knowledge", including Ziauddin
Sardar and his followers [Sardar 1988], have long insisted that
Islam is not a rigid dogma but allows sufficient interpretive
flexibility within the limits of the core idea of unity of god
(twahid). Likewise, BJP-RSS writings on science [Feurerstein et
al 1995] celebrate the interpretive flexibility and modernity of
Hinduism. As far as the demand that traditions do not contradict
the rationality of science goes, both the religious right and the
left anti-secularists re-define science to fit the native genius,
and in turn, use these ethno-sciences as the benchmark of
rationality of modern "western" science - this is what the talk
of "alternative universals" amounts to in practice. The Hindu
right takes the left-indigenist argument to its logical
conclusion and claims that norms of reason internal to High
Hinduism are not only capable of producing special sciences
indigenous to India (for example, Vedic mathematics, Vedic
physics, Vastu shastra, ayurveda, etc), but are in fact affirmed
by, and presage, the findings of modern sciences. In the Hindutva
scheme of things, to be scientific all that Indians - nay, the
whole world - has to do is to come home to Vedic Hinduism!
Soroush is arguing for the exact opposite of the above position:
not Islamisation of science, but a reinterpretation of Islam in
the light of science understood as a universally valid stock of
justified beliefs about the natural world. His argument is not
that science should replace religion, but only that the body of
knowledge amassed by human intellect in the secular realm should
be a guide for refining and developing man's understanding of the
sacred. What separates Soroush from the nativists of both the
Left and the Right is his understanding of the nature of science.
Very simply, Soroush is a Popperian who believes in the growth of
objective knowledge, while the indigenists of all stripes embrace
varying versions of social constructivist theories that deny the
very idea of knowledge that is free from cultural values
particular to a place, a people and a time. This is as good a
place as any to clarify that those like Soroush, Popper, and many
post-positivist philosophers of science who believe that
objective knowledge is possible are not saying that scientific
knowledge is free from cultural assumptions, gender biases,
metaphysics and such. All they are saying is that it is possible
- albeit not always easy - to identify and put these assumptions,
biases, etc, to a systematic test of reason and experiment. The
danger of social constructivism and the postmodern theories of
science is that they deny that we can ever break out of the
prison of our myths, biases and cultural assumptions: for them,
even the best attested knowledge at any time is "local knowledge"
of a particular place, time and people. This idea of all science
as local science or "ethno-science" opens the way to indigenist
defence of traditions as legitimate sciences. By now there are a
sufficient number of serious critiques20 of why social
constructivism, including its more politicised feminist
epistemology, is based upon faulty reasoning. It is not
surprising that Soroush too has written a critique of historicism
and postmodernism in science. Unfortunately his philosophical
work is not accessible to those who do not know Persian.
A word regarding the politics of knowledge: Sardar and other
jet-setting Islamists are feted by Islamic rulers of
Arabia
indigenists - Vandana Shiva, Madhu Kishwar, Claude Alvares,
Sundar Lal Bahuguna - are being warmly embraced by neo-Hindu
gurus and reactionary publications like Hinduism Today and The
Organiser, the official voice of RSS.21 Soroush, the Luther of
Islam, on the other hand, is facing death-threats and
state-sponsored censorship. Before we pat ourselves on the back
for Hinduism's tolerance for its rationalists and scientists, let
us not forget that Brahmanical Hinduism is replete with
strictures against rationalists, skeptics and materialists.
Besides, the persecution has already begun: what else does the
"retirement" of the left historians mean? If the rest of the left
in
Right finds it easy to coopt the left-populist
anti-globalisation, ecological and alternative science and
technology campaigns. We simply have no public intellectuals of
Soroush's stature and courage who have challenged the world view
of the religious right.
To bring it back to Sarukkai's claims of the incompatibility
between the domains of nature and society, science and religion,
between doing science and living science, Soroush is obviously
denying such incompatibility. (Interestingly, it is the clerical
critics of Soroush who, like Sarukkai, are claiming the
separation of spheres or faith and science, as two entirely
different domains, each with its own separate methodology.)
Soroush insists that empirical developments in science have an
impact on epistemology: that is, the more we learn, the better we
can understand how we learn. The new self-understanding of human
capabilities can lead to a new understanding of humanity's
knowledge of itself, its relationship with nature and human
beings' relationship with each other. Like the Enlightenment
philosophes of the 18th century, Soroush is trying to bring the
developments of natural sciences to bear upon how we live with
each other, how we reason in society, how we organise our social
institutions.
What Soroush is saying is precisely what the doomed idea of
"scientific temper" was all about, an idea that was put to a
premature end by the Gandhian anti-modernists who used the
anti-intellectual philosophies from the west as a "progressive"
fig-leaf. In my opinion, the left, including the Marxist left and
the secularist-rationalist elements of people's science movements
(with the honourable exceptions of K N Pannikar, K V Subbaram and
some others), made a momentous mistake in the early eighties by
not taking a principled stand in favour of scientific temper as
their operating philosophy. Even those who believed in it began
to make public obeisance to traditions, culture and such, or
turned their attention purely to economistic critique of
development, ignoring the cultural freedoms that are possible
with economic development. The populist urge to learn from the
wisdom of the unlettered and the oppressed, combined with the
fear of the barbed questions of the neo-Gandhians and
postmodernists challenging the "adhikar" of the supposedly
westernised scientists to commit "epistemic violence" against the
innocent traditions of the masses has done untold harm to the
cause of secularisation of Indian society. We have wasted
precious time, and now it is too late.
V
'Things' and 'People': Separate Domains?
We are faced with a paradoxical situation. Critics like Sarukkai
who see natural science as a social construct deny that knowledge
of nature has any relevance for social life. On the other hand,
we have Popperians like Soroush who allow for a relative and
progressive separation between science and society who argue
that science is relevant for a critique of society. The more
tight the relation between society and science, the less
relevance given to scientific understanding of nature for
understanding and/or changing society. The paradox, of course, is
only apparent. Those who tend to read the content and logic of
natural science as determined by social interests will also tend
to see any meaning attached to nature as ideological. It follows
that they should be more resistant to allowing such reading of
nature to influence social behaviour. If science is ideology,
then allowing scientific understanding to influence society
becomes an exercise not of demystification but of ideological
naturalisation of social power.
Social constructivists deny any analytical distinction between
knowledge of nature and structural and cultural morphology of a
society. Science, as Sarukkai claims, is simply one mode of
"adjudication" through which a society declares some "claims of
truth to become 'truth'". The knowledge of nature we acquire
through modern science has no special claim to superiority: other
cultures have their own socially grounded methods of adjudication
among contending claims of truth, On this reading, the "domain of
the social" gives meaning to the "domain of nature": nature in
itself has no meaning, it is "mute", and "silent" (even
though
Sarukkai does not refer to it, muteness of nature is a salient
idea of the strong programme of sociology of science: see the
recent writings of Barry Barnes,1992 and David Bloor, 1999 for
instance). Different societies give different meanings to nature:
some talk of inverse-square gravitational forces, while some talk
of djinns, but you cannot say that one is an advance over the
other. (Sarukkai takes great umbrage at my preference for
over the djinns and the goddesses of folk sciences. His argument
is: ".It is not possible to compare different epistemological
systems" and that "different systems of justification embody
different norms. And the fight between different systems of
knowledge [is].. about whose norms one should accept." These
"norms" of course are seen as above any rational evaluation, as
they are historical products embedded in the fabric of a
society.)
In social constructivist accounts of science, while the domain of
the social is supposed to explain and encompass the domain of
nature, the reverse is staunchly denied: that is, the domain of
nature is declared to have no relevance for the domain of the
social. While how we organise our social life is declared to be
of primary salience to the meaning we give to nature, the
different meanings we give to nature are deemed to have no
relevance for how we organise our social life. Indeed, any
attempt to read social significance in scientific understanding
of nature is put down as "reductionist", "scientistic", and
worse.
Sarukkai gives expression to this very widespread and deep fear
of scientific understanding of nature as somehow turning people
into things: "How does an epistemology related to 'things' get
transformed into an epistemology of social action, unless society
and its human constituents are seen as 'things'...Things do not
act" On Sarukkai's reading, then, replacing a view of nature in
which gods keep an account of karma, for instance, with a view of
nature that moves by immutable laws which can be understood by
all of us, regardless of our karma, makes no difference to how we
live and reason together in a society. This is indeed Sarukkai's
brief against me, for he repeatedly accuses me of "insufficient
understanding" of why the domains of things and people must be
kept separate, and why we do not become "caste conscious, or see
the evils of sati through canons of science".
Without any more philosophical hair-splitting, let us look around
us and ask if it is indeed true that how Hindu "sciences" - both
elite and folk - understand nature has no bearing on the socially
regressive, illiberal, anti-human customs we encounter in our
everyday life. Let us start with concrete commonplace practices
and then peel away the layers of the onion, so to speak, and get
to the cosmological views of the "great" traditions of Hinduism
that legitimise these practices.
VI
Causes of "Things" and Conquest of Fear
Let us examine the case of Charanshah who burned herself to death
along with her dead husband's body in November 1999 in Satpura
village in Bundelkhand, UP. I have no intention of adding to the
learned disputations over the "nobility" of this Bharatiya
tradition. I am not going to ask whether Charanshah's suicide was
or was not a sati, and if a sati, how "voluntary" it was. And
neither am I about to wallow in the most recent brand of Parisian
discourse theory in order to ponder if a subaltern like
Charanshah can speak, or whether or not she can act like a
"subject" and show "volition" when she throws herself into
the
flames. Indeed, there is nothing more pathetic than feminists
looking for signs of female agency and resistance in sati -
patriarchy at its most brutal and barbaric. When a woman
"chooses" to die because she cannot stomach the idea of a
lifetime of degradation in widowhood, I don't need any high
theory to hear what the subaltern is saying: I can hear, loud and
clear, the inhuman traditions that not only make such "choices"
possible, but wrap them in an aura of nobility and
self-sacrifice.
I am going to leave Charanshah aside and look at the mindset of
Charanshah's neighbours and fellow villagers in Satpura and
surrounding areas. The media reports are pretty clear about the
role of Satpura's residents, Charanshah's neighbours and
relatives. It looks as if Charanshah was left alone in tending
for her husband who was suffering from tuberculosis. The fear was
such that, according to India Today (November 29, 1999), " the
villagers refused to accompany her even to the cremation ground
because he had TB." The fact-finding team of the All-India
Democratic Women's Association reported that the men left the
burning pyre unattended while they hurried for a bath, because
"the dead man had been a TB patient and they [the mourners]
believed that once his body started burning, they might catch
infection from it", (The Hindu, December 27, 1999). This
premature ritual bath has indeed become the community's alibi:
they were away bathing and did not know that the widow was
heading for a fiery death. These same villagers who were so
reluctant to come to Charanshah's aid when she needed them, and
were so perfunctory in whatever assistance they did provide,
showed no such compunction when it came to worshipping her as
Sati Mata after she was burnt to death.
Why? Both the act of omission - the villagers' reluctance to help
their neighbour in need - and the act of commission - gathering
to celebrate their neighbour's horrible self-immolation - need
explanation, for both are equally contrary to what one would
normally expect from the good and honourable people that the
Satpura residents surely are. What led these good men and women
to go against the normal standards of morality and neighbourly
behaviour that must surely prevail in their community?
Why did the neighbours not help Charanshah? Why were they in a
hurry to cleanse themselves even while the funeral pyre was still
hot enough to burn not one but two human bodies (one alive) to
ashes? We can rule out caste prejudice. Satpura is a largely
dalit village, so it wasn't as if Charanshah was surrounded by
some purity-fixated upper castes. Dalits are in fact well known
for their culture of mutual help. Why would such people, who are
free from the irrationality about touchability and purity, show
such an uncustomary haste for a ritual bath?
They were obviously afraid of catching TB. They evidently thought
of TB as a highly contagious disease, which it is not. Such a
fear would be rational (because it is based upon a desire for
self-preservation) but false, because it is based upon inadequate
and factually wrong understanding of the TB bacillus. Obviously,
I have not personally asked the villagers what it was about TB
they feared. I am only offering a conjecture that an
unscientific, objectively false understanding of the disease
influenced Charanshah's community's actions in this matter. Such
a conjecture is not entirely far-fetched, for similar fears about
leprosy, AIDS and such are quite common in our society.22
Sarukkai is right: nature is mute; things don't act, people do.
The TB bacilli don't come with labels declaring that they are the
ones that cause TB or that they will/or won't kill on contact.
Indeed, TB bacilli don't reveal themselves to the human eye at
all. It is us humans, at least some humans in a particular time
and place, who made the bacilli visible under the microscope and
connected them to the disease. It is us humans who gave these
bacilli the meaning as carriers of a disease. And as we came to
understand the behaviour of these organisms, we learned better
how to avoid them, how to control them, how not to fear them or
fear those who have the disease. How we understand the mute
forces of nature influences our sense of ourselves as people and
our ethics as neighbours: Are we subjects of our lives who can
exert rational control over our circumstances? Or are we objects
on which our circumstances act and all we can do is cringe in
fear and hide away when our neighbours need us?
I know that our sophisticated theorists will find my concerns
simplistic, hyper-rational and not considerate enough of people's
own knowledge. I will nevertheless persist in my examination, for
it is these kinds of elementary misconceptions, fears and taboos
that make up the everyday reality of our society. The point I
want to make is simple: human societies are a part of nature, and
how we understand nature (both methodologically and
substantively) influences how we live with nature and with each
other. While nature does not determine social behaviour, the
domain of nature and society are not different "objects of
discourse" which cannot be brought in a conversation. Neither are
all the different meanings different societies attach to "mute"
nature equally good: some meanings, although rational in their
own framework of assumptions, are nevertheless objectively false,
for they ascribe wrong cause-and-effect relationships between
different entities of a phenomenon. Some of these objectively
false (even though subjectively meaningful, and even comforting)
meanings of nature take a terrible toll on social relations,
because they perpetuate fear and hold back full development of
human capabilities, which include human kindness, empathy and a
sense of commonality. Scientific reason is not an enemy of human
goodness as it is made out by the critics. If understood modestly
and fallibly, it plays a central role in practical reason in
society which includes how people evaluate their options, how
they match means to ends, how they plan their lives, in short,
how they make moral distinctions.
Indeed, this relationship between objectively correct knowledge
and human freedom was amply clear to the ancient Indian
materialists who scoffed at the brahmins' using the fear of death
to peddle their doctrines of the immortality of the spirit
(Chattopadhyay, 1976, 234). Like their Indian counterparts, the
ancient pagans of the classical antiquity of
equally aware of the freedom that comes from knowledge. Here is a
tribute by Virgil to Titus Lucretius, a poet of the Roman
Republic who, like our own Lokayatas, dared to challenge the
Platonic idealism of his time: "Happy the man who can know the
causes of things, and has trampled underfoot all fears,
inexorable fate and the clamour of greedy hell" (Quoted from Gay,
1966, p 99).
In their battle against Christian orthodoxy of their age, the
Enlightenment philosophes recovered precisely this ancient
connection between knowledge of causes and conquest of fear,
which as Gay rightly points out, is the "essence of the critical
mentality at work". Yes, the Enlightenment philosophes turned to
their history and their traditions in search of arguments against
Christianity. But unlike our romantics, they turned to history to
recover the lost voices of the skeptics and the materialists -
Lucretius, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius - whom they could use as a
historical and cultural justification of modern science and
humanism. As Peter Gay remarks: "[The Enlightenment thinkers]
used their classical learning to free themselves from their
Christian heritage, and then, having done with the ancients,
turned their face toward a modern world view" (p 8).
The contrast with our own anti-Enlightenment "prophets facing
backwards"23 could not be more stark. Captivated as they are by
the siren songs of postmodernity, they have lost confidence in
the modern world view. Consequently, when they look back, they
retrieve not our Lokayatas, not our ancient sceptics and
materialists who insisted, at the cost of invoking the wrath of
the brahmanical law-givers, upon putting the Vedic idealism to
the test of experience and logic. No. Our disillusioned
anti-modernists look back into Indian traditions and come back
with precisely those "wholistic" brahmanical traditions that have
disallowed a separation of the spiritual from the material, and
prevented the growth of critical reason in Indian society. All
the talk of incommensurability of rationality of east and west
will disappear, like mist in the sun, if we, like the
Enlightenment philosophes, were to recover the suppressed
traditions of science and reason that did prevail, despite great
odds, among the labouring castes in
The point of this historical detour into antiquity was simply to
remind Indian critics of science of the fundamental connections
between knowledge and freedom. Given the deeply entrenched
ignorance and unfreedoms that are a part of our cultural
heritage, we in
liberatory potential of knowledge. This connection has been lost
in the unilateral collapse of knowledge into power and ideology
of the west. We in
power that science has supposedly exerted in the service of
colonialism24 and ignored the deadly power that superstitions and
obscurantist ideas have continued to exert on the mental universe
of ordinary people. If Indian intellectuals had saved even a
fraction of the outrage they express against the "instrumental
reason" of modern science and technology, for the palpably real,
life-denying, inhuman instrumentalism of our hallowed traditions,
we could have made a real and positive difference to the cultural
temper of our society, without which no real change is possible.
VII
Dharma as Cosmopolis
But this is hardly the end of the story of Charanshah. We have
only examined the act of omission, based upon irrational fear, on
the part of her community. That was the easy part. I will now
look at how a certain view of the natural order, derived from the
core values of Hindu dharma, goes into the making of the culture
of sati. I will argue that while the postmodern critics of
science and modernity are anxious to insulate the domain of the
social from the domain of nature, all religious ideologies base
their legitimacy on a putative harmony between their
social-ethical prescriptions and the workings of the natural
order. By denying that (a) objective scientific knowledge of
nature is possible, and (b) that it has any relevance for social
ethics, the critics of science disarm any challenge to the
religious view of the world. The irony is that these same critics
of sciencecontinue to count themselves as secularist opponents of
Hindutva. I do not doubt their sincerity. But can they oppose the
politics of Hindutva consistently and effectively while they also
oppose the best available means of deconstructing the world view
from which Hindutva gains its intellectual coherence and popular
appeal? (Sadly, the tendency to shy away from a critical scrutiny
of the actual content of popular Hindu religiosity is common even
among the critics of postmodernists who prefer a more
"materialist" explanation of the rise of Hindutva.25 I, on the
other hand, believe with Nikki Keddie that new religio-political
movements "tend to occur only where in recent decades religions
with strongly supernatural and theistic content are believed in,
or strongly identified with, by a large proportion of the
population" and where this religiosity is identified with the
nation (Keddie, 1998, p 702, emphasis in the original).26 A
critical engagement with folk religiosity is therefore
important.)
Let me go back to the issue at hand: namely, the relationship
between the domains of "things" and "people", or the
relationship
between the science of nature and society. Let us stay with
Charanshah a bit longer. As I did in the last section, I will
stay with her relatives and neighbours who saw her death as an
event of religious significance. Even granting that the reports
of large-scale glorification may have been exaggerated, the fact
that the villagers believed that something of great religious
significance had happened in Satpura cannot be denied. As long as
there are people who continue to treat sati as an act of piety,
women will continue to burn.
Whatever else may be in dispute regarding the practice of sati,
two facts are beyond doubt. One, that a widow is treated in high
Hindu communities as inauspicious; and two, a widow who commits
sati is not only not inauspicious but is actually worshipped like
a goddess in these same communities. A widow's self-sacrifice is
supposed to wash off the inauspiciousness of widowhood.27
But what makes a widow inauspicious? And what makes a sati a
goddess? The answer to both these questions is to be found in the
two central dogmas of Hinduism, namely, karma and
samsara. Hindu
scriptures may or may not explicitly condone widow immolation,
but the cosmology which turns a natural event (death) into a
moral infraction against women's dharma is
enshrined as the very
foundation of Hinduism. As
neo-Hinduism and "Hindu human rights", freely admits, to
understand the social significance of sati, one has to understand
what is specifically Hindu about it: stripped of what is uniquely
Hindu, sati collapses into an ordinary suicide or homicide.
Widowhood, according to Sharma, is seen by Hindus as a "karmic
crime" of "causing [the] husband's death" and "entails
spiritual
misfortune and a temporary absence of dharma" (p 76). Sati is
only the most extreme form of yogic austerities (which Sharma
calls, appropriately, "pati-yoga" ) that all widows were enjoined
to go through in order to "rectify" their lapse from stri-dharma:
"a sati was viewed...as the very embodiment of the goddess for
she expiated immediately her bad karma that
caused the husband's
death. [While] the widow took time to rectify her faults and
perfect her yogic discipline to join her husband. The goal
(upeya) was the same for both [the widow and the sati] but the
means (upaya) differed" [Sharma 81, emphasis in the original].
Thus sati is only the extreme form of pati-yoga which is supposed
to bring 'punya' to the dead husband, the families and to those
who come for darshan. This karmic-yogic frame explains why a
burned-to-death widow is supposed to have miracle-working
abilities: yoga, after all, is supposed to develop, among other
things, special supernatural powers among the practitioners.28
This explanation of wifehood, widowhood and sati is not a purely
textual explanation, but is accepted by feminist scholars as the
operational ideology of sati [Chakravarti 1998 and Narasimhan
1990]. Please note that karma functions here
and in the
brahmanical Hinduism as a force of nature that transfers actions
from the moral realm to the physical realm. The domains of nature
and morality are not separate but both obey the same laws of
dharma. The karma men and women accumulate by
living in obedience
with the duties of their dharma translate into
their good and bad
experienes in their physical lives in here and now. A closer
fusion of the domain of nature and moral order would be harder to
imagine.
Now, there is enormous amount of sociological, ethnographic,
journalistic and everyday, existential data that confirms that
the karmic interpretation of widowhood/sati and indeed many other
misfortunes ranging from one's caste, illness, childlessness,
failure, etc, are commonplace in contemporary
a general rule, the "lower" castes are more immune to, although
by no means not entirely free from, karmic interpretations for
their "station", there is no denying that the karma doctrine is
available, both to the "great" (Sanskritic) and the
"little"
(popular) traditions of Hinduism, as a "frame of reference that
is potentially available in any situation that calls for the
interpretation of destiny." [Babb 1983: 171]. Contrary to those
who read only "resistance" in the subaltern versions of Hinduism,
important ethnographic studies [Delige 1993, Fuller 1992] show
that even when the subaltern seem to create an alternative and a
counter-culture for themselves, the terms of this oppositional
identity are set by the norms of the 'great' tradition.
Take for instance, how a middle-aged Tamil woman, Viramma (whose
wonderful first-person account of her life has recently appeared
in print), explains her status as a pariah. Her original story
does not invoke the brahmanical cosmology of Purusha sacrifice
and insists upon an original equality of all. Yet, she explains
the "lowliness" and "uncleanness" of her caste but as a
result
from a fall from an earlier situation of equality as a result of
a crime of theft by an ancestor of their caste [Viramma 1997, p
165-167] and considers it her dharma to be
"humble, obedient,
discreet and affectionate" (p 148). The point is that Viramma
ends up reconstructing the brahmanical idea of impurity and
inequality as just deserts for one's own community's actions.
Even when she does not use the language of karma or
Purusha, she
accepts - and tries to explain - the "fact" of uncleanness and
unworthiness of her caste. The same dynamic becomes apparent in
Kancha Ilaiah's Why I am Not a Hindu. Despite the strengths of
dalit-bahujan culture that Ilaiah describes so powerfully, it
cannot be denied that the ideology of
shapes dalit identities: the "mutilation" it inflicts on dalit
self-respect ends up as a negative force against which
dalit-bahujan have to react, defend and define themselves. One
cannot but agree with Christopher Fuller (1992, 256) that the
"religion of the oppressed...does not constitute subversive
opposition to the social and religious system as a whole. Even
when they are resisting elitist pressures to conform, lower
social groups consistently tend to reconstruct their own
socio-religious inferiority.Inequality is deeply entrenched in
Hinduism and Indian society, at both ideological and
institutional levels..."
This brief foray into karma doctrine as it plays
out in gender
and caste relations was meant to establish the continued
importance of cultural codes derived from brahmanical ideology in
India's social life, at all strata. This leads me to the issue at
hand, namely, the close nexus between the domain of the social
and the domain of the natural in Hindu dharma.
I submit to you that Hindu dharma, of which karma is
a
fundamental axiom, maintains its spell on
because it is cosmopolis par excellence. It is a cosmopolis in
which two of the most inegalitarian ideas of nature - namely,
nature as a hierarchical chain of being and nature as an organism
- have combined to produce a highly inegalitarian social
philosophy. A cosmopolis is exactly what it says: it is a cosmos
+ a polis, a formula that holds that " there is a natural harmony
between the order of all the heavens (that is, the cosmos) and
the order of human society (that is, the polis) and...[that]
human affairs are influenced by, and proceed in step with
heavenly affairs..." (Toulmin, 1990: 67).
Although Hinduism is unique in turning the fusion of the natural
and the social into a sacred tenet, thinking in terms of a
cosmopolis is not unique to Hinduism at all. All premodern
cultures see the society as an organic whole in which natural
events have a moral import and, conversely, moral behaviour has
an effect on the course of nature.29 The much-vaunted "wholism"
of non-western traditions has nothing non-western about them:
they are simply non-modern ways of knowing, which abounded in the
west until they were discredited by the combined assault of
capitalism, the reformation, the scientific revolution and the
Enlightenment.Wholism is simply another name for not separating
out what actually belongs to the cosmos, and what belongs to our
polis, and its traditions and myths.
Cosmopolitic thinking serves two important social functions,
traces of which continue in modern societies as well. One, by
anchoring morality in natural order, it provides human beings
with an assurance of permanence and dependability behind the flux
of events. In societies where change and innovation are seen as a
threat, the belief that there is a permanent order which
underwrites people's lives and actions is obviously comforting
[Lovin and Reynolds 1985: 8]. Secondly, the view of society as a
unified whole with the universe, society as an ordered hierarchy
where everyone has his proper place, each place being associated
with different rights and duties, obviously serves a legitimating
function. What could be more potent as an ideology than making
social arrangements as natural as self-evident, inescapable and
necessary as the order in nature itself?
Cosmogony is not unique to Hinduism. But what is unique, however,
to Sanskritic Hinduism is the view of the natural order and how
it is mapped on to the social order. Lacking the concept of a
law-giver god whose laws of nature make themselves evident in the
daily workings of nature which human beings can observe and
understand, Hinduism has depended on a monist idealism of the
doctrine of Absolute spirit (Brahma) at a Sanskritic level, and
on correct ritual and duty, at a folk level, as the mediating
factor between the cosmos and the polis. In Hinduism, it is not
god's natural law that assures a continuity between cosmos and
the polis, but dharma. This dharma, I need not remind the readers
of EPW, does not have an identical content for all: each human
group has its own sva-dharma, the fulfillment of which maintains
the socio-cosmic order.30
Why the spell of dharma is so disastrous for
the cause of freedom
and reason in our society is that it naturalises hierarchy and
hierarchically assigned duties of different varnas and genders.
It makes hierarchy an obligation imposed by the order of nature.
Just as nature has its 'rta', that is, the universal harmony in
which all things in the world have a proper place and function,
so do social beings have corresponding places and functions. It
does not require much sophisticated discourse analysis to see how
dharma anchors social ethics in the alleged
order of nature
itself. Hindu texts, from learned commentaries of the late
president of
tracts of the Hindutva brigade, openly acknowledge the
inseparability of social ethics and morality from the order of
nature. Here is Radhakrishnan (1927, p 59): "dharma
is virtue in
conformity with the nature of things; moral evil is disharmony
with the truth which encompasses and controls the world "
(emphasis added). Here is Gandhi, who famously declared the 1934
phenomena produce results both physical and spiritual. The
converse is equally true." Here is Deendayal Upadhyay, the author
of Integral Humanism that forms the official ideology of the BJP:
"when nature is channelled according to the principles of dharma,
we have culture and civilisation". According to K S Sudarshan
(1998), the RSS boss: "All those institutions...and conventions
that allow a disturbance free [i e, harmonious] and untrammeled
discourse between an individual, the society, nature and the
supreme being, come under the term dharma."
What is important to understand about the Hindu cosmopolis is
that the two orders - the natural and the social - do not just
mirror each other, but are actually seen as constituting and
sustaining each other's functioning. Fulfillment of functions
appropriate to the station in life is supposed to be responsible
for the maintenance of rta (order) in nature, and conversely,
improper actions lead to the fall of the universe into unreality,
chaos and non-being. Dharmic actions carry ontological weight.
Thus, while we moderns and postmoderns may want to deny - for
perfectly justifiable reasons, which I as a liberal humanist
share - any necessary connection between the working of nature
(the realm of necessity) and the social order (the realm of human
freedom and choice), the fact is that the dominant ideology of
Hinduism is premised upon a unity of nature and society. In the
next section, I will elaborate upon why the
postmodern-indigenists' embrace of the unity of nature and
society as a source of "emancipatory" science is fundamentally
misguided and collusive with the Hindu right. But before I do
that, I want to consider the frequently voiced objection that
Hindu shastras and priests may want to harp upon dharma
on the
lines described here, but "the people" have somehow escaped the
spell of dharma. The "people," it is said, have their own hardy
empiricism which allows them to break free from brahmanical
notions of dharma; or that "the people" actually use the dharmic
notion of unity of the social and the natural to come up with
"emancipatory" sciences; or that the dharmic justifications for
such crimes against humanity as sati and caste were only given
the status of ruling ideology by the colonialists in the first
place. These claims come from the left, in the fashionable
denunciation of "orientalism" or "essentialism" of any
critical
examination of the social consequences of Hindu dharma. With
"enemies" like these, the Hindu right does not need friends!
Is dharma then only of philosophical interest?
And is its effect
on the people only benign? Let us see...
a)
karma and
out the resurgence of dharma as the official
ideology of the
Sangh parivar.
Here is Gandhi on varna-dharma: "
but an immutable law of nature...The law of
discovery of Hindu seers...and had universal application. The
world may ignore it toady but it will have to accept it in the
time to come" (Gandhi 1962: 13). I have no use for the supposed
"egalitarianism" of Gandhi and his neo-Hindu, neo-Vedantist
fellow-travellers who have simply declared all varnas to be
equal, by fiat, against all the weight of textual and historical
evidence for a clear hierarchy of values found in the Vedas,
Vedanta and other holy texts of high Hinduism.31
And here is one of true inheritors of Gandhi's conservative
revolution, Deendayal Upadhay, the inspiration behind the Sangh
parivar,on why varna dharma is preferable to
class struggle: "In
our concept of four castes, they are thought of as analogous to
the limbs of Virat purusha... can there] arise any conflict
between the head, the stomach and the legs of the same Purusha?
There is a complete identity of interest, identity of
belonging..." If this is not a religious justification for
denying even the possibility of individual autonomy and plurality
of interests, then I don't know what ideology is.
But, one can argue, even the BJP dare not invoke dharma
nowadays
to justify caste divisions. Haven't realpolitik interests of
political parties and the rising assertiveness of dalits made
dharmic justifications of caste irrelevant? The answer lies not
in words but in actions. Jan Breman (1999) describes the brutal
beating to death of a halpati in 1994 and suggests that the
impunity with which the dominant castes carried out their crime
comes from the injunctions of Manu they carry in their heads as
part of their common sense. The outrage the upper castes feel at
their caste inferiors usurping their power gets its emotional
charge from the righteousness of the social order in their minds.
The victims of
though they inadvertently end up internalising some aspects of it
(as described earlier). Cosmic/dharmic understanding of
always served as an upper class, upper caste justification for
their good karma that earned them a spot among
the twice-born.
And that aspect of dharmic justification of caste is in no danger
of disappearing. Far from it! The "social harmony" of varna
dharma is now a part of the official platform
of the BJP, even as
it reluctantly gives in to the demands for affirmative action
[BJP Election Manifesto 1998, see also, Jafferlot 1998]. One can
hear the echoes of Gandhi and Golwalker's pronouncements on
dharma as a universal law of nature in the
more recent advocates
of "Hindu science" who present laws of dharma
as a product of
scientific thinking of our "sages" and in keeping with the most
cutting-edge developments of modern ecology and quantum physics
[Sudarshan 1998]. Moreover, as Lise McKean has shown in her fine
work, as the political and economic salience of Hinduism grows,
the much-vaunted values of harmony and cooperation are being sold
as a new business ethic to the upwardly mobile classes while at
the same time denigrating individual rights as a pathology of the
west.
b) Patriarchy: I have already touched upon the role of dharma
that can transform a death in the family to a case of "karmic
crime" of the wife, who must atone for it for the rest of her
life. But dharmic notion of correspondence between cosmos and the
polis also serves a more widespread and seemingly innocuous -
even feminine - function of equating women with nature, earth and
the organic. While western xenophiles seeking comforting myths in
the spiritual east may find the interconnections between fallow
fields and menstruating women most romantic, the fact remains
that in actual life, linking of the two serves as a powerful
justification for treating women as polluted beings, tied to
their menstruating wombs and burdened with obligations to behave
as the fecund mother earth. I have dealt exhaustively with the
dangerous romance of ecofeminism elsewhere and will not add to it
here.
c) Miracles, or the instrumental rationality of traditional
knowledge: The ontological content of dharma works
both ways: it
makes human arrangements appear as ordained by nature, and gives
the illusion that human interventions can alter the course of
nature through supernatural means. Because Hinduism holds
divinity to be immanent in nature, the impulse to control nature
takes the form not of a study of natural law laid out by a
law-giver god, as in Judeo-Christian traditions - much less the
fully materialist world view of modern science - but in
propitiating local gods through ritual and prayer.
I find it amazing that Indian intellectuals who are so adept at
spotting real and imagined depredations of "instrumental reason"
of modern science and technology in all its disguises, should be
so untroubled by the deadly toll the instrumental reason of
traditions takes. Religious rituals are not innocent expression
of simple faith of simple people that are off-limits to critical
evaluation by out-of-touch hyper-rational elite. More often than
not, religious rituals, yagnas, prayers - even
to sacred trees or
earth or rivers, much beloved of our ecofeminists - have a
component that addresses the very human need to understand and
control the forces of nature. Of course, understanding and
control of nature is not the sole or the "real" purpose of
religion, but it definitely is one component - and an important
component at that. (Indeed, as Clifford Geertz's classic
exposition of Religion as a Cultural System suggests, religion
gains its hold on the imagination by "clothing [itself] in an
aura of facticity.")
In the current left discourse, even among those who have no love
lost for the traditional social order, there is a near perfect
consensus that any rational critique of popular religious
practices is not to be allowed. Such "unadulterated secularism",
as Bharucha (1998: 39) calls it, amounts to being "prejudiced"
against tradition, seeing it as "fundamentally retrogressive...
backward repository of feudal and primitive values". In
Bharucha's reading, the progressive writers in an era past, who
dared to object to government sponsorship of a yagna
belonged to
this brand of scientific rationalism (p 34). Critics like Nandy,
Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakravarty have weighed in with their
critique of critical reason as a "derivative discourse" of
colonial masters. One wonders what these anti-secular
intellectuals will have to say when yagnas and
prayers become
part of official educational and cultural policy, as they are
showing all signs of becoming? Yes, they can still object to the
mixing of religion and politics on "contingent" or
"strategic"
grounds - that has always been the last resort of
"anti-essentialist" critics of reason. But when political action
is divorced from philosophical conviction it soon degenerates
into crass opportunism.
Let me take a couple of contemporary examples and ask how our
critics of secular-rationalists would respond. I will go back to
Viramma, whose honest, down-to-earth account of her trials,
tribulations and triumphs I find most touching. She is a woman
who can combine faith in gods with a great deal of common sense.
The gods she worships are non-Sanskritic gods and goddesses of
her paraiayar caste, although she surreptitiously listens in -
from a respectful distance - to the religious ceremonies of the
upper castes. Her relationship with her own gods is most
intimate: she sings to them, offers animal sacrifices to them and
goes to pilgrimages, the expense for which she can barely afford.
But it is amply clear that her faith is not devoid of
instrumental reason: her piety is also a means to an end of
warding off evil spirits and illnesses. On one occasion that
captures the complex dynamic of faith, caste ideology and
instrumental reason, Viramma ascribes the temporary loss of her
milk (she is nursing her baby) to her "crime" of having listened
in to the prayers to upper caste, superior gods in her master's
house. Her "uncleanness", she believes, has brought upon her the
wrath of the goddess. I cannot find a more telling example of the
ideological work of religious faith. No doubt that Viramma's
religiosity is very earthy, practical and egalitarian - pretty
much as described by Ilaiah. But Viramma accepts her gods as
inferior to the gods of the clean castes. Moreover - and here I
have a problem with Ilaiah's celebratory view of dalit
religiosity - her faith in the protective powers of gods did
nothing to save nine of her 12 children from dying of perfectly
curable infectious diseases. If dalits are to serve as the agents
of reason and Enlightenment in Indian society, they will have to
accept that reason will expel their own gods, as well as the gods
of the twice-borns, from social life.
Any misconception that such instrumental uses of religious faith
is only limited to poor people and will go away as more modern
alternatives become available, ought to disappear on reading Lise
McKean's account of well-heeled, urban middle-to-upper class
devotees of modern gurus who run modern, profit-making,
technologically sophisticated ashrams (not unlike the rich
fundamentalist outfits in the US). (Most of these gurus are
ardent supporters of VHP and the rest of the Sangh parivar.) It
is clear that faith in the miracle-working powers of gurus feeds
upon the dharmic notions of karma, yoga and moksha: the gurus,
through their asceticism, have accumulated sufficient power that
they can alter the course of nature which - recall from our
earlier discussion of cosmopolis - follows the same course as
dutiful, righteous action.
The point I am trying to make is this: the religiosity of people
is not just a matter of simple faith - the supposed antithesis of
the derided "instrumental reason" of modern science and
technology. And neither is this religiosity simply an ideological
cover for 'real' material needs. This religiosity has roots in
the actual doctrines and world view of Hindu dharma which
sanction an irrational route to solving the problems of here and
now.
I agree that religious sentiments cannot be reduced without a
residue only to stand-ins for cognition and control. But there is
no need to over-correct the reductionism of rationalists and
swing to the other extreme and ignore the cognitive-instrumental
needs religious beliefs do actually serve. In fact, one must take
Geertz's understanding of religion seriously and consider the
possibility that religious beliefs masquerade as facts of nature
in order to gain acceptability. If 'man' does not live by reason
alone, he does not live by faith alone either: faith can use
reason as its vehicle to lodge itself in human consciousness. In
fact, in order to protect true faith - which does not need
subterfuge of reason - it is important to tease out the two
components of religious beliefs. That is the reason that unlike
our basically secular and non-believing defenders of 'the
people's' faith and traditions, those internal critics of
religion who are men and women of faith (such as Soroush in Iran,
and any number of modernist priests and theologians in the west),
have not hesitated in exposing inherited religious beliefs to
critical reason: they did that more out of a desire to put faith
on a secure ground than to spread rationalist scepticism all
around. In
grant, the impulse to reform religion from within has been very
weak and has invariably fallen prey to the
brahmanical-nationalist interest in absorbing heterodoxies into
the supposedly universal core of Hinduism. Out of necessity, the
task of religious reform has fallen to lay intellectuals. Apart
from a small but principled minority, Indian intellectuals have
not taken the on a critique of religious reason with the
seriousness it deserves.
VIII
Breaking the Cosmopolis: Historical Role of Reason
Life in a cosmopolis is stifling: man-made laws are backed by the
alleged force of nature, and the keepers of these laws - the
god-men, the gurus and the priests - correspondingly acquire an
aura of unquestioned authority in both the sacred and the secular
realms. Justifiably, we m oderns (and postmoderns) are vehemently
opposed to any natural - or supernatural - justifications for
man-made laws. (This explains Sarukkai's mocking condescension
towards my argument that the cultural universe we live in
today stands to be liberated if what we know about nature through
science is allowed to challenge what our dharmic sources tell us
about the world. To a postmodernist like Sarukkai, it is simply
unimaginable and morally abhorrent that any aspect of nature can
or should illuminate social ethic.) It is this fundamentally
sound distaste for cosmopolis - which I as a liberal humanist
share - that underlies the postmodern rebellion against modern
science. The critics of science fear that modern science's claim
to have discovered objective truths of nature will legitimise
attempts to restore cosmopolis in a modern disguise, that is, to
justify the capitalist social order as ordained by nature.
What I find objectionable about post modernist-indigenist attacks
on science is not their distaste for cosmopolis, but their
misguided and distorted understanding of modern science as an
ideology of cosmopolis. What I object to, in other words, is the
completely ahistorical and factually incorrect understanding of
modern science as a discourse that justifies the interest of the
powerful by making their power look natural. While science as an
instrument has sometimes served the interest of power, science as
a world view has been the solvent of the cosmopolis. Indeed, the
historical record clearly shows, despite all the blind-alleys of
scientific racism, that breaking down the premodern cosmopolis
has been the crowning achievement of modern science.
Consequently, I will argue, it is simply inconsistent,
philosophically, on the part of postmodernist-indigenists to
simultaneously want to end any naturalistic justifications for
social arrangements and to deny the possibility of rational
progress in modern science. These critics are trying to get the
world that the Enlightenment made - that is, a world where the
cosmos and the polis are not expected to march in lock step -
without the protracted and personally painful struggle against
one's own inheritance that the Enlightenment calls for. The post
colonial intellectuals' embrace of post- modernist concerns and
postmodernist frames of thought, without first becoming modern,
is a replay in the realm of culture of the communist left's hurry
to get to the ultimate bliss of a classless society without a
bourgeois revolution.32 Both, I contend, are routes to the same
unintended end of reactionary modernism, with postmodernism being
the ideology of reactionary modernism of the right. Reactionary
modernism, either of the right or of the left, can promise highly
sophisticated modern technology, without the benefit of political
liberalism in the public sphere.
the silos and 'Vedic science' in the schools - is showing all the
signs of a dangerous reconciliation between forces of modernity
and atavistic social philosophies. Such a reconciliation has been
tried once before - in Nazi Germany [Herf 1984].
I submit that two of the most fundamental concessions to
Hindutva's reactionary modernism that the
postmodernist-indigenist critics of modern science have made are:
(a) That "we" the oppressed/colonised/east think
"wholistically",
while "they" the oppressors/colonisers/west think
"reductionistically", and (b) that thinking holistically will
lead to "emancipatory" science. This supposed wholist,
non-dualistic, non-reductionist standpoint epistemology" of the
oppressed, is precisely the philosophy of "integral humanism" so
dear to Hindutva-wadis. The much vaunted "non-dualism" of Vedanta
that is the foundation of all neo-Hindu revivalists from
Vivekanand onward, is nothing but the religious right's version
of the postmodernist left's agitation on behalf of the supposedly
incommensurate differences in thecriteria of validity of
experience, reason and truth between the west/colonisers/men and
the east/the colonised women.
The fact is that both 'wholistic'33 and 'reductionist'34
thinkings are historical modes of thought: the pre-capitalist
west was no less "wholist" than the east. What is more,
transition from wholist to "reductionist" thinking is not the
disaster that it is made out to be. "Reductionism" is nothing but
a cognitive - and concomitantly, a political - ethic that demands
of its practitioners to make all honest effort to separate the
influence of the polis when they study the cosmos and vice versa.
It is an ethic that demands that we take apart the package deal
between nature and society that our priests, our gurus, our
traditions offer us, and analyse the two in terms that we,
ordinary mortals, can ascertain through our own reason and
senses. Reductionism is an ethic based upon Kant's insistence to
seek guarantee of our social morality not in nature, or in God,
or in any external source of authority - and that includes the
party, the proletariat, women, 'people of colour' or any group
that can claim an 'epistemological privilege' based upon either
their power or their lack of it - but in the "categorical
apparatus" of our own minds and reason, disciplined by a
collective, and free exercise of reason by all in public life.
(Lest this account of the historical role of reason be put aside
as 'positivist', it is significant that such staunch
social-democratic critics of positivism as Jurgen Habermas,
Hilary Putnam, Richard Bernstein, Seyla Benhabib subscribe to
this communicative ethic over a special epistemic privilege of
the oppressed.)35
It is this much ridiculed 'reductionism', or 'dualism' between
object (nature) and subject (the culturally shaped mind) that,
slowly but surely, drove the gods out of the cosmos (though not
necessarily out of the life in the polis - gods could stay in the
polis as objects of personal faith, but not as final causes of
natural events). It is the scientific refusal to recognise any
source of epistemic privilege that translates, in society, into a
refusal to bow to anyone. Nothing and no one is sacred but a
procedure in which potentially any one, with due education and
training can participate. No doubt this ethic is nowhere fully
and perfectly realised - and perhaps should never, even in
principle, be fully realised, for men and women do not live by
procedural reason alone. Moreover, those seeking a socialist
society find the new culture of reason complicit in the bourgeois
order, for it upholds formal and procedural equality of
individuals without challenging the class privileges of the
bourgeois. For all the admitted limitations, both inherent and
contingent, reason still remains a force for permanent revolution
in a society. Those of us who aspire for a liberal, democratic
socialism in which no one can rule on the behalf of all, in which
there is no fount of liberatory consciousness, cannot afford to
deny the very possibility of critical reason, as postmodernists
and social constructivists do.
I know that postmodernists and their sympathisers will assert
most strenuously that they are not denying reason, but only
challenging its claims to universalism and cognitive superiority
over other ways of knowing. By now, all the standard postmodern
arguments have been repeated ad nauseum. Sarukkai repeats the
tired old cliches: scientific justification is only one variant
of how "claims of truth become truth" [Sarukkai 779]; other
cultures use their own norms for justifying their claims of truth
(783); modern science establishes its western norms of
justification by "forced exclusion" of other rationalities (p
781), which are presumably as capable of "adjudication" of truth
claims, etc. In my previous writings, I have challenged the
philosophical grounds for theories of "alternative
epistemologies", which Sarukkai espouses. Rather than repeat
myself, I want to extend a challenge to Sarukkai. Will he please
tell us, how he will respond to the votaries of Hindu science who
claim - in almost the exact tone and vocabulary that Sarukkai
uses to decry the exclusiveness of modern science - that karma is
an exact science, at par with the discovery of laws of gravity by
Newton, for it can predict and explain events in human and
natural life (see Sundarshan, for example, although the claim is
present in such sophisticated neo-Hindus as Radhakrishnan as
well)? Here is one cultural tradition "adjudicating" and
proclaiming the truth of culturally sanctioned experiences of
nature and society. Would Sarukkai grant that this adjudication
is at par with science? If not, why not?
Those of us who are concerned with the rise of state-backed
revivalism have no choice but to rethink the deference to
traditions we ourselves have shown. This rethinking need not take
us back to positivism - for cultural discourse and traditions do
indeed guide our empirical experiences and our reasons. But we
need to recover a respect for critical reason that remains
committed to the belief that we can become aware of our
prejudices and learn to evaluate them rationally through free,
open and critical debates.
In one of his last important books, Postmodernism, Reason and
Religion, Ernest Gellner described three major contestants in the
global intellectual conflict at the close of the millennium:
religious fundamentalism, relativism/postmodernism and
Enlightenment rationalism, or what Gellner jokingly calls
"rationalist fundamentalism".
Like Gellner, I am a proud and unrepentant adherent of
Enlightenment rationalism. This essay was meant as a call for
reviving the prematurely aborted project of Enlightenment in
has only aided the rise of reactionary modernism of Hindutva.
Even though religious right has no use for the deeply
anti-essentialist and secularising possibilities of postmodern
thought, postmodernist denigration of reason has provided the
grounds for the revivalist project of Hindu science and Hindu
modernity. Enlightenment rationalism is the only viable,
long-term solution to the crisis that
Notes
1 There are those avowed anti-secularists who have argued that
nothing has changed, that Hindutvawadis are only more open, less
hypocritical variants of Nehruvian 'pseudo-secularists', for they
both seek the same goal of modern 'unmarked' culturally-denuded
'abstract individuals', [see Nivedita Menon's (1998) twist on
Nandy's well known argument] and that the whole idea of keeping
religiosity out of the public realm is wrong-headed and unsuited
to Indian culture in the first place. But these well known
anti-secularists apart, there is a general feeling among those
who oppose the Sangh parivar that the Nehruvian secularism mostly
meant a formal nod to secular ideas, with very little principled
commitment to them.
There is a substance to these concerns. As I will argue here, the
battle for secularism and humanism was never joined at the
terrain of culture; the secularists - and here not just the
Nehruvian liberals but all other left intellectuals share the
blame - never adequately challenged the pervasive and reactionary
influence of religious thought on the hearts and minds of
Indians.
Nevertheless, it is facile to deny any difference between the
Nehruvian secularism and what has now come to pass. There is an
essential difference: while the communalism of the former,
deplorable as it was, was a matter of unprincipled political
opportunism, that of the latter is grounded in the ideals of
'dharma rajya'. There is no conflict between
the ideals and the
actual practice in the case of BJP. Sometimes, even lip-service
to formal principles has its uses, for it provides a vantage
point from where to hold the state accountable for delivering on
the formal principles.
2 This does not mean that I do not recognise the pervasive
influence of the power of money and privilege in western
societies. But the proposition that social institutions in
western democracies do not humiliate their citizens on an
everyday basis can be supported by a comparative study of
institutions across cultures and political systems. Instances of
humiliation - like Rodney King's beating by
make news around the world precisely because they are relatively
rare and because they contradict the well-established norms of
fairness and justice.
3 Needless to say, the natural equality of all is still not fully
realised in even the most advanced countries. Social inequities
have to be recognised but should not be allowed to trivialise, as
they often are in 'radical' discourse, the importance of the
recognition of the principle of the equality of natural reason.
Such a principle is not at all self-evident, even to this date,
in brahmanical Hinduism.
4 It was this spirit of intellectual modesty and anti-dogmatism
that constituted the self-understanding of the Enlightenment and
not the delusions of grandeur contemporary critics have read into
them. This understanding is based upon not just the earlier, more
sympathetic commentators like Peter Gay (1969) and Ernest
Cassirer (1951), but also contemporary students of Enlightenment
who read it through their encounter with postmodernism. Notable
among the latter are: Porter (1992), Outram (1995), Bronner
(1995), Dranton (1997) and Gordon (1999).
5 Jurgen Habermas [see Calhoun 1997] remains the best source for
a history of the structural transformation of the public sphere.
6 In the Jewish Question, Marx made it plain that he saw the
rights of man of the American and of the French declarations as
"nothing but the rights of members of civil society, i e, the
rights of egotistic man, of man separated from other men and from
the community". Recognition of such rights by modern state, in
his opinion, "has no other meaning than the recognition of
slavery by the state of antiquity had".
Yet, it cannot be denied that Marx himself and Marxist social
movements have led the struggle for securing human and civil
rights around the world. But such struggles are more utilitarian
than principled and run the risk of opportunism.
7 While the Protestant Reformation did indeed purge the medieval
church of miracles and superstitions, it actually led to an
increase in magic, witchcraft and other supernatural beliefs in
the rest of the society, primarily because the Catholic church
was no longer available to minister to those material and
emotional needs that miracles and supernatural beliefs answered.
The classic text that examines the influence of Reformation on
popular beliefs is Keith Thomas (1971).
8 The Scientific Revolution did not mark a break with the
Christian worldview. All the major figures of the Scientific
Revolution continued to be pious Christians.
9 Although capitalist social relations do have a tendency to
"melt all that is solid," they can also selectively conserve the
magical and mystical beliefs that serve the profit-motive. The
use of ideologies of karma and bhakti by
Indian industrialists
has been studied by Milton Singer (1972). Lise McKeane (1998)
offers new evidence of the accommodative tendencies of Hinduism.
She describes neo-Hindu gurus who are modernising elements of
Hindu worldview to serve as ideology of the new, globalised
business classes. Indeed, the ability of Indian traditions to
accommodate modern capitalist development is what the whole
thesis of 'modernity of traditions' is all about.
10 Many streams of 'progressive' thought have converged to shape
this post-Enlightenment common sense. Most persistent and
far-reaching critiques of reason have come from feminists
(notably, Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Evelyn Fox Keller, Donna
Haraway, Vandana Shiva) and the proponents of 'alternative
sciences' (notably, Ashis Nandy and the so-called 'Delhi School',
Ziauddin Sardar and the allied proponents of the so-called
'Islamic science'.) This style of science critique finds
philosophical justification from a radicalised Kuhnian sociology
of science on the one hand, and the Foucaultian critiques of
Orientalism on the other. As most of these works have become
contemporary classics, complete references are not included in
this paper.
11 See Saberwal, 1995 for the segmentary logic of caste, and see
S Gopal 1996, Upadhyay 1992 and Larson 1995 for the continued
influence of neo-Hindu ideology on
12 See Gurpreet Mahajan's (1995) critique of this tendency.
13 Javeed Alam (1999) is a good example of common Marxist
misconceptions about the politics and epistemology of the
Enlightenment.
14 On this count at least, the Marxist left is a mirror image of
the Hindutva right. Hindutva right wants to keep the economic
freedoms of the market, while denying as un-Hindu the individual
freedoms and rights of liberalism. The Marxist left wants to keep
the political rights and freedoms of liberalism, without the
economic freedoms of the market. The problem with both these
positions is that they ignore the necessary structural links
between economic and political freedoms.
15 This is not to deny that the dalit-OBC politics has its share
of opportunism, identity politics and sheer chauvinism. But the
philosophical underpinnings of dalit-OBC movements are derived,
most consistently, from the Enlightenment view of the world.
16 Gerald Larson (1995) provides a very sympathetic reading of
how neo-Hinduism has provided the political philosophy of
post-colonial
17 While there always had been some isolated dissidents, the
first major critique of constructivism appeared in 1994 with the
publication of Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its
Quarrel with Science by Paul Gross, a molecular biologist and
Norman Levitt, a mathematician. The book was followed with a
conference organised by the New York Academy of Sciences. The
proceedings of this conference were published in a volume titled
Flight From Reason and Science. In the interest of full
disclosure, I must mention that one of my essays appears in the
Flight volume.
18 For a recent compendium of writings of anti-constructivist
philosophers of science, see Koertge (1998).
19 To anticipate the usual complaints: Yes, it is possible to
deify science itself as a new religion. But no, it does not mean
that science by its nature is a new myth. It only means that
weneed a constant vigilance against all mythic thinking. The
dialectic of Enlightenment can only be cured by a more
radicalised Enlightenment.
20 Including my own, Nanda 1997, but also see Koertge 1998,
Kitcher, Laudan, and Haack, and the original works of Karl Popper
and the American pragmatists, especially Charles S Peirce and
John Dewey.
21 On nearly any issue pertaining to women from domestic violence
to quotas for women, Hinduism Today runs special interviews with
Madhu Kishwar, or reprints her writings. On matters of ecology,
globalisation, intellectual property, The Organiser turns to
Vandana Shiva. Hindutva writings on relevance of Hinduism to
ecological preservation are replete with the Shiva's and
occasionally, Patkar's invocation of nature as mother, shakti and
such. Claude Alvares' writings get kudos among the Hindutva
critics of modernity. Lise McKean (p 261) reports the appearance
and the stirring speech by Sundarlal Bahuguna of the Chipko fame
in the praise of Bharatiya Sanskriti to combat the evils of
science and modernity at the centenary celebrations of
Sivananda's Divine Life Society in
Divine Life Society was one of the founding members of VHP.
22 This is not to suggest that the west is entirely free from
irrationalities. Fear of those with AIDS is widespread in the
It is not an all-or-nothing issue, but more of a continuum.
has to go longer on the continuum to become a more rational
society. 23 Prophets Facing Backwards: Postmodern Critiques of
Science and the Rise of Reactionary Modernism in
the title of my forthcoming book which will examine the
philosophical fallacies of postmodern critiques of science and
their hold on Indian 'alternative science movements'.
24 How little colonialism or even postcolonial modernity actually
changed the basic tenor of Hindu worldview is well described in
Gerald Larson (1995), whose defence of neo-Hinduism inadvertently
reveals the continuities that have withstood and absorbed the
colonial ideas within Hinduism. Indeed, even a cursory reading of
Radhakrishnan reveals how deeply entrenched the architects of
modern
justifications for caste and patriarchy.
25 Here I have my good friend Achin Vanaik in mind, from whose
otherwise excellent writings I have learned so much.
26 The fact that mass religiosity of a strongly
super-naturalistic kind is a contributory factor in the rise of
religious politics makes the anti-Enlightenment bias of the
Indian Left all the more distressing. The populist turn to
traditional values has only ended up deifying as 'decolonisation
of the mind' what needed to be questioned. Decolonisation to what
end? Whether intended or not, the mental decolonisation has only
prepared the great hope of the Indian left - the 'people', the
'subaltern' - for a take-over by the Hindu right.This nexus
between "critical traditionalism" and neo-Hinduism has been
visible for all to see since Gandhi and later the JP movement. It
appears to me that Indian left intellectuals must first break the
spell of dharma from their own minds before
they can approach the
cultural question with any degree of balance.
27 Unless this worldview changes, we cannot hope to alter the
status of widows. Calls for more development, etc, as the answer
to Satpura tragedy are perfectly legitimate. But it is not clear
at all if material development by itself translates into a
modernisation of consciousness. On the contrary, there is ample
evidence to suggest that the habits of the heart, conditioned by
a host of intimate social relations and institutions, can bend
the changing modes of production to their own continued survival.
28 Interestingly, at the end of his phenomenological analysis of
what is specifically Hindu about sati, Sharma seems to have one
great regret: these poor widows and satis were not told, and
neither were they perceived by others, as actually doing yoga. If
pati-yoga was could be seen as a form of yoga rather than just
plain old drudgery, widows could get the respect that is due to a
yogic! So, keep widowhood, only call it yoga! (Although to be
fair to Sharma, he does come down against sati on the ground that
unlike real yogis, women do not choose the yogic path as their
vocation.)
29 See Gellner 1992, Popper 1962 for classic statements of the
history of reason in society. Patricia Crone (1989) provides a
useful introduction.
30 If a theoretical statement of this idea of (sva)- dharma,
which is familiar to anyone - non-Hindus included - growing up in
31 For a clear, textually grounded, learned - and without any
over-heated rhetoric - analysis of the support of hierarchy in
the Vedas and Vedanta, see the writings of Wilhelm Halbfass
(1988, 1991).
32 This does not imply that I subscribe to universal laws of
history. Neither a bourgeois revolution in social relations nor a
classless society is inevitable. But they become possible to
imagine, for the first time in history, with the forces unleashed
by science, industry and capitalism.
33 Technically, the term 'wholism' describes any doctrine that
emphasises the priority of a whole over its parts. In discourse
theory, wholism claims that the meaning of an individual word can
only be understood in terms of its relation to an indefinitely
larger body of language, such as a whole theory, or even a whole
language or form of life (
postcolonial critiques, wholism comes to take connotations of
unity, or lack of separation of knowledge and culture, facts and
values.
34 Technically, the term "reductionism" holds that the "facts or
entities apparently needed to make true the statements of some
area of discourse are dispensable in favour of some other facts
or entities" (
biology to chemistry, or chemistry to physics. Reductionism
assumes a unity of science so that laws of any special branch of
science can be described as special cases of the universal way
things are. However, multicultural and postcolonial critics of
science use reductionism more in its historical sense of
differentiation between the spheres of factual knowledge and
sphere of philosophy, theology and ethics (See Gellner 1992).
Reductionism here comes to take on a connotation of separation of
knowledge from culture, facts from values.
35 My own account here is indebted to Karl Popper (1962) and
Ernest Gellner (1992). For an earlier statement of this
historical role of reason for postcolonial societies, see Nanda
(1996).
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A Rejoinder to Meera Nanda ’s Article “Postmodernism,
Hindu nationalism and Vedic science”
by "Srikant"
-
In an article ‘Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and Vedic
science’ in the Frontline magazine (December 20,2003 – January 02, 2004),
First the author presents a general idea about Postmodernism. It is described
as a mood or disposition that is opposed to the ‘Enlightenment’, which is
considered as the core of modernism. The ‘Enlightenment’ in this context is
explained as “a general attitude fostered in the 17th and 18th centuries on the
heels of the Scientific Revolution.” Its aim was “to replace superstition and
authority of traditions and established religions with critical reason
represented, above all, by the growth of modern science. The Enlightenment
project was based upon a hope that improvement in secular scientific knowledge
will lead to an improvement of the human condition, not just materially but
also ethically and culturally”
The author says that the Postmodernists are disillusioned with this
‘triumphalist’ view of science that claims dispelling ignorance and making a
better world. In a mood of despair they question the possibility of this
‘Enlightenment’ leading humanity to progress towards some universal truth. They
seem to prefer local traditions even if they are not led by rational criteria
and make room for sacred and even the irrational. And they are attracted to the
ideas of the ‘social constructivist theories of science’, put forth by some
schools of thought originated in Edinburgh, Paris, etc., who basically assert
that modern science, which was considered as moving closer to objective truth
about nature, is only just one culture-bound way to look at nature. They
consider that the content of all knowledge is socially constructed and the
supposed ‘facts’ of modern science are ‘Western’ constructions reflecting
dominant interests and cultural biases of Western societies.
The author seems to be perturbed by the fact that the Indian critics of
science, especially those led by the neo-Gandhians, other well-known
intellectuals and even those who were with the traditional left-wing causes,
are moving towards Postmodernism. The author points out that it has also
numerous sympathizers among ‘patriotic science’ and the environmentalist and
feminist movements.
In this article cluttered with biased attacks on Hindutva, the author also
makes sweeping statements as follows: “In reality, everything we know about the
workings of nature through the methods of modern science radically disconfirms
the presence of any morally significant gunas, or shakti, or any other form of
consciousness in nature, as taught by the Vedic cosmology which treats nature
as a manifestation of divine consciousness. Far from there being ‘no conflict’
between science and Hinduism, a scientific understanding of nature completely
and radically negates the ‘eternal laws’ of Hindu dharma
which teach an identity between spirit and matter.”
Science is Not a Closed System
The above-mentioned passage highlights the author’s belief that scientific
inquiry has reached its culmination and has discovered the whole truth and one
can declare the above ‘fact’ from the present knowledge of science.
‘The Hindu’ Magazine (
Now let us examine the reputed scientist’s view about the present position of
modern science. While discussing on the nature of human mind and computation,
the following question was asked:
“You do not however question the notion that whatever is going in the mind can
indeed be explained in terms of physical laws.”
“I do not believe that whatever is going on is beyond the scope of science.
However, it does lead me to believe that we have to go beyond existing science.
Science today can only approximately emulate what is going on in the mind,
which suggests that there is something else going on out there in our conscious
thinking and perception and whatever else is involved in mentality. So we need
something other than computation, but I am not saying it stands outside the
scope of some future science. Whatever that future science is – and we can
point to the direction it may take – it will have quite a different character
from the science of today. What we have today cannot come to terms with what
mentality is.”
Another question asked was this: “In your writings one detects three basic sets
of concerns – the mind, mathematics and he laws of physics. In your opinion,
are they all three different aspects of the same phenomenon or structure, or
are they entirely distinct and unrelated in your thinking?’
He answers: “In my second book, The Shadows of the Mind. I have drawn a
diagram, which reflects this trinity of notions. On the one hand, we have the
physical world, then we have the mental one of our perceptions, understanding
and free will. The third notion is the world of absolutes – a platonic world of
the truth, the beautiful and the good – and, in particular of mathematical
absolutes. I am prepared to accept that all these things have some form of
absolute existence, which we can relate to in some way. It has to do with our
awareness. Mathematics, of course, is intrinsic to our understanding of the
physical world, and may even control it. These are all mysteries, and the third
mystery is how our mind comes about when we have the right physical structures.
We have to look at these three things together and get a holistic picture of
how they relate to one another.”
Fadists and the Explorers
There are two types of people who champion the cause of science – science
enthusiasts or faddists and active explorers. The former often revel in closing
the doors of science in the name of science and the latter who have made great
contributions for the advancement of science and having the humility and true
scientific spirit, keep the doors of science wide open.
Mark the words: “and the mystery is how our mind comes about when we have the
right physical structures.” A spider makes a web or a bee makes its comb with
exact mathematical precision and a sparrow builds its nest with an artistic
excellence. At their stage of physical structure the ability simply expresses
in them in the natural course. One can simply say it is all ‘instinct’. But
just an utterance of a word is not an explanation. It is a ‘mystery’ to a true
inquirer, and a true scientist will patiently work to unravel any such mystery.
He knows there is nothing irrational. There are only gaps. A dog or cat goes
out and eats grass when it has some stomach problem without any doctor’s
advice. The knowledge comes to them. Without experimentation, but through
meditation the knowledge of suitable medicinal herbs came to the consciousness
of the great explorers of yore who gave form to the science of Ayurveda. This
system of medicine has been flourishing because its efficacy has been verified
through generations after generations. This is also quite rational. Because,
besides the analytical capacity, the human mind has also a faculty called
intuition, which still remains a mystery for science to solve. Analytical
faculty of mind is easily applicable but intuition often needs cultivation. Denying
blindly that which we do not understand will not annihilate a fact. Inquiring
scientists would never make such sweeping and unfounded remarks as. “Far from
there being ‘no conflict’ between science and Hinduism, a scientific
understanding of nature completely and radically negates the ‘eternal laws’ of
Hindu dharma which teach an identity between
spirit and matter.”
Mind has emerged at the stage of human structure, and when it becomes receptive
or made receptive, for which meditation is prescribed as a method, the faculty
of intuition gets activated and knowledge naturally comes to the mind. Through
intuition profound knowledge came to the Vedic Rishis. Are the unique
intellectual ideas in the Upanishads to be just relegated as mere ‘religious’
views? Topmost scientists and philosophers of the world look at them with great
admiration and reverence.
Yoga as a Science
Yoga in its own right is a science because it has a precise methodology. Yogic
science prescribes three steps pratyahara, dharana and dhyana. Prayahara is
withdrawing the mind from the external world, dharana is fixing on that which
is being explored and dhyana is exploration into what is being sought. This is
a verifiable science, not a belief. You tell some one that water is formed of hydrogen
and oxygen. And if that man stubbornly opposes saying it is a superstition
because two invisible gases can never form water, which is visible, you are
helpless. At the most you can tell him to go and first to have some preliminary
knowledge about chemistry and then experiment himself. Still if he maintains it
is all mere superstition, it is better to leave him and mind your own business.
Spirituality is a verifiable science and if one is prepared to do the
experiment then only one can know whether there is an immanent Spirit or not. .
When one drinks water one quenches one’s thirst, but one cannot by that act
quench another’s thirst. The other person can shout from the top of his voice
that water can never quench anybody’s thirst. And the world will dismiss such a
person as of unsound mind and ignore him. It is common knowledge that when a
person undergoes even the basic disciplines of yoga he experiences the
reinforcement of his physical, mental and spiritual faculties. Yoga and
spirituality are sciences of human evolution having a methodology like any
experimental science. It can be safely dismissed as due to mere ignorance when
one demands that Hindu Dharma should conform to the criteria of the constantly
changing and imperfect modern science, which the author says “radically
disconfirms and negates the ‘eternal laws’ of Hindu dharma, which teach an
identity between spirit and matter” to prove its validity!
Like Sir Roger Penrose, the eminent nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg, also
leaves wide open the doors of science when he says, “…the concepts of ‘soul’ or
‘life’ certainly do not occur in atomic physics and they could not, even
indirectly be derived as complicated consequences of some natural laws. Their
existence certainly does not indicate the presence of any fundamental substance
other than energy but it shows only action of other kinds of forms, which we
cannot match with the mathematical form of modern atomic physics. It follows
that the mathematical structures of atomic physics are limited in their
applicability to certain fields of experience and that if we want to describe
living or mental process, we shall have to introduce yet other concepts which
can be linked, without contradictions with our existing system of concepts. It
may also become necessary to limit the range of previous concepts of atomic
theory attaching specific new conditions to them. In both cases we would regard
such an extension as a broadened form of atomic theory and not as a theory
describing any fundamentally different events. If we accept such a wide
definition of atomic theory we can immediately see how far removed we are from
its completion.” Yet, it is strange that some people try to force us into a
belief that science has reached its zenith and it has once for all rejected the
‘immanent Spirit’!
And Max Planck, one of the founders of modern nuclear physics, rather begs the
science enthusiasts to be more sensible and give consideration and due respect
to the larger issues for the advancement of knowledge, in the following words:
“As a physicist, i.e., as a man who has devoted to the most matter of fact
branch of science, namely the investigation of matter, I am surely free of any
suspicion of fanaticism. And so after my research into the atom I say this to
you: there is no such thing as mater per se! All matter originated from and
consists of a force, which sets the atomic particles in oscillation and
concentrates them into minute solar systems of the atom. But as there is
neither intelligence nor an internal force in the universe we must assume a
conscious intelligent spirit behind the force. This spirit is the basic
principle of all matter…”
Thus the doors are kept open by the stalwarts of science and the science moves
ahead. Here we must give special attention to the following statement of Werner
Heisenberg while considering the further advancement of scientific knowledge:
“It follows that the mathematical structures of atomic physics are limited in
their applicability to certain fields of experience and that if we want to
describe living or mental process, we shall have to introduce yet other
concepts which can be linked, without contradictions with our existing system
of concepts.”
Human brain has a certain structure and potentials and faculties. Scientists have
pointed out that since thousands of years there has not occurred any
mentionable structural change in the human brain. It follows that it can
discover what it requires irrespective of the time factor, employing these
potentials and faculties. The structure of the human brain and its faculties in
the Vedic times could not have been different from that of the 21st century
human brain. And many inexplicable facts relating to it can be observed to
those who have the mind to wonder and the eyes to see, and, of course, not to
those who are sitting in some ivory tower and telling us what science is!
Little Clint of Kerala began his paintings just when he was only two years old
and before his passing away at the age of eight he drew about twenty thousand
pictures in color and B&W, including that of Gods and Goddesses,
landscapes, etc!. There is a permanent arrangement to display his paintings in
Modern science helped liberate human mind from dogmatic religious concepts of
the West. It was begun as a reaction in the West against the thralldom imposed
on the human mind by an organized structure of religion that suppressed all
inquiry. Any student of history knows how cruel that suppression was. And the
author tries to equate those conditions to the free intellectual climate that
prevailed in
A Scientist’s Views on
Let me quote here a few passages from a book, in which one ordinarily cannot
expect any reference about the ancient sages of
Now, let us see what such an eminent scientist has to say about the sage
explorers of
“The culture of the ancient Orient affirmed not only ideas of man’s dependence
on the supernatural forces that were external to him; there was also a tendency
to cultivate certain rules of behaviour in relation to these forces, including
techniques of training the body in relation to these forces to regulate and
perfect bodily and spiritual processes. Various systems of exercises linked
with religious beliefs were evolved to change the state of the mind, the consciousness,
to achieve complete unity with the universe, to become one with the energy of
nature. These techniques for influencing one’s own organism through the
mechanisms of psycho-physiological self-regulation and control - techniques
that are much in fashion today – could not have survived for centuries and have
penetrated other cultures with a different ethnos, if they had not contained
some real knowledge of the most subtle and hidden structural.
Energo-informational neuro-psychical and humoral potentials, which even now
sometimes seem fantastic to the analytical European mind, particularly when it
is fettered by stereotypes.
“Oriental culture is full of beliefs about the role of the way of life and its
various components – breathing techniques, the ability to commune very subtly
with nature, acupuncture, cauterizing, and other ways of influencing the
biologically active centers of the organism, herbo-medicine, diagnostics by
means of the iris of the eye, pulse and olfactory diagnostics, consideration of
the position of the earth in relation to the celestial bodies in medicine, the
time of year and day and of the properties of water in relation to the state of
the earth strata and the character of its flow in connection with the geo
magnetic phenomena – all this and much else has contributed to the great wisdom
of the Eastern peoples, the wealth of their culture and man’s place therein,
their understanding of the mechanisms of regulation of his life activity and
vital potentials. Thus already in the distant past, in the mists of
mythological world views the precious crystals of knowledge, tested by the
experience of centuries, of skills in beneficially influencing man’s body
gradually accumulated. How could people of those far off times know so much
without any experiments or apparatus about the conditions and factors that
regulate the course of the vital processes and the character of the interaction
between man and nature, particularly the influence of the celestial bodies, the
sun and the moon and various radiations proceeding from outer space and the
bowels of the earth!? And all this was taken into consideration both in
diagnosing and in treatment! Does this not go to show an astonishingly high
level of culture that should arouse our admiration, gratitude and desire to
study! This knowledge could not have retained its vitality if it had not again
and again been confirmed by practice.”
It is regrettable that while a scientist in a distant country could make such a
disinterested, objective and deep assessment of the relentless explorations of
knowledge that had taken place in India, some of our writers choose to brand
those valiant explorers together as a superstitious folk and block enquiry and
research on this great mass of knowledge that we inherit from them! Here we
must again give special attention to the following statement of Werner
Heisenberg while considering the further advancement of scientific knowledge:
“It follows that the mathematical structures of atomic physics are limited in
their applicability to certain fields of experience and that if we want to
describe living or mental process, we shall have to introduce yet other
concepts which can be linked, without contradictions with our existing system
of concepts.” The above passages of Professor Alexander Spirkin clearly
indicate this mass of knowledge that evolved in ancient India if researched and
filtered ( no doubt much dross has also been gathered around this knowledge
through the ages) would supplement the concepts necessary, as Heisenburg says,
which can be linked with modern science for a deeper understanding of life and
universe.
It is not the “mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of science”
as the author says, but the historical necessity of a synthesis to expand the
present-day scientific concepts that is taking place today. While this
integration proceeds, in the initial phase naturally there will be
imperfections and shortcomings, which will gradually be rectified and a greater
amalgamation will take place eventually that would benefit humanity. The author
says it “must be of great concern not just to the scientific community, but
also to the religious people, for it is a distortion of both science and
spirituality.” On the other hand, it offers great opportunity for both the
people of science and religion because it will be well heeding the following
warning of Albert Einstein: “Science without religion is lame; religion without
science is blind.” It will bring about the expansion of concepts.
There should not be a compartmentalization of knowledge that comes to humanity
from one source or the other. We must constantly look for areas of unity, which
will be advantageous to mankind. The following observation of the renowned
mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on the clash between
religion and science, published in the book ‘ Science: Method and Meaning’ (New
York University) is very thought-provoking in this context: “We would believe
nothing in either sphere of thought which does not appear to us to be certified
by solid reasons based upon the critical research either of ourselves or of
competent authorities. But granting that we have honestly taken this
precaution, a clash between the two on points of detail where they overlap
should not lead us hastily to abandon doctrines for which we have solid
evidence. It may be that we are more interested in one set of doctrines than in
the other. But, if we have any sense of perspective and of the history of
thought, we shall wait and refrain from mutual anathemas. We should wait; but
we should not wait passively or in despair. The clash is a sign that there are
wider truths and finer perspective within which reconciliation of a deeper
religion and a more subtle science will be found.”
Scanty Knowledge of Indian Philosophy
The author of the essay seems to be out rightly rejecting the Vedantic concept
that “matter and spirit are not separate and distinct entities, but rather the
spiritual principle constitute the very fabric of the material world” and
criticizes the presentation of the gunas in a book published by VHP, which
refers to it as something fundamental to the universe. It is the scanty
knowledge of Indian philosophy that often prompts one to present such profound
concepts as the gunas as some puerile idea that dawned in some primitive mind,
as the author seems to think.
According to the Sankhya philosophy, one of the six paths of exploration
mentioned in the Vedas, there are three major conditioning forces in Nature
which are the basic modes causing all forms of actions and reactions and the
manifestation of the phenomenal worlds from a subtle Reality, whether we choose
to call it Energy or Brahman. They are the three gunas. (One who has the
patience to explore will find that these are very well coordinated fields of
knowledge which can contribute to modern science the new concepts to expand its
horizon. At least a moderate study would have prevented this author from making
so casual a reference about the gunas. What is required today is bridging of
the gaps between the ancient knowledge and the modern scientific perspective.
That requires inquiry, not blind contempt or rejection. ) According to the
Samkhya view, before cosmic evolution begins these three modes of Nature are in
a state of equilibrium. One can say the universe is in a state of zero
manifestation, as some of the modern scientists prefer to present this state.
Let us now look into some views of modern science on cosmic evolution. Stephen
Hawkins in his ‘Brief History of Time’ mentions on the basis of Hobbles
observation that “there was a time called the big bang, when the universe was
infinitesimally small and infinitely dense” (Compare this statement with the
Upanishadic words about Reality ‘anavo-raneeyam, mahato-mayeeyam’ – smaller
than the smallest, bigger than the biggest.) He says that under such a
condition, the laws of science will have no relevance if there were events
earlier than this time and: “Their existence would be ignored because it would
not have any relationship with events that have happened after the big bang.”
This is the view of the scientist. But the ancient seekers could not thus
‘ignore’ anything and they endeavored to explore everything. As mentioned
above, according to the Samkhya philosophy, before the cosmic evolution begins
the three modes of Nature are in a state of equilibrium. . Through a certain
mode of scientific presentation Stephen Hawkins tries to prove that the total
energy of the universe is zero. He says: “In the case of universe that is
approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational
energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by matter. So the total
energy of the universe is zero.” While discarding the Western religious view
that the universe is an arbitrary creation of God, Stephen Hawkins points out
that in the process of the evolution of the world there does not appear any
arbitrary interference of God but it evolves “in a very regular way according
to certain laws”. He concludes that even in the initial phase it is logical to
think that certain laws might have been responsible, not an arbitrary God. He
states, “It therefore seems equally reasonable to suppose that there are also
laws governing the initial state.”
However, the ancient explorers of
Before the Big Bang (a state Hawkins prefers to neglect) one can presume, as
the Sankhya philosophy states, these three modes of Nature – thamas, rajas and
sattva were in a state of perfect equilibrium.( It offers a good field of
enquiry for modern science to probe into the subtle facts involved in these
three modes of Nature.) While the universe was thus in a state of zero
manifestation, the Reality, as the Upanishads say, remained itself potentially
as anavo-raneeyan and mahato-maheeyaan - smaller than the smallest and bigger
than the biggest, a language the modern nuclear physicist will not find much
difficult to follow.
The manifestation begins from this state, it is said, by the breaking of this
equilibrium of the gunas and along with it the process of evolution sets in.
The Sankhya system declares that there is thus a Law involved in the
manifestation of the universe and its evolution. Universe is not an arbitrary
creation of a whimsical God. It is the manifestation of an Intelligent-Energy
‘suchness’(or ‘Beness’ as Stephen Hawkins prefers to call it although he does
not have an idea of the Intelligence involved in Energy.) From the present
state of scientific knowledge it is an open question for science whether
Intelligence or Mind is involved in energy. Sir Roger Penrose leaves it for
future concepts to explore into this question. And as Professor Alexander
Spirkin considers the science to explore and find an answer. Heisenberg says we
have to introduce other deeper concepts for the further expansion of science.
In this context, deeper studies on the findings of
Sir Julien Huxley, the neo Darwinist and eminent biologists makes some
thought-provoking observations in this contest in his essay ‘Philosophy in a
World at War’. He says, “The notion that there is something of the same nature
as human mind in lifeless matter at first sight appears incredible or
ridiculous.” However, he points out that electricity was once considered as a
form of energy external to the atom, but later it became clear that electrical
properties are most essential to matter. He says: “One may suggest that the
same sort of thing has happened with mind. All the activities of the
world-stuff are accompanied by mental as well as by material happenings; in
most cases, however, the mental happenings are at such a low level of intensity
that we cannot detect them; we may perhaps call them ‘psychoid’ happenings, to
emphasize their difference in intensity and quality from our own psychical or
mental activities. In those organs that we call brains, however, the psychoid
activities are in some way, made to reinforce each other until, as is clearly
the case in higher animals, they reach a high level of intensity; and they are
the dominant and specific function of the brain of man. Until we learn to
detect psychoid activities of low intensity, as we have learned to do with
electrical happenings, we cannot prove this. But already it has become the
simplest hypothesis that will fit the facts of developmental and evolutionary
continuity.” This hypothesis of a great modern scientist shows that science is
not a closed affair as the author of the article would like to make us believe.
This also shows that the Vedantic idea of the involvement of mind in matter
remains an open question with eminent scientists, and not something to be
inadvertently rejected as the author does. It is unfortunate that the ignorance
of some people mislead many because it gets publicity.
Verbiage cannot be a Substitute for In-depth Ideas
Mere lavish use of worn out words and verbiage some people think they can
market their opinionated views. It is an in-depth vision that is required.
After all, is science the only way to know the deeper facts of life and the
universe? The German biologist Prof. Dr. Joachim Illies raises the following
points in an article “Does Universe Hold Other Intelligent Beings”, published
in the Universitas:
“Is science really the only authority from which we expect answers to our
questions? There are pre-scientific experiences, unconscious certainties, hopes
and conjectures, and especially the vast energy center of emotional life. All
these media are, just like science, antennae for feeling our way in the world we
live in. Even the certainties of science did mostly originate in a flash of
genius, a hunch, and intuition; and it was often only after this that the
scientist went to work, painstakingly elaborating the logical proof for what he
had known all along. Let us, therefore, learn this from the great discoverers
and research workers, not to scorn the power of our own intuitive feelings
which supplement that of our universally valid reason.”
Let us keep in mind the following advice of Werner Heisenberg to an assembly of
science students: “Take from your scientific work a serious and incorruptible
method of thought; help to spread it because no understanding is possible
without it. Revere those things beyond science which really matter about which
it is so difficult to speak.” The ancient explorers of
(The several grotesque and distorted arguments of the author, like the
‘Narcissism’ of Hindu culture and statements representing the most noble and
perennial Vedic ideas, as instruments of self aggrandizement, etc., are ignored
because they appear to be vicious and challenge even one’s commonsense.)
The Postmodernists are on the right track. Their disillusion with the so-called
‘Enlightenment’ of the Scientific Revolution is justified. This sort of
‘Enlightenment’ will create, as we have seen, only terrible weapons of mass
destruction, domination, exploitation and it will convert human life into a
mindless machine, unless, as Sir Roger Penrose hopes, a future science with a
quite a different ethos emerges from the science of today, for he says “What we
have today cannot come to terms with what mentality is.” All those with an open
mind like Professor Alexander Spirkin and a host of modern scientists today are
becoming aware of the fact that profound, unbiased and sincere inquires and
explorations conducted by the ancient sages of
Science and Spirituality
Brni. Lasa
Publication:
On
attention: "Calling India's freethinkers" by
The main idea she presents is that "drawing clear distinctions
between science and religion is crucial in
reference to Hinduism.
After reading the article, I was profoundly perplexed. I am not a
stranger to either science or Hinduism having studied them both. Born
and educated in
developments in modern science right from the time when science
departments in American universities were starting to "experiment"
with bringing arts and humanities, including spirituality, to bear on
science. Universities were opening separate "experimental colleges"
where one could study yoga, astrology, ayurveda, etc. as well as
biology, physics, and other natural sciences. In fact, I took an
experimental college biology course at
University where students could do science projects involving art,
poetry, music, essays, which were spiritually uplifting. We also went
on field trips to the ecological reserves and to the Stanford Linear
Accelerator. We were allowed to go inside the accelerator and were
told how it splits the atom. All these were inspiring.
Concurrent with an avid interest in science, which has never ebbed, I
was also an ardent seeker of self knowledge. In the early-seventies I
found what I was looking for in Vedanta. Having heard Swami
Chinmayananda on a radio interview, I decided to attend his talk
series at the UC Medical Center in
my interest in Vedanta has continued to grow. In
several years studying at a traditional Vedanta gurukulam where Swami
Dayananda Saraswati was the teacher. Then, in order to deepen my
study of Hinduism, I moved to
discover what kind of a culture could provide nourishment to the
profound wisdom waiting to be discovered in Vedanta. Having gotten
immersed in the riches of this spiritual culture I feel that every
day is a wonder with still much more to discover about myself, the
world, and Ishvara.
Naturally, when I read
not have had any well-informed access to modern science. And I was
equally surprised that she knows so little about the Vedas and
particularly about Vedanta.
Ms Nanda complains that Hindu apologists "draw wild parallels and
equivalence between just about any shloka from the Vedas and the laws
of quantum mechanics and other branches of modern science."
The following quotes are not from the Vedas, but from the world's
leading scientists speaking on the topic of
hinduism/spirituality/religion and its connection to science.
Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976), German theoretical physicist,
best known for his Uncertainty Principle for which he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in physics, said: "Physical science has now become
planetary and draws into its fold an increasing number of non-
westerners who find in its new vision of the universe many elements
that are quick to note, one cannot always distinguish between
statements made by eastern metaphysics based on mystical insight, and
the pronouncements of modern physics based on observations,
experiments and mathematical calculations."
Dr. Carl Sagan, (1934-1996) famous astrophysicist, in his book,
Cosmos, says: "The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's
great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes
an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is
the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of
modern scientific cosmology." Describing the Nataraja, Lord Shiva in
the form of cosmic dancer, he says: "These profound and lovely images
are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical
ideas." Sagan continues, "A millennium before Europeans were willing
to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few
thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the
Hindus billions."
In the television series "Cosmos", he acknowledges that of all the
world's philosophies and religions those originating in
remarkably consistent with contemporary scenarios of space,time and
existence.
Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961), Austrian theoretical physicist, best
known for his discovery of wave mechanics, which won him the Nobel
Prize for Physics in 1933, wished to see: "Some blood transfusion
from the East to the West" to save Western science from spiritual
anemia."
"In all the world," writes Schroedinger in his book, My View of the
World (chapter iv), "there is no kind of framework within which we
can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we
construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is
a false construction....The only solution to this conflict insofar as
any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the
Upanishad."
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was a theoretical physicist and
the Supervising Scientist for the Manhattan Project, the developer of
the atomic bomb. He studied Sanskrit with Professor Arthur W Ryder
(1877-1938) at Berkeley.He called the Gita "the most beautiful
philosophical song existing in any known tongue.".
Christian Century magazine (May 15, 1963 p. 647) asked Oppenheimer to
list the ten books that "did most to shape your vocational attitude
and philosophy of life." Two of the ten works that Oppenheimer
claimed as most influential were Indian, The Bhagavad Gita and
Bhartrihari's Satakatrayam, and a third, The Waste Land by T S Eliot,
alluded to the Hindu Scriptures.
Oppenheimer wrote: "The general notions about human understanding.
which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the
nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of or new. Even in
our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu
thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find [in
modern physics] is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a
refinement of old wisdom."
These are a few quotes from among the scientists who are
freethinkers. The amount of current scientific papers and books
available on this topic is mind-boggling. For example, many more
quotes from current leading scientists are available on the Science
and the Spiritual Quest web site, www.ssq.net
- a program of the
Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences,
"For seven years the Science and the Spiritual Quest program has
involved over 120 distinguished senior scientists in dialogue at the
intersections of science and spirituality. In conferences and
workshops around the world, SSQ has demonstrated that scientists of
Nobel caliber can also be people of faith, and that those who are not
traditionally religious can offer insights of great value to
religion."
"Ask any scientist what lies at the core of her work, you will learn
that it is not the experimental test of the hypothesis - although
that is where most of the time and money of science go. It is the
idea, the mechanism, the insight that justifies all the rest of the
work of science. The moment of insight that reveals the new idea,
where an instant before there was just fog, is the moment when the
unknown first retreats before the creativity of the scientist. Here,
then, is the first door into the unknowable: where does scientific
insight come from? Surely from someplace currently unknown. Let us
consider the
possibility that scientific insight, like religious revelation, comes
from an intrinsically unknowable place." Robert Elliot Pollack,
Professor of Biological Sciences and Director, Center for the Study
of Science and Religion at
Clearly,
different from the natural world that exists. Even if it were
possible "to achieve a society that has internalised the principle of
separation between science and spirituality," nobody would be able to
live happily in such a world. All previous experiments of societies
toward that end have failed dismally.
Everything
would make
has inspired throughout the world's scientific community.
By
http://www.hindu.com/2004/05/22/stories/2004052201691000.htm
"Dangers Of Religious Environmentalism In India
DHARMIC ECOLOGY AND THE NEO-PAGAN INTERNATIONAL:
THE DANGERS OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISM IN
by
Uhttp://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/072004_D_Ecology_MeeraNanda.pdfU
[Paper Presented at Panel No. 15 at the 18th
European Conference on Modern South Asian
Studies, 6-9 July 2004
Panel Title: From Landscapes to Genomes:
Authoritative Knowledge in Contested Domains 8
July,
Paper Abstract:
The Context: Politics in
process of sacralization, or religionization. The
founding principles of
are being reformulated in the concepts, symbols
and rituals derived from the elements of orthodox
and neo-Hinduism. In keeping with the fabled
"inclusivism' of Hinduism, Hindu nationalists are
trying to co-opt the key modern ideals of
liberalism, secularism and humanism as being
always-already present in the eternal truths of
the Vedas. Hindutva is "modern" in rhetoric, for,
unlike the paleo-religious fundamentalists like
the Taliban, it is not turning its back to the
modern world. But Hindutva is deeply anti-modern
in reality, for, like all "respectable" religious
fundamentalist parties (e.g., Moral Majority in
the
co-opt modern ideals and deny any contradiction,
any break and any secularization of the Hindu
understanding of nature and society.
The problematic: The rhetoric of "Vedic
spirituality-as-science"/ "spiritual science" is
playing a key role in the erosion of secular
public discourse in
state-sponsored effort by Hindu ideologues to
reinterpret modern science as a mere footnote to
Hindu spiritual traditions which see the
phenomenal world of nature as an expression of
the Spirit or Brahman. Hindu nationalists and
their intellectual allies including numerous
gurus and swamis, inside and outside the
government, all claim that the most advance
research in physics, neurosciences, biology,
ecology and mathematics all confirm the holistic
worldview of the Vedas and/or are already
presaged in the Vedas. Conversely, they justify
esoteric, paranormal and pseudo-sciences like
astrology, vastu, faith-healing, telepathy, and
reincarnation memories etc. as legitimate
sciences within the holistic, non-dualistic
worldview of Vedic Hinduism. The introduction of
astrology is one prominent example of such
thinking, as is the state-sponsored "research"
and propagation of Vastu shastra, cow-urine,
scientific benefits of yagnas and
"Vedic"
mathematics. The question this panel asks is: how
and where "authoritative knowledge is created
about such imponderables as genes - or atoms. Who
is the God of the really small things?"
My paper will offer one possible answer to this
question: authoritative interpreters of knowledge
of material things, big and small, are none other
than the "Intellectual kshatriyas" of the Sangh
Parivar.
Complete text at:
TUhttp://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/072004_D_Ecology_MeeraNanda.pdfUT
Dharmic Ecology and the Neo-Pagan International:
The Dangers of
Religious Environmentalism in India
URL=http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/072004_D_Ecology_MeeraNanda.pdf]
Paper presented at the
18 th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies
Lunds University, Sweden
July 8, 2004
meerananda@comcast. net
Uhttp://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/072004_D_Ecology_MeeraNanda.pdfU
1. Let me introduce the subject matter of my paper with a news story from the
June 19 th issue of The Frontline. The story is about a Pani yatra (or water
pilgrimage) organized by the district collector of Osmanabad district of
Maharashtra, in cooperation with 40 local NGOs, including scientists and
environmentalists from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Osmanabad has
suffered from a drought for many years, and the yatra was meant to increase the
awareness of local water conservation methods. As a centerpiece for their
yatra, the organizers took a pot, filled it with well water, which according to
radio-carbon dating, was some 700-years old. They dressed up this pot with Hindu
religious items (red cloth, garlands and coconuts) and took it around as they
performed street plays and lectured on the importance of water conservation.
According
to the story, "people came out in large numbers to offer prayers to the
kalash," as they took in the rest of the political theater.
2. Pani yatra is by no means an isolated incidence. In order to mobilize the
masses, the mainstream Indian environmentalists have not shied away from
invoking Hindu imagery and myths. Just about every popular Hindu ritual or idea
has been tapped for its potential for mobilization on behalf of the
environment. Examples range form women tying rakhis to trees, mass recitations
of bhagwat purana at the site of Chipko, fasts, religious vows on the river
banks and temples, invocations of Krishna as the lord of cows and pastures,
invocations of shakti, devi, bhu mata (or Narmada mata, or Ganga mata), karma,
reincarnation, sacred trees, rivers, and even jati, reinterpreted as biological
species living in harmony with their environment. All major environmental
campaigns in recent years, including Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan, and even
to some extent, the controversy over the GM seeds, have had their share of
religious imagery, mixed in with the nostalgic invocations of the good old
days.
3. I want to raise some fundamental questions regarding this kind of religious
environmentalism of the mainstream, left-inclined social movements. I will show
that the left-wing religious environmentalism has become in-distinguishable
from the "dharmic ecology" propagated by the champions of Hinduism.
Under the BJP government, dharmic ecology had already become a back-door
through which Hindu temples and cults were being financed by the tax-payers
money. Hindutva parties, in turn, have been attracting the attention of a host
of potentially ultra-nationalistic neo-pagan movements from
4. But first I want to define my terms. What do I mean by religious
environmentalism?
This preponderance of religious motifs in struggles over natural resources
should not come as a surprise.
Who are these prophets and why are they facing backward? They occupy a curious
third position Ð a hybrid position, as postcolonial theorists would have it Ð
between the traditional left and the traditional right: they have radical
left-wing politics, but a radical right-wing epistemology and cosmology. That
is to say, they claim to bear allegiance to the traditional left's political
ideals of equality, peace, tolerance and ecological sustainability, but they
have lost faith in the traditional left's cultural ideals of scientific reason,
naturalism, humanism and secularism. They reject these Enlightenment ideas as
the source of colonization of the non-Western societies, and a cause of the
environmental and other problems facing the modern world. In
In matters of environmental politics, which is the subject of my talk today,
these backward looking prophets routinely invoke religious idiom Ð almost
always a Hindu idiom, by the way Ð to promote environmental and other public
welfare objective. [Some examples include pani pooja (to promote water
conservation),
This conscious application of a religious attitude toward nature to
contemporary
environmental concerns is what I call religious environmentalism, or
faith-based
environmentalism, if I may borrow this adjective from George Bush.
5. PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISM
Why this intense preoccupation with the religious idiom?
Part of it is strategic: religious imagery is being used to mobilize the masses
for
environmental causes. The assumption is that if people worship nature as
embodiment of shakti, Shiva, Krishna (or in more philosophical, Vedantic terms)
Brahman, they will naturally be inclined to take care of it, use it lightly,
sparingly, with reverence. (I will challenge this assumption later in the talk.
Evidence shows that while sacredness of nature leads to irrational fears and
natural-law ethics, it does not always encourage sustainable use of natural
resources. Indeed, an attitude of reverence toward the powers of nature may
have actually contributed to irresponsible uses of nature. )
But the turn to religious cosmology goes deeper than mere strategy and has to
do with the philosophical allegiance of the anti-Enlightenment left to the
standpoint epistemologies, or local knowledges, of the "Other" of the
West, including women, non-Western people (even the most elite in the
non-Western contexts count as the
"oppressed" and colonized vis-à-vis the Western, while male!). The
epistemological
assumption is that due to the combined sins of the Judeo-Christian heritage,
the "violence" of the Scientific Revolution, patriarchy and
capitalism, Western science is a reductionist and dualist science which
separates matter and mind and treats nature as a mere object to be studied by a
pure subject removed from it. The holy grail of the anti-Enlightenment left is
to create a postmodern science which is non-dualist and holistic. Such a
science will be more respectful of the embedded-ness of science and nature
itself in the cultural context. Non-Western people, especially the oppressed
among them, are supposed to provide the right kind of metaphysic and the right
kind of non-dualistic, non-reductionist value orientation to study nature.
6. OK, definitions out of the way. It is time to ask those "tough
questions" that have been bothering me about this whole business.
I start with a simple question: why is pani-yatra OK, if we think that Advani's
Rath yatra was not? Why should we as secularist scholars, activists and
citizens participate or at least keep quiet when environmentalists inject
religion into public debates over red-green issues, when we condemn the
Hindutvawadis for injecting Ram into the saffron issues of the mosque in
Ayodhya? Just because we believe Ð correctly Ð that our red-green goals are
morally superior to their saffron ones, does it make it ok for us to invoke
religiosity in what are essentially secular matters related to development and
environmental policies? Does the perceived nobility of our ends justify the
means? Shouldn't secularism begin at home? Shouldn't we demand a separation of
faith and politics in new social movements, just as much as from the Sangh
Parivar, or from the current Congress parivar? Should we allow environmentalism
to become the chief agent of Hinduization of politics and culture?
7. In the rest of the time available to me, I want to convince you of the
necessity of a secular, evidence-based, rational environmentalism that respects
the modernist aspirations of the poor even as it seeks to sustain the land,
rivers and air. Here is how I am going to proceed:
First I will show that religious environmentalism has become the Trojan horse
for Hindutva. Dharmic ecology of the right wing is indistinguishable from the
anti-Enlightenment left.
Second, Dharmic ecology of Hindutva right is emerging as the hub of a new
neo-pagan International. Neo-paganism in
Three, I will argue that sacredness of nature does not protect nature Just
because people venerate trees and rivers does not meant that they will take
care of them.
I will conclude with a suggestion that, in fact, a secular, promethean
environmentalism is more in keeping with the aspirations of the poor in
8. The SHARED GROUND between the anti-Enlightenment left and the Hindu right.
Through the decade of the nineties, just as anti-Enlightenment theory was at
its height, and just as Hindu nationalists had come to power, a new academic
discipline called "Dharmic ecology," or Hindu ecology was taking
shape with active participation of Hindu philosophers, world-renowned
Sanskritists and Indologists, the Goddess feminists, anthropologists, religious
cults like Hare Krishnas, Hindutva propagandists, and sadly, the
representatives of our own Crusading Gandhians, the prophets facing backward.
(Anil Agarwal, Sundarlal Bahuguna, Shiva as participants or as informers.
Chipko and NBA cited as examples of Dharmic ecology). Two major books, one by
Every ancient high-Hindu text from the Rig Veda to the Upanishads, along with
Manusmriti, Bhagvat Gita, Bhagvat Purana, Ramayana and Mahabharata has been
reinterpreted as supporting a unique eco-spirituality which encourages an
ecological ethic suitable for the contemporary 21 st century world. Every
Brahminical Hindu concept, from the obnoxious theory of karma and reincarnation has been appropriated as a
source of ecological wisdom. Every major god and goddess has been inducted as
an ecologist.
What is Dharmic ecology? It is basically an unabashedly Hindu supremacist,
nationalistic version of the same religious environmentalism that the
anti-Enlightenment left has been preaching and practicing. Proponents of
Dharmic ecology agree with their left-wing anti-Enlightenment counterparts that
a. because Hindus find gods in nature, because they see nature as embodiment of
the divine, they must therefore, by definition have a more evolved ecological
ethic; and
b. it is because of the colonization of the mind by Western reductionist
science that
Indians have forgotten this holistic worldview; and
c. that a revival of this "holistic" "non-dualistic"
worldview is needed in order to
encourage environmentally responsible development.
The difference between the two is while the left tries to find all these
ecological virtues in the Hinduism of the poor peasants, hill people, women and
other marginalized groups, the right-wing unproblematically locates it in the
Brahminical Hinduism itself. It makes no attempt to subalternize the Hindu
ecological ethic.
9. Chipko as the bridge between the Right and the Left
I will very briefly use the example of Chipko to illustrate how close the left
and the right are on salient points.
Thanks to the painstaking and careful research by people like Haripriya Rangan,
Emma Mawdsley and numerous other Indian and Western researchers, it is by now
very clear that Chipko was not an assertion of traditional values or even
traditional forest rights of non-modern villagers and women against commercial
forestry. Chipko was not a rejection of commercial forestry but a struggle for
a preferred access to markets, credit, jobs and subsidies for the local people
in the industry.
In the Hindu ecology literature, however, Shiva and Sundarlal Bahuguna's
interpretation of Chipko as the civilizational and religious expression of
women and hill people are taken as canonical. Chipko is presented in the Hindu
ecology literature as, quote, the "application of foundational ideas of
Hindu philosophy to environmental action" and an "affirmation of
spiritual value of nature." (George James, from Chapple's anthology). The
recitation of Bhagwat Katha, probably arranged by Sundar Lal Bahuguna and women
tying rakhi to trees are taken as evidence of the influence of Hindu
religiosity.
10. Dharmic ecology opens the door to Hinduism in politics. The success of
Chipko and the various anti-dam campaigns, especially the anti-Tehri dam
movement are used as exemplars of how Hinduism can make a positive contribution
to the global environmental movements. Not surprisingly, under the BJP rule,
government began to actively fund temples, pilgrimage sites and religious cults
for reforestation and maintenance of sacred groves. A few examples will
suffice:
° G. B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Ecology has been working with the
° Indian government funded in part the work of ISKCON (Hare Krishna) in
re-forestation of Vrindavan
° Department of environment is supporting temples to maintain sacred groves.
° Ecological aspects of Sanatana dharma have
been included in the school text books of at least one state, UP.
11. The Hindutva Ð Neo-Pagan connection
If you think this is bad, wait, it gets worse. In the hands of Hindutva's deep
thinkers, notably Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel, dharmic ecology takes an
explicitly anti-monotheistic turn, aimed superficially at Christianity. Goel
notably, but also many others like N. S. Rajaram and Koenrard Elst hold
"Semitic monotheism" responsible for the crisis of modernity: they
take the left's critique of the scientific revolution as disenchanting the
world, but blame it on Christianity, rather than on science per se. All the
ills of modernity that the left and right both agree upon are pinned on to the
monotheistic conception of God who stands outside nature, creating this split
between man and nature.
And this anti-Christian turn makes dharmic ecology very friendly to the
anti-Christian, neo-pagan groups that are mushrooming in
Western Neo-pagans are mostly disillusioned Christians. They reject the
transcendent God of Abrahamic faiths, who created the natural order, but now
stands outside nature. They are attracted to paganism which sees the sacred as
manifested in nature more rationally and aesthetically convincing.
Where are they going to find this paganism? Well, they try to revive the local
gods of the pre-Christian European tribes. Thus there is a revival of such
European nature gods as Odin, Thor, Wotan, the old Germanic and Nordic gods,
combined with practices associated with occult, Celtic druidism and witchcraft.
Of course, there is another place they can turn to for inspiration and support
Ð and that is Hinduism, the living religion of nature. It is this pagan
connection that has brought people like Koenrard Elst, David Frawley and many
others in close collaboration with Hindu nationalists.
Not surprisingly, Hindu nationalists are very keen on winning the Western
neo-pagans to their side. This will give them a chance to hollow out
Christianity from within and give Hinduism a global scope. There are contacts
between the RSS ideologues and the British, Irish and Lithuanian neo-pagans. (
give details of the mutual overtures). Dharmic ecology becomes the polite,
politically correct face of the pagan outlook.
12. THE FASCISM QUESTION: All neo-pagans are not fascists. Not at all. Indeed,
neo-paganism can stand by itself as a genuine religion, with no necessary
connections with fascist, racist politics. And I have no evidence at all that
the neo-pagan groups that Hindutva is trying to bring into its own fold have
any overt connections with Nazi or neo-Nazi groups.
What worry me are three things
° The long history of the Nazi and neo-Nazi involvement with occult and
paganism. Most people don't realize that the Nazism was a revolt against
universalistic and secular elements of Christianity which the Nazis' ascribed
to the influence of the Jews. Why this attraction for the occult and paganism:
Ð local gods are more blood and soil gods.
Ð Nature religions allow their adherents a great deal of hubris. They feel they
are
acting in accord with nature itself and don't have to obey either the positive
law
of the land, or the traditional ethics, all of which they see as merely
man-made
law.
° Non-political, perfectly decent neopagans might attract racist groups. For e.
g., wicca or even deep ecologists who have no rightwing sympathies tend to
attract neo-Nazi groups who are into occult and the cult of Odin.
° The more prominence Hinduism gets abroad, even for wrong reasons like the new
age and paganism, the more prestige it gains in
13. But the defenders of religious environmentalism might still ask: So what?
Just because the right-wing is opportunistically jumping on the ecology
bandwagon, and bringing foreign neo-pagans along, does not prove that religion
cannot be an effective check against environmental degradation.
But by now there is sufficient evidence from anthropological studies that nature
worship plays a highly ambiguous role in how people relate to nature. Just
because people hold some rivers, trees, stones, animals as sacred does not mean
a. That they do it out of environmental concerns. Wish-fulfillment (e. g., for
better
rains, higher crop yields), fear, ancestor worship are fairly common
motivations
for nature worship. (Examples from Baviskar, Jackson.
b. Those natural entities deemed sacred for whatever reason will be better
taken care of (e. g.
My point is that the underlying assumption of religious environmentalism Ð that
a religious attitude of sacredness and reverence toward nature encourages wise
use of nature Ð is not supported by sound evidence from field studies.
14. In closing, I would like to return to a hard-learned, but mostly forgotten,
lesson of the environmental movement in
15. This secular motivation for environmental action is an untapped resource
for secular environmentalism. Rather than drape the cloak of sacredness on
nature, environmentalism in
What Is So Dangerous about Religious Secularism in India
A preliminary reply by Dr. Koenraad Elst to Ms.
A certain
It is not contrived to describe
Oh, and the second item in that final call is "secularism". In
principle, Marxists are supposed to be atheists. In
In her paper "Dharmic ecology and the neo-Pagan international: the dangers
of religious environmentalism in India", presented at panel no. 15 at the
18th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, 6-9 July 2004 in Lund,
Sweden,
Ecology and religion
Ecology can perfectly exist without religion. A case in point is Nazi
Germany, a secular state and the pioneer of environmental policies. Its
preservation of rare species, its first anti-smoking campaigns, its first
environmental-effect reports in preparation of new industrial initiatives, its
tree-planting campaigns and other ecological measures: all these were given a purely
secularist justification, mainly in terms of health and hygiene. The
hard-headed Nazis were sceptical of the religious-environmentalist belief that
"reverence towards nature encourages wise use of nature", as
You could even say that this secularism is what made Nazi ecology dangerous. It
was part of a reductionist worldview that reduced living beings including human
beings to their material, biological dimension. That is why it was of one
piece with Nazi racism. In the pre-secular past, people had certain ideas
about racial traits and they often believed that there were statistical
differences in character and aptitudes between, say, blacks and whites. Yet,
these assumed differences were kept in a certain proportion because men were
deemed to have a deeper identity than their biological characteristics, loosely
known as the soul. That is why the Catholic Church could intervene to
mitigate the sufferings of the Amerindians under Spanish rule: whatever their
alleged inferiority in aptitudes, they were entitled to a humane (though not,
for that, an equal) treatment because they were endowed with souls. In
the bio-materialist view adopted by the Nazis, by contrast, men's personalities
entirely coincided with their genetic determinants.
One way of conceiving the soul was as an entity which could
embody itself in a human body, but could also exist outside the body and later
return to the physical world by incarnating in yet another body. This
belief in reincarnation is central to Jainism and Buddhism, and it has also
been adopted in Hinduism. The Vedic hymns had no notion of reincarnation
yet, but in the Upanishads we learn that the idea was borrowed from the warrior
class, the class to which wandering ascetics like Mahavira Jina and Gautama the
Buddha belonged. In the vast and variegated Hindu society, this belief in
reincarnation coexists with other notions of soul and afterlife. Personally, I
don't know whether this widespread belief is true or not, I am inclined to
reject it, but then I also hesitate to say that seers of the Buddha's stature
were all wrong.
At any rate, Marxists never wonder whether a theory is true or not, they only
care about what class interests a theory may serve. Lenin despised a
concern for universally valid truth as "bourgeois objectivity"; in
this respect, he was the forerunner of postmodern relativism. So, I am
not surprised to find
Yet, the belief in reincarnation is also productive of its own type of
environmentalism: since souls can incarnate in non-human beings, we had better
treat even plants and animals with at least a measure of the respect which we
as humans would expect from others. That is why the Dalai Lama and other
spokesmen of reincarnatory doctrines have a point when they claim an
intrinsically ecological concern for their religions. Ms. Nanda has
described how environmentalism in
And then it gets really bad: "Indian government funded in part the work of
ISKCON (Hare Krishna) in re-forestation of Vrindavan. Department of environment
is supporting temples to maintain sacred groves. Ecological aspects of Sanatana
dharma have been included in the school text
books of at least one state, UP." Let's put this in
perspective. Most relevant secularist school textbooks, not only in UP,
contain the highly disputable claim that Islam stands for "social
equality" (has Ms. Nanda ever protested against that?), but we are asked
to feel scandalized that a similar claim is made for Hinduism and
ecology. Christian and Muslim denominational schools which receive state
funding under Art. 30 of the Constitution (unlike Hindu denominational schools,
which are excluded from this provision for not being "minority institutions"),
mix their educational task with not just the exercise but also the propagation
of religion. Yet
However terrible all this may have sounded, now it gets even worse: "If
you think this is bad, wait, it gets worse."
The problem with monotheism
On the road to hell, one of the last horrors one may encounter, is this:
"In the hands of Hindutva's deep thinkers, notably Ram Swarup and Sita Ram
Goel, dharmic ecology takes an explicitly anti-monotheistic turn, aimed
superficially at Christianity. Goel notably, but also many others like N. S.
Rajaram and Koenrard Elst hold 'Semitic monotheism' responsible for the crisis
of modernity: they take the left's critique of the scientific revolution as
disenchanting the world, but blame it on Christianity, rather than on science per
se. All the ills of modernity that the left and right both agree upon are
pinned on to the monotheistic conception of God who stands outside nature,
creating this split between man and nature."
Here,
And how would the critique of monotheism be only "superficially aimed
at Christianity"? What
"deeper" aim is being taken, and how would
Incidentally, now that
Rarely have so many errors been squeezed into a single paragraph. Next
case in point: Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel wrote in defence of Hinduism, never
of "Hindutva". The latter term was launched by the Hindu
Mahasabha and subsequently adopted by the RSS, organizations of which the said
independent authors were never members nor camp-followers. Indeed, if
Ms. Nanda systematically misspells my Christian name as "Koenrard".
Clearly, all while criticizing me, she has never read any publication of
mine. And it shows. She imputes to me, along with a few others,
certain objections against "Semitic monotheism", an expression which
she herself puts in quote marks. Well, she can't be quoting me there, for
I never use that expression. On the contrary, I have repeatedly written
out my reasons for rejecting the term "Semitic" as a religious
category, effectively synonymous with "prophetic-monotheistic".
I refer to my books "Decolonizing the Hindu Mind" and "The
Saffron Swastika" for this, though I leave it to her to find the page
numbers; after all it is *her* job to read the authors whom she wants to
criticize.
But since she seems to find it beneath her dignity to actually read my
publications, I will summarize the reasons right here. Firstly, to
Western ears, but largely unknown to Hindus, the term "Semitic" has
connotations with "anti-Semitism" and is rarely used in any other
context, except by linguists when they refer to the language group chiefly
comprising Akkadian, Ugaritic,
Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Amharic. Secondly and more
importantly, there is nothing intrinsically monotheistic about the
Semitic-speaking peoples, vide the polytheism of the Babylonians or Phoenicians
and even of the Israelites and Arabs before monotheism was violently imposed on
them by Moses c.q. Mohammed, as per their own scriptures.
Three cheers for modern science
Neither Goel nor NS Rajaram nor myself hold monotheism responsible for an
alleged "crisis of modernity". In fact, we're quite happy with
modernity. It is in pre-modern societies that monotheist militancy has wrought
many a crisis. For the late Goel, "postmodernism" came too late
on the scene to even register in his worldview, while Dr. Rajaram, a
professional mathematician, has mocked postmodernist fads repeatedly on various
internet discussion lists. Modernity, by contrast, has been a liberating
development which, among other things, broke the spell of dogmatic religions
and created new intellectual tools for unmasking and debunking them. It
is sheer invention on Ms. Nanda's part that any of us has adopted "the
left's critique of the scientific revolution as disenchanting the world",
let alone that we would "blame it on Christianity". We have
nothing against the s