Written
by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, 28 January, 2016
Copyright © Dr. Seshadri Kumar. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are the
opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean the
opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated
otherwise in the article.
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Happy 67th Republic Day. (I
know it is a bit late, but what’s a couple of days in 67 years? I’m certainly
punctual by Indian standards.)
Today (January 26) marks the adoption of the Indian
Constitution in 1950 by India.
One very important part of the Constitution is the section on “Fundamental
Duties” of Indian citizens, added to the Constitution by an amendment in
1970. One of these fundamental duties is that “it shall be the duty of every
citizen to develop the scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry
and reform.”
Indians in today’s India seem to have forgotten this important
injunction.
What is this “scientific temper?” The Wikipedia article on
Scientific Temper describes it as follows:
Scientific temper is a way of life - an individual and social process of
thinking and acting - which uses a scientific
method, which may include questioning, observing physical reality,
testing, hypothesizing, analysing, and communicating (not necessarily in that
order). Scientific temper describes an attitude which involves the application
of logic. Discussion,
argument and analysis are vital parts of scientific temper. Elements of
fairness, equality and democracy are built into it. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first to use the phrase in
1946. He later gave a descriptive
explanation:
“[What
is needed] is the scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper
of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to
change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on
observed fact and not on pre-conceived theory, the hard discipline of the
mind—all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for
life itself and the solution of its many problems.” —Jawaharlal Nehru (1946) The Discovery of India, p. 512.
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| Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the First Prime Minister of India, Who Coined the Term, "Scientific Temper" |
Nehru, who seems to have coined this
word, qualified what was meant by scientific temper even more, clarifying that
it was a way of thinking, and not just about science. As the Wikipedia article continues:
Nehru wrote that scientific temper goes beyond the domain in
which science is normally done, and deals also with the consideration of
ultimate purposes, beauty, goodness, and truth. But he also said that it is the
opposite of the method of religion, which relies on emotion and intuition and
is (mis)applied "to everything in life, even to those things which are
capable of intellectual inquiry and observation."While religion tends to
close the mind and produce "intolerance, credulity and superstition,
emotionalism and irrationalism", and "a temper of a dependent, unfree
person", a scientific temper "is the temper of a free man". He
also indicated that the scientific temper goes beyond objectivity and fosters
creativity and progress. He envisioned that the spread of scientific temper
would be accompanied by a shrinking of the domain of religion, and "the
exciting adventure of fresh and never ceasing discoveries, of new panoramas
opening out and new ways of living, adding to [life's] fullness and ever making
it richer and more complete." He
was of the strong opinion that "It is science alone that can solve the
problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition
and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a
rich country inhabited by starving people."
The Vanishing Scientific Temper of Hindutva
Followers
Of late, or, more specifically, since
the rise to prominence of Narendra Modi and his ascent to the prime
ministership, many Indians seem to have totally lost the scientific temper. I
refer not to illiterate, uneducated people. I am talking about friends of mine
who have studied at the most prestigious Universities in India and the United
States. I am talking about those who have worked in world-class industrial
R&D organizations and who, even today, apply logic relentlessly in their
professional domain.
For quite a few years now, these
people have developed a split personality, a schism within themselves, in their
approach to the world. When it comes to their professional domain, they are
relentless in the pursuit of logic and rationality; if one of these people is a
marketing manager, for example, you can be sure that he will not invest a dime
of his company’s money in a new market unless the data show unquestionably that
there is a profit to be made; if she is a scientist, you can be sure that she
will not follow a scientific route of inquiry unless she has researched the
work of scientists past and can clearly defend whatever hypothesis she is
proposing; if he is an IT person, you can be sure he will only use the best
practices in that industry, which have been tried and tested and proven to be
the best.
But a strange transformation comes
over these people when they switch from the professional to the personal domain
– when they talk about their religion, their culture, and the history of the
country of their birth. Suddenly they undergo a 180 degree turnaround – they
insist that it is not fact that matters but belief. They refuse to apply logic.
They accuse those who use logic and rationality to analyse situations of being
unpatriotic and possessed of a “slavish mentality.” There are many examples of
this Jekyll-Hyde transformation. I will discuss a couple of them here.
The Aryan Migration Debate
The Aryan
Migration debate relates to the history of India a couple of thousands of
years ago. Archaeological expeditions started in pre-Independence India by the
British revealed the great Indus Valley
Civilization (IVC) sites of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. This showed the world
that the Indian subcontinent was the home of one of the truly advanced and
great civilizations of the ancient world. The IVC settlements are dated to as
long back as 6000 BC (e.g., Mehrgarh),
but the city of Harappa itself, the most important city in this complex, is
dated to only as far back as 2600 BC. There is a mature phase of the Harappan
Civilization that is dated between 2600-1900 BC, a transition phase between
1900-1800 BC, and a late phase that sees the decline of Harappa, leading to the
abandonment of the city itself, between 1800-1300 BC.
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| The Ruins of Mohenjo-Daro, with The Great Bath in the Foreground |
The decline of the IVC also coincides
with the rise of Vedic Hinduism,
which appears to have come into India roughly around 1500 BC.
There are a lot of links between
Vedic Hinduism and Zoroastrianism,
specifically that the Avesta,
the main religious book of the Zoroastrians, specifically refers to the Devas as the enemy.
Linguists have long postulated that “Asura” in the Hindu holy books,
the Vedas, refers to “Ahura,” especially in light of
passages in the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrians, which refer to the
Devas as their enemy, with the
passage,
And
I shall destroy the malice of all the malicious, the malice of Daevas and men,
of the Yatus and Pairikas, of the oppressors, the blind, and the deaf.
Like the Vedic Hindus, the
Zoroastrians also worshipped the fire, and consumed the sacred offering Soma (which they called Haoma). All this leads to the
possibility that Vedic Hinduism migrated to India from Central Asia through
Iran.
In addition, the IVC appears to have
very few links to Vedic Hinduism. In particular, the horse, which is an
important part of the Vedas, finds no reference in the IVC seals. The only
animal similar to a horse that is found in the IVC seals is an animal that is often
described as a “unicorn,” (see figure below) but really looks like a bull with
one horn. But what seems more likely (since there is no evidence of unicorns
anywhere in history or geography) is that this is a bull viewed end-on, with just
one horn shown. But the horse finds no pictorial depiction in the IVC seals at
all.
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| The Famous "Unicorn Seal" of the Indus Valley Civilization |
One connection that the IVC does seem
to share with modern Hinduism is the famous Pashupati seal: a seal depicting a
person in an obviously yogic pose, surrounded by a variety of animals. This
seal is thought to perhaps mean the adi-yogi, Shiva. The explanation for this
might well be, as
eminent researchers like Iravatham Mahadevan have proposed, that the IVC
was a prototypical Dravidian civilization, and Shiva a Dravidian God. One of
the modern ideas on IVC is that modern Hinduism is a blend of religious customs
and deities from the IVC and the Vedic religion.
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| The Pashupati IVC Seal |
Hindutva followers are very
uncomfortable with all these discoveries. They are uncomfortable with the idea
that Vedic Hinduism is a fairly recent import to India. They would like to
believe that India has remained Vedic for ever; that Vedic Hinduism arose in
the Indian subcontinent. This is also central to their aim to declare
non-Hindus (and followers of religions unconnected with Hinduism, such as Islam
and Christianity) as “foreigners” because India is not their holy land (as
Savarkar said in his book “Who
is a Hindu?”) They prefer to think of the links between Vedic Hinduism and
Zoroastrianism as having been there because Hinduism arose in India and then
migrated westwards.
Unfortunately, the facts do not
support this. Archaeologists have found that the oldest
reference to the Vedic culture occurs not in India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan,
but in Syria. If Hinduism started in the Indian subcontinent and travelled westwards,
we should expect the opposite – the oldest Hindu artefacts found in India.
I should point out here that the
issues are certainly not completely settled. There is fierce
debate among scholars on many issues on the facts and what they mean and
how they should be interpreted.
Rather than dispute the facts in a
logical manner, and discuss which of them may have errors in them, these
Hindutva followers often confront rational thinkers like me with questions such
as: “Why don’t you have pride in India?” “Why don’t you want to believe that
India was the source of Hinduism?” Or worse, they will say, “Your assertion
that Hinduism came to India from the west was first stated by Western scholars
to undermine India. Your agreeing with them shows that you are a slave of the
west and have no national pride.”
What these people are missing is that
pride in something false is pointless. If it is false and you believe it,
someday your mythical worldview will come crashing down on you and make you
look really bad. Our honourable PM experienced this when, in order to show his
pride in India’s glorious past, he
claimed that Hindus knew about plastic surgery thousands of years before the
west, with the story of the God Ganesha being an example to prove this. Or the Indian Science Congress of 2015, in which
some speakers, encouraged by the Central government, made ludicrous statements
that Indians
knew how to fly thousands of years ago on the basis of mythological
stories. Attempts like this only make you look sorry.
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| Indian PM Narendra Modi Speaking at The Indian Science Congress, 2015 |
Reason and logic – in short, the
scientific temper – is the only way to analzye these really complex issues. I
do not want to get into more detail of the issues involving the AMT debate now.
My objective is not to prove that the AMT is absolutely correct. There can be,
and there are, many
valid objective views on this.
But
the point I am making is that when someone says “Hinduism may have migrated
into India from Central Asia,” the correct response is NOT to say, “Oh yeah? Go
to Pakistan, you brown sahib, you Macaulay-putra.”
One can have a lot of pride in Indian
culture (as I do) and still think the evidence seems to heavily suggest that
Hinduism is a blend of two religions – what existed before the Aryans came to
the subcontinent and what the Aryans brought with them.
The Caste System in Hinduism
Another thing that always gets
the Hindutva supporter’s goat is discussion of the caste system in
Hinduism. The caste system is one of the most abhorrent legacies of
Hinduism to the world. It is so corrosive that even converts from Hinduism to
other religions, like Islam and Christianity, tend to practice it within those
religions (which do not permit such distinctions.)
Furthermore, the caste system
is very much alive, and even in the 21st century, we hear of
caste-based atrocities in India, in which upper castes behave horribly with
lower castes just because they may have used a common facility, like a road.
And this, in spite of the Indian constitution, which was written 67 years ago
this day, specifically outlawing caste discrimination.
Hindus are often mortified when
non-Hindus ask them how their religion can sanction such horrible crimes
against fellow humans. This is particularly true of Indians who live abroad, as
western Christians are completely unfamiliar with these concepts, and many are
shamefaced about explaining this obviously unjust and cruel concept.
So they have come up with some
clever, albeit false, rationalizations.
The chief plank of their
defence is to claim that caste discrimination, especially the crude and evil
way it is practiced in many parts of India even today, was never part of the
pure Hindu way. They admit that caste discrimination is an evil, but claim that
it is a social custom that was added to Hindu custom by some people from the
upper castes a few hundred or maybe a thousand years ago to empower themselves;
that it is a false Hinduism; that pure Hinduism never gives sanction it; even
that the story about Hinduism crushing underfoot the lower castes and the “untouchables”
in India is a myth that the Englishman introduced to make India lose confidence
in itself; that the scriptures do not
sanction caste discrimination.
This is a lie.
The fact is that the Hindu
scriptures have reams of rules about caste discrimination – rules that are
absolutely unambiguous, and cannot be “interpreted” in any convenient way –
that state quite clearly the position of the different castes. They state quite
clearly that the Brahmanas (priests) are the highest stratum, followed by the
Kshatriyas (warriors), followed by the Vaishyas (merchants), and finally by the
Shudras (laborers). These are finally followed by those outside the four-fold
division of society, the Dalits (not the name used in the scriptures – Dalit is
a modern name – but the meaning is the same) – who have no status and no rights
in society, who are essentially slaves of the four strata of Hindu society.
When confronted with this truth,
Hindutva followers often claim that the fourfold division of Hinduism is simply
an optimal organization of labour, just as today we have bankers, engineers,
priests, accountants, drivers, doctors, and the like. The vital difference is that today the son of a sweeper can become a
doctor; in Vedic times this was impossible.
Nothing illustrates this truth
better than the story
of Matanga from the Mahabharata. Matanga was a boy who was born a Dalit but
adopted by a kind Brahmana. When an adolescent, he learns the truth of his
birth and is told his soul is unclean (since he is a Dalit). Matanga resolves
to cleanse his soul of its blot, and performs terrible penance, starving
himself and devoting himself to God for years. Finally satisfied with his
prayers, Indra, king of the gods, comes down from the heavens to grant Matanga’s
prayers. Matanga asks to be transformed into a Brahmana. Indra tells him this
is not possible and asks Matanga to ask another boon. Matanga will not relent;
he performs more and more penance to force Indra to grant his wish. Finally,
Indra tells him that his wish is impossible to grant; that his soul being born
in the low caste of Dalits, he would have to suffer millions of rebirths as a
Dalit to be born as one of the fourfold, a low Shudra, then again millions of
rebirths with good behaviour to graduate to the next caste, and so on, until he
would need quintillion rebirths as a Kshatriya to be born as a Brahmana. He
thus assures Matanga that being converted to a Brahmana in the same birth is
impossible.
When confronted with these
uncomfortable facts, the Hindutva follower gets very angry, calls me a stooge
of those who would like to malign Hinduism, and asks me why I cannot find good
things to say about Hinduism.
But things do not become good simply
because we wish them to be. The scientific temper requires that we use
rationality and logic to examine questions and decide whether they are right or
wrong. Just saying that Hinduism never discriminates against lower castes will
not make it so.
We have to accept what a
careful analysis of Hindu scripture tells us. And in my careful study, 95% of
scripture strongly sanctions caste discrimination and cruelty, and about 5% says
the opposite – that caste is based on character, not birth. But there is a
preponderance of passages that say that caste discrimination is not only
correct, but required of a good Hindu. (This is the subject of a future
article.)
To be fair to the Hindutva
follower, his ignorance is not entirely his fault. This false version of
Hinduism has been fed to him by such eminent people like Mahatma
Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda.
Their desire to fill Indians with pride about their civilization was stronger
than their love for the truth. It was luminaries like these who taught the
Hindu of the 20th century that Hinduism was not to blame at all for
its ills; it took a man of the courage of BR Ambedkar to expose this lie in his
classic work, “The
Annihilation of Caste.”
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| Mahatma Gandhi (left) and Swami Vivekananda (right) |
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| Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Architect of India's Constitution |
Calling someone who points out the
deficiencies in Hinduism a Hindu-hater or a follower of Lord
Macaulay, who held Hinduism in contempt, is not the way to address this
problem. It reveals a deep deficiency in the scientific temper.
Concluding Thoughts
India is facing a serious
problem in the vanishing of the scientific temper when it comes to social and
religious issues. There are many among the majority Hindus who see any
criticism of one “official” line of thought very offensive. This serious
problem has to be rectified if India as a country and a civilization is to move
ahead, and if its culture has to grow and be dynamic.
If we truly want to celebrate
our 67th Republic Day, maybe we could go beyond the parades and make
a true commitment to inculcate a scientific temper within us, as is enjoined
upon us by the Constitution.
