Topic started by mandoose (@ cache-blr.ernet.in) on Wed Oct 31 14:18:21 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
First a few clarifications : I am not against hindus or hinduism.. I am against hindutva (Hindutva is an ideology, based on a modern day version of centralized intolerant Hinduism. It has nothing to do with a historical tradition of spiritual practices that we call Hinduism.)
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 India by forcing such absurdities as "Vedic astrology" into the college curricula? Why must they also insist upon declaring astrology, and the entire Vedic tradition, "scientific"?
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 India
and abroad. We will find that postmodernist condemnations of science and
modernity, coupled with uncritical celebration of "local knowledges" have
created a climate in which irrationalities of all kinds can thrive.
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 1998 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 goddess es
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 India. They have dreamt of a "Hindu modernity" in which technology
serves to glorify India's "natural" spirituality.
This Hindu modernity, incidentally, bears a frightening similarity with
the reactionary modernism of Hitler's Germany, where high technology was
allowed to mix with a highly romanticized dream of recreating an Aryan
society. The Nazis, too, assumed that Germany could be both
technologically advanced and remain true to its "Aryan soul".
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 India.
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 India associated with a host of populist "alternative
science" and "alternative development" movements, with Gandhian,
environmentalist, and even some Marxist elements. All these groups
believe that the problems of modernization in India stem from the very
nature of modern scientific ways of thinking about nature and human
beings. They see the content of science - and not just its application -
to be Western or Orientalist, and believe that real decolonization will
only come with development of indigenous sciences.
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 Subhash Kak, David Frawley and N.S. Rajaram argue that the
conceptual categories and methods of science must be organically connected
to the rest of the culture of a society. On this account, different
cultures will have different idea of what is reasonable and true: thus,
the supernatural is declared to be real and true for Hindu science. This
idea that standards and methods of rationality differ with different
cultures is borrowed from the postmodernist critiques of science.
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 India.
-- mandoose
Tell your friend about this topic