Is jingoistic science discrediting the astounding achievements of ancient Indian knowledge?

courtesy: http://economictimes.com/

Jacob Koshy

When concluding a public lecture on Einstein at the Indian Science Congress in the first week of 2015, Abhay Ashtekar, an Indian-born theoretical physicist at Pennsylvania State University and among the founders of loop quantum gravity — an esoteric mathematical approach to better understand gravity's role in the universe — remarked, rather bleakly, that it was no longer possible for human beings to entirely grasp the complexity of the universe by thought alone. "Today, without sophisticated instruments, expensive space probes and gargantuan detectors, knowledge of the beginnings and evolution of the universe would have been impossible," he summarised to a resounding ovation.

However, the applause Ashtekar drew, after his hour-long recce of 100 years of cosmology, was several decibels lower than the plaudits from a 500-strong audience for Captain Anand Jayaram Bodas, who 24 hours earlier, on the same podium, expounded on a 200-foot plane that was powered by 40 engines with "flexible exhaust pipes made of fabric and animal skin". The aeroplane, the ex-pilot noted "was just one of many common in the Vedic Age". He sourced his information to texts and scriptures originally authored by Maharshi Bhardwaj, who "lived between 6,000 and 7,000 BC".

Bodas, who with his remarks made it to the front pages of most newspapers, didn't take questions such as how these planes were fuelled, what were the aerodynamic principles involved and refused an interview with this reporter saying "journalists had misrepresented his words by referring to his assertions as 'mythical'". In his presentation, he added that several techniques of making aircraft bodies with alloys were mentioned and of the 500 verses that made up the body of Bhardwaj's work, only 100 had survived. He nevertheless exhorted students to make aircraft bodies using techniques mentioned in the texts.

Had Bodas used a 15-year-old, easily available technology called Google, he would've come across a 1974 paper in the journal Scientific Opinion titled 'A Critical Study of the Work Vymanika Shastra', by HS Mukunda, SM Deshpande, HR Nagendra, A Prabhu and SP Govindaraju. The authors who are aerospace and mechanical engineers, and then at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, argued that Vymanika Shastra, one of the antiquarian books cited by Bodas that mentioned the various kinds of planes Bodas explicated, didn't seem older than 1922. Their research paper, analysing each of the various planes mentioned in the book, concludes that "...the descriptions of their making in the text do not seem to make much sense from the point of view of making them in actual practice..." and there is "no mention at all of the weights of different components. This is serious, as that is fundamental to the flying of heavier-than-air machines".

Calling Attention

While Bodas may have garnered the maximum attention at the fest — perhaps more than the several Nobel laureates, biologists, particle physicists and rivalled prime minister Modi's de rigueur extempore perorations — he is at the apex of a revisionist clamour that over the last few months has seen several ministers attribute plastic surgery, stem cells, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, algebra and Pythagoras theorem as having been developed by India and "given away" to the rest of the world. However, Science Congress' organisers say that it was unfortunate that one "publicity monger" had managed to hijack all the attention and eclipsed many more thought-provoking sessions on 'Make in India', 'Swachh Bharat Mission' and medical breakthroughs.

SB Nimse, president, Indian Science Congress Association, said that he had made a conscious effort to invigorate the century-old Science Congress by ensuring that leading, active researchers from all over the world congregate, exchange ideas and inspire young students to the possibilities of science. The proposal to include a session on scientific ideas in ancient Indian literature — the first such in the organisation's history — came from the Kavikulaguru Kalidas Sanskrit University, Nagpur and, while Nimse emphasised that he had no role in conceiving such a session, it appeared a good idea. "While they initially requested a day-long session, I insisted it be only a few hours and moreover it seemed worthwhile to have a discussion on scientific thought in our ancient texts," said Nimse. "There is considerable scholarship, for instance, on the conception of multiple infinities in old Jain literature and how even Fields medallist Manjul Bhargava's [one of the speakers at the Science Congress] prize-winning work was party influenced by his reading of [19th century] German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in the original." Nimse emphasised that there was no request or pressure from the government to include such a session and that whether such as session would be included in future was "up to the future president".

Sage Talk

Neither Nimse nor environment minister Prakash Javadekar, who was one of the speakers at the science and Sanskrit session, was present for the research papers that were presented and discussed. These included, apart from Bodas' presentation, talks on ancient Indian surgery, architecture and the neuroscience of yoga. Many of these works relied on a firmer historical base than Bodas' bibliography. For instance, Ashwin Sawant's work on the surgical tools and techniques in ancient India relied on the Sushruta Samhita, an important work of the Ayurveda canon, and yet the dominant argument that permeated most of the findings was that all valuable science was discovered in India and refined to immaculate perfection between roughly 2,000 BC and 500 AD. All such knowledge was known to 'sages' and over time this knowledge was "lost" or made "impure" as they began to be practised unscientifically by a larger pool of semi-trained practitioners and worse, impeded by the dominance of Buddhism, Jainism and later Islam.

Sawant, an Ayurveda physician and a PhD student, dressed in an immaculate grey suit, concluded with an exhortation that "...Sushruta is asking for credit to be known worldwide as the father of surgery". He argued that sophisticated techniques, such as corrective nose surgery, and the use of scalpels so sharp that they could "split hair", were lost because of the subsequent dominance of "certain religions". Also, he argued, "Buddhism's advocacy of non-violence gained such precedence that even the use of scalpels were considered to be violent and over time, surgery started to be practiced by 'lower classes' and they lost their refinement."

Rahul Altekar, another speaker on the same forum, claimed that principles of architecture in the Vastu Shastra were so refined that "houses were prescribed to last for an average of 500 years". Only one of the papers, by Veena Londhe and Leena Phadke, presented experimental work that purported to show the superiority of yoga asanas when compared to popular aerobic exercises of the present day such as jogging. When Phadke stated that measurements by her associates, which included researchers from the University of Munich, of electrical activity in the brain in people performing the 'sirsasana,' or a headstand, was similar to that when we are supine or extremely calm, the audience again broke into raptures. She however didn't explain why such a headstand, then, was preferable to lying down if the resultant "brain activity" was the same and why this was healthier than deep breathing.

Future of the Past

"I am a Hindu, proud of it and yet there is an inviolable line between science and belief," said KS Saraswat, a professor at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany, Lucknow. He was part of a separate panel at the Science Congress, which presented work at a session called the 'Future of the Past', or on what were the latest archaeological techniques and discoveries being employed to understand India's early history.

In his presentation, he showed photos of lithographs and temple iconography from several Indian, Thai and Chinese temples to argue that fruits such as maize, cashew and the Brazilian pineapple — canonically believed to have been introduced to India and the East only after the European discovery of the Americas in the 16th century — were actually known to India and the East in the first millennium itself. Though this is a matter of academic dispute, Saraswat is disinterested in its implications. "This is not even my work and am relying on previous research in the US, but I'm not going to make the argument that maize was discovered in India or that Indians knew the Americas long ago," said Saraswat, "and that's because I don't have the evidence. It doesn't matter what I actually believe."

Researchers, who are exploring provocative ideas and challenging conventional West-backed histories, said that sessions such as the science and Sanskrit impede their work.

"The vimanwallahs do more harm than good because they assume any science done in the West is conspiratorial and biased toward India. Sure, there are sometimes problems with American and European interpretations, but they must be refuted in the language of science," said Mayank Vahia, a physicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. With interests ranging from cosmic rays and ancient astronomy, Vahia was part of a group of Indian scientists that refuted a 2004 thesis from US scientists, that the Indus script — the language of the Harappan civilisation — may not be a language at all but a mere collection of symbols, a body blow to what is understood about that civilisation. The defence of Vahia and his colleagues published in 2009 in Science — a top academic journal — used evidence from computational linguistics, statistical principles used in the auto-complete feature of texting and thermodynamics.

Other scientists argue that jingoistic science discredits the genuinely astounding achievements of ancient Indian knowledge. "I've some, but not an exhaustive, background in the history of algebra and astronomy and there is no doubt that Aryabhata predated Europe in several aspects of trigonometry," said Ashtekar, "but planes and missiles are ludicrous. How is it then that half of India doesn't have electricity? Let's us not insult the great minds of our antiquity with stuff like this." Saraswat is however resigned to the idea that this clash between cultures and the use of science to establish utopian golden ages will never go away and is embedded deep into the human DNA. "As long as people are divided by countries and their own regional histories, these conflicts will continue. Only if humanity comes together to unearth our past can we really hope to understand the course of civilisations. That, I'm sure, is impossible."

The author is a science writer

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, Vedas and scientific discoveries, Vymanika Sastra

Science friction

courtesy: http://timesofindia.com/

Samit Basu

Millennia ago, a Vedic spaceship took off from India and colonized another planet. The Indians in it were perfectly happy: in order to minimize internal differences and language superiority squabbles and avoid the End of Days (the invention of Facebook), they'd abandoned language altogether, and used their highly advanced plastic surgery skills to give themselves perfectly sculpted bodies, which it made no sense to cover with clothes. Like all NRIs, they liked to come back to the homeland occasionally to see how poor conditions were and feel smug about their choices. The result of all this? PK is totally true, people.

Bad science? Yes. Bad science fiction? Definitely. I'm hoping to deliver the keynote address at the Indian Science Congress next year. We live in an era where even presumably well-educated adults have problems telling fact and fiction apart. That certainly explains the events at the recently concluded Indian Science Congress, which demonstrated that apart from inventing everything in the world thousands of years ago and then presumably losing these marvels while planet-hopping, undergoing elephant-head plastic surgery or tweeting in Sanskrit, Indians also lead the world in the production of bad science fiction authors.

Having been a bad science fiction author writing about vamans, rakshasas, vanars, vimanas and nuclear-powered bows for over a decade now, I have just realized my big mistake. I never thought the events in the books I wrote were true, which would have been the key to untold wealth, a ministerial berth, probably, and a permanent seat on the speaking roster of the Indian Science Congress — even in times when India's actually doing well in non-mythic science, with Mangalyaan and recent Nobel Prizes and whatever else. Science fiction, like most of literature, mythology, science, history and selfies, is essentially an attempt to use specific tools to find answers about big questions about the human condition: Who are we? Why are here? How do things work? But the goals of all of these fields are different, as are the tools they use. Sci-fi/fantasy, like mythology, folklore and fable, uses fantastic, larger-than-life devices, characters and objects, imaginary-scientific or magical, to inspire, understand and investigate humanity. Good science fiction and fantasy create alternate, whatif universes, create contexts and explanations for ways the worlds in them differ from ours, and use the resultant mixture to tell stories that, like all good stories, help readers understand who they are. But they're clear about one thing — the worlds they create are mirror universes, not this one.

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, Vedas and scientific discoveries, Vymanika Sastra

When imagination took wing….

courtesy: http://freepressjournal.in/

V Gangadhar

Airports, explained fiction writers like Arthur Hailey, were noisy places, whose high decibel levels disturbed residents of sylvan suburbs and stirred environmentalists to protest. The recently concluded 102nd Indian Science Congress in Mumbai had a different story to tell us, however. Papers read out by Indian ‘aviation experts’ at the Congress mentioned how aeroplanes flying 7,000 years ago travelled from continent to continent and planet to planet noiselessly.

We learnt hitherto unknown facts from the aviation technology expert, Captain Anand Bodas. Sanjaya in the Mahabharat gave a running commentary on the 18-day war to the blind Kaurava king Dhritarashtra.

The narration and its subsequent interpretation found its way to modern Vedic times as per the ‘Vaimanik Shastra.’ Such ancient aviation theories were documented nearly 7,000 years ago, by sages like Bharadwaj.

As the Science Congress progressed, many such theories were debunked by modern scientists and students of science from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and the IITs. They saw these claims as grotesque attempts to glorify the past, encourage superstition and showing no understanding of aerodynamics. Should we posit fantastic theories on battlefields of the past or should we use those battlefields as springboards for further research? Captain Bodas and others did not hesitate to link aviation to Rigveda.

The links between ancient surgery in India and those mentioned in ancient Greece made no sense. The minority Indian groups also drew attention to our sophisticated ancient Indian surgery techniques, unlike some present day instances, where limbs are sometimes wrongly amputated.

Medicine experts at the Science Congress asserted that ancient Greek surgeons used excellent tools and passed them on to ancient Indians. Surgery came to them naturally. Sailors on British and European vessels, from the 17th century onwards, who needed dental treatment, were plied with liquor to numb them to the pain of the surgery. The ancient Greeks were more sophisticated and used chloroform, which made the process easier.

The Science Congress did not refer to the more recent quirks in the US and Europe, like Russian scientists munching on peanuts on the eve of a rocket launch. When Indian scientists and astronomers gathered to witness and study a total solar eclipse some years ago in Hyderabad, foreign scientists present wondered why their Indian colleagues disappeared on and off, coming back looking much fresher. Obviously they had disappeared for a quick ‘holy’ bath, followed by a mini-puja, with ‘prasad’ and whatnot. A happy mix of ancient ritual and modern science.

Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Science Congress diehard Conservatives put out dozens of ‘Old is gold’ nuggets of information, met with much applause by the PM and his group. How many of us knew that Mathematics, Algebra, Zero, Infinity and the decimal system were known to our ancients and that we gave these ideas to the West? Modi himself applauded cosmetic surgery that took place aeons ago. It was made clear at the science meet that much of the teaching and learning was done in Sanskrit.

Ancient India was generous enough to share her scientific knowledge with other nations and civilisations. Dr Harsh Vardhan, the BJP minister from Delhi, explained that sharing knowledge came naturally to our ancient scientific Indians. We gave the Pythagoras Theorem to ancient Greece (we don’t know what for). Visiting potentates liked zebra meat and ancient Indian kings obliged them with herds of zebras, explaining that ‘all zebras’ had been donated and thus this branch of mathematics came to be known as Algebra.

With the NDA Government determined to popularise ancient science and Sanskrit, several more innovations are likely to follow. The next topic of research could be transmigration of souls (souls of living birds and animals entering human bodies or human souls entering other human bodies, as in the case of King Vikramaditya). We could understand bird language thus and tweet better, perhaps.

These are included in the science syllabus for the 2016 Science Conference in Vikramaditya Nagar. With India opting to follow the World Trade Order and Intellectual Copyright Act, there is an ambitious plan to ‘pinch’ some copyright material from foreign sources. Just to make up for the Algebra from Arabia and Geometry from Greece.

The aviation front opens up newer skies. Our flying ‘aakash sundaris’ could take crash courses in make-up from female members of ancient cabin crew, who relied on naturally available beauty aids. We should give back generously for all that we have got.

In honour of Pythagoras, we should name a few of our major roads (and parks) after him, but must make sure these roads are pothole-free because his theorem did not account for these modern day pitfalls. Of course, one gets the hiccups thinking of the scientist who jumped out of the bath, shouting out the Sanskrit equivalent of Eureka and one must pray that he was halfway decently clad, in the finest short-stapled cotton we were producing at that time.

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, Vedas and scientific discoveries, Vymanika Sastra

Alternate history: Passing off fiction as fact

courtesy: http://www.hindustantimes.com/

Sitharam Yechury

It is not often that two distinctive developments, separated by distance across the globe, should have a bearing on contemporary India. One is the terrorist attack on the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo which killed 12 people in Paris on January 7.

The other is the stunning defeat of sitting Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the elections held on January 8. Brimming with over-confidence that he would be re-elected for another six years, for having ended a 30-year-long civil war in the country, Rajapaksa, called these elections two years ahead of schedule. His defeat shows, once again in history, the frailty and futility of arrogance that accompanies authoritarian rule in a democracy.

This latter development has a bearing on us, with the current ruling dispensation increasingly showing tendencies of all power flowing from the Prime Minister’s Office.

The authoritarian trends are increasingly seen with the strengthening of the current ‘Ordinance Raj’. The Union finance minister has reportedly said that while the Rajya Sabha can have “its say”, the government will have “its way”. President Pranab Mukherjee’s reported unprecedented cautioning of this government on frequent recourse to take the ordinance route seems to be falling on deaf ears.

The former development, once again, shows that rousing religious passions spreading intolerance lead to unpardonable crimes against humanity through terrorist attacks. Aggressive pursuit of the Hindutva agenda and sharpening communal polarisation through campaigns of ‘love jihad’ or ‘ghar wapsi’ engender such tendencies in our country.

Communalism and fundamentalism in our country grow by feeding on each other. In order to strengthen themselves, they seek to glorify the past, to conquer the present and capture the future. To glorify the past, mythology replaces history and masquerades as the repository of scientific advance. Thus, there is a tendency to continue to refuse to learn the correct lessons from these developments.

A case in point is the recent 102nd annual Indian Science Congress. Instead of discussing India’s current scientific achievements and defining its future direction, it became the platform to propagate ‘unscientific temper’. Section V, Article 51A (h) of our Constitution on Fundamental Duties of every citizen enjoins upon us, among other things, “To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.

The science congress should have impressed upon the prime minister, who customarily inaugurates this meet, irrespective of the government in power, to spend more than the current measly 0.88% of our GDP on research and development for India’s emergence as a global power. The United States spends 2.74% and China around 2%. The GDP of both these countries is much larger than India’s, meaning that they spend multiple amounts more in absolute terms.

Instead, this science congress made various claims, glorifying Indian science in the ancient past (read: glory of ‘Hindu civilisation’) like aircraft technology existed in India 7,000 years ago, etc. Such fabrication of our ancient history has been emboldened, also, by the prime minister’s earlier claims that plastic surgery in ancient India could implant an elephant’s head on a human body to create Lord Ganesha and that ancient India was well-versed with ‘stem cells research’ and in ‘in-vitro fertilisation’ like procedures that permitted the immaculate conception and birth of Karna.

Of course, there were many landmark scientific achievements in ancient India. The advances in astronomy and mathematics were path-breaking. But they came more than four millennia later than claimed! However, modern science would have been impossible without the invention of the zero, not merely as a tool for accounting (in which many other ancient civilisations preceded us) but as a philosophical and mathematical concept whose opposite is the infinite.

This gave birth to negative numbers, irrational numbers, quadratic equations, mathematical constants, etc, and the philosophical ‘battle of ideas’. Though Arab traders carried these scientific achievements to the western world, to be fair, they credited “the lands beyond the Indus river”, Hindustan, for these advances.

However, 7,000 years ago, what was the state of human civilisation in these lands? Archaeologists have painstakingly documented this evolution through scientific methods like ‘carbon dating’. Between 5,000 and 4,000 BCE, the stage is described as having reached “handmade ceramic; cotton cultivated”. This is based on the findings at Mehrgarh-II, an early site of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Further, assuming such were ancient India’s achievements as claimed, why could various kingdoms in these lands not resist, indeed stop, periodic invasions, the establishment of Empires leading to the colonisation of India? Did not our scientific growth stagnate after the Brahmanical caste hierarchical order re-triumphed over Buddhism, denying access of learning and knowledge to the vast majority of our people? Buddhism had encouraged such a milieu, permitting scientific advance to thrive.

Often the Hindutva brigade accuses Marxist historians of debunking the ‘glory of the ancient Hindu civilisation’. However, the most elaborate expositions of advances made in ancient India have come from the writings of Marxists like Irfan Habib (born a Muslim), Rahul Sankirtyayan, DD Kosambi, Devi Prasad Chattopadhyaya and many others.

Historians of the Hindutva variety, on the other hand, did not make any significant study of our ancient past that would stand up to serious intellectual scrutiny.

Such rewriting of history is now being done, through the spread of ‘unscientific temper’, to glorify and establish as MS Golwalkar propagated the uninterrupted glory of the “Hindu civilisation” in these lands since ancient times.

The RSS/BJP are vigorously working to transform, by sharpening communal polarisation, the modern secular democratic Indian Republic into the RSS project of a rabidly intolerant fascistic ‘Hindu Rashtra’, where religious minorities and atheists will not be treated as equal citizens. The realisation of this project, unless resisted and defeated, will permit such a transformation of India, as we know of it today. 

Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, Vedas and scientific discoveries, Vymanika Sastra

An 'ancient' treatise no older than 1904

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

DIVYA GANDHI

Aircraft based on drawings and text of Vyamanika Shastra cannot fly...

Vymanika Sastra, the “Vedic” aeronautical treatise by an ancient Rishi describing giant indigenous airplanes that travelled between cities and continents 7,000 years ago, it turns out, is no older than 1904, the year of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight.

Aeronautical engineers of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who, in a 1974 paper, scrutinised the Sanskrit text and its Hindi and English translations, concluded that the work had neither Vedic origins nor scientific credence. The Vymanika Sastra, however, does betray “knowledge of modern machinery,” they say in the paper published in Scientific Opinion decades ago.

At the 102nd Indian Science Congress held earlier this month in Mumbai, retired pilot Captain Anand J. Bodas presented a paper on “Ancient Indian aviation technology” and spoke of India’s ancient aircraft described in the Sanskrit text by “Maharshi Bharadwaja.” The giant 60X60-ft airplanes with 40 engines and a radar system, “rooparkanrahasya”, could travel between cities, countries and planets, he said raising considerable controversy at the conference.

“In a 1974 paper, IISc scientists found Vymanika Sastra has neither Vedic origins nor scientific credence.”

The group of five IISc scientists, however, says in their paper that the aircraft described in Vymanika Sastra is a “gross violation of Newton’s laws.” The paper adds that “none of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying; and the principles of propulsion make them resist rather than assist flying.” In short, “If the craft is taken to mean what the drawings and the text say, it can be stated that the craft is a decided impossibility.”

The scientists looked at four airplanes described in the Vymanika Shastra and studied them for their aeronautical principles, geometry, materials, chemistry and operational data: Shakuna Vimana made from “prana kshara” (ammonium chloride), Bengal gram, mercury, borax, mica, silver and ‘panchamrita’; Sundara Vimana comprising five tiers and capable of flying at 12,800 mph on electricity produced in vessels containing, among other concoctions, cow and elephant urine; Tripura Vimana that could fly in air and also move in water and on land; and Rukma Vimana.

They concluded that “It appears that his work cannot be dated earlier than 1904 and contains details which, on the basis of our present knowledge, force us to conclude the non-feasibility of heavier-than[-air] craft of earlier times.”

Co-author of the scientific paper, S.M. Deshpande, a former Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the IISc told The Hindu: “In the course of our research, we found quite conclusively that the text was written by Subbaraya Shastry from Anekal — not by a Rishi Bharadwaja — and no earlier than 1904.” Shastry dictated the text during “trance-like spells” in the form of shlokas to a scribe and commissioned drawings from a draughtsman from an engineering college, Professor Deshpande said.

The illustrations “definitely point to a knowledge of modern machinery,” says their paper. “This can be explained on the basis of the fact that Shri Ellappa who made the drawings was in a local engineering college and was thus familiar with names and details of some machinery.” The scientists add: “What we feel [is] unfortunate… is that some people tend to eulogise and glorify whatever they can find about our past, even without valid evidence. In the absence of any evidence, efforts will be made to produce part of the evidence in favour of antiquity.”

Professor Deshpande said he and his colleagues were, 40 years ago, “driven by scientific curiosity” to study this work to see if it was possible to create an aircraft based on the text from an aeronautical point of view. “But we were disappointed.”

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, Vedas and scientific discoveries, Vymanika Sastra

An annual ritual losing its meaning

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

R. PRASAD 

The idea of promoting science through the Indian Science Congress began in earnest after Independence, continuing till 1967, but the efforts have since lost focus.

“Few practising scientists of note consider the [Indian Science] Congress an important event. Pomp and ceremony take precedence over substance,” P. Balaram, former Director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, wrote in a December 10, 2012, editorial in the journal Current Science.

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, scientific development in India, Vedas and scientific discoveries

An uncertain glory

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/

 JATIN GANDHI

Rajnath Singh had falsely claimed that Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’ was borrowed from the Vedas when evidence points to the contrary

On March 2, 2013, almost a year before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the Centre, the party’s then president, Rajnath Singh, addressed his first party national council meeting. The presidential address at the Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi was meant to lay down the rules for the party’s electoral battle ahead.

Mr. Singh’s address was dedicated to why the BJP is most qualified to lead India into the future. “Friends, India is a country of youth and every youth wants to see India as a great country in the 21st century, but do we have the capacity and the vision which can make India great,”

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Posted in Indian Science Congress, mythology and science, Vedas and scientific discoveries

The Question of Conversion in India

Jakob de Roover and Sarah Claerhout 

[Published in Economic and Political Weekly, 40(28):3048-55]

The Indian debate on religious conversion has been an ongoing one for a few centuries now. However, the mutual understanding between the advocates and the adversaries of conversion has not advanced much. This paper suggests that this is due to the fact that Hindus and Christians refer to two different objects when they discuss ‘religion’. The traits which the Christians ascribe to religion account for the premium they put on the right to convert, while the traits of the Hindu view of religion explain the opposition to conversion. As the two parties attribute mutually exclusive properties to religion, they encounter difficulties while seeking to make sense of each other’s claims about religion and conversion

Religious conversion has become the subject of passionate debate in contemporary India. From the early 20th century onwards, it has surfaced again and again in the political realm, in the media and in the courts. During the last few decades the dispute has attained a new climax in the plethora of newspapers, journals, and books whose pages have been devoted to the question of conversion. Apparently, a large group of Indians considers this to be an issue of crucial import to the future of their country.

The positions in the dispute are clear. On the one hand, there are those who plead for a ban on conversion, because it disturbs the social peace in plural India. This group consists mainly of Hindus. The aversion towards the proselytising drive of Christianity and Islam is widespread among various Hindu groups – from the radical spokesmen of the Sangh parivar to the moderate Gandhians. On the other hand, there are those who argue that conversion is a fundamental human right, which should be protected in any democracy. Generally, the proponents of the right to conversion are Christians and secularists. In spite of the clarity of these two positions, which have remained unchanged throughout the previous century, the debate has not seen significant progress. The discussions are still governed by feelings of mutual incomprehension, unease, and resentment. The participants in the debate seem to agree on one thing only: the gap between the different views on conversion is unbridgeable.

There is much to be said in favour of this conclusion, since all attempts to settle the conflict have failed. The Indian Constitution addressed the issue of conversion more than half a century ago. In Article 25, it is stated that “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion”. Soon, it would turn out that this piece of legislation was not able to resolve the problems around conversion in Indian society. In 1954, the Madhya Pradesh state government launched an inquiry into the proselytising activities of foreign missionaries, which resulted in a report that recommended legal restrictions on conversion. In the next decade, the Orissa government endorsed a Freedom of Religion Act that put such recommendations into practice. Other states would follow. Recently, the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance added more confusion. The ensuing polemics demonstrated that the question of conversion is still as contentious as it was before.

The situation is growing worse today. The encounters between the Hindu traditions and the proselytising religions of Christianity and Islam are more explosive than ever. Little is needed, these days, for hostile feelings to flare up. In recent years, a similar enmity towards the proselytising activities of Christians has surfaced in Sri Lanka. Conversion seems to play a crucial role in these conflicts. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand why so many south Asians are disturbed by the issue of religious conversion. Why has this issue become a bone of contention? As yet, our research does not allow for conclusive answers. However, given the current weight of the issue, we would like to submit some provisional results for consideration.

Religion and Conversion

The current explanations suggest that the cause for the conflict is not to be located in the issue of conversion itself, but in some hidden agenda of the dominant Hindu community. Some say that high caste Hindus fear they will lose their grip on Indian society if more and more members of the lower castes are converted away from Hinduism [e g, Vyas 2002]. Others suggest that the attack on Christian conversion is merely a convenient pretext of the Sangh parivar to support its agenda of Hindu nationalism [e g, Sarkar 1999; Menon 2004]. These explanations are not supported by an analysis of the debate on conversion. They seem to consider the viewpoints in this debate as side issues in the struggle between the aggressive Hindutva movement on the one hand and the religious minorities, the downtrodden castes, and their secular protectors on the other. At the very least, a genuine explanation of the clash over conversion in contemporary India should give us insight into the viewpoints of the different parties. It should tell us why so many Indians have invested so much time, energy, and emotion in discussing this particular issue.

As Sebastian Kim’s recent overview (2003) illustrates, the debates of the last 70 years or so have revolved around the same concerns. One of the early 20th century debates on conversion took place when Mahatma Gandhi was interviewed in 1931 by The Hindu about the role of foreign missionaries in independent India of the future. He said he would ask them to withdraw if they engaged in proselytising by means of medical aid and education. His arguments were clear: “Every nation’s religion is as good as any other. Certainly India’s religions are adequate for her people. We need no converting spiritually” (Collected Works, Vol XLV: 320). Although Gandhi later pointed out that the reporter had twisted his words, the modifications he made did not change the picture much. His true standpoint, he said, was the following: “Every nation considers its own faith to be as good as that of any other. Certainly the great faiths held by the people of India are adequate for her people. India stands in no need of conversions from one faith to another” (Young India, April 23, 1931). An American missionary, E Stanley Jones, replied in an open letter to Gandhi. He asserted that – although he agreed that hospitals and schools should not be used to proselytise – it is “a fundamental human right and a fundamental human duty” to share what one finds precious in the spiritual realm. Opposing Gandhi’s claim that every nation’s religion is as good as any other, he said that religious truth – like scientific truth – is by its very nature universal. Jones reproached Gandhi for denying Christians the right to share the truth of Christ with others [Kim 2003:28].

In the constituent assembly debates (CAD), similar views were expressed during the quarrel regarding the question whether or not Article 25 of the Constitution should grant Indian citizens the right “to propagate their religion”. The Christian participants had very strong feelings about this matter. They repeatedly asserted that “millions of Christians” felt passionately about “this right to propagate their religion” and that it is perhaps “the most fundamental of Christian rights” [F R Anthony in the Constituent Assembly Debates III: 489-90]. The Hindus involved in this quarrel, on the contrary, did not at all agree that belonging to a religion entailed a right to convert others. Purushottamdas Tandon put it this way: “We Congressmen deem it very improper to convert from one to another religion or to take part in such activities and we are not in favour of this” and “it is absolutely futile to be keen on converting others to one’s faith” [CAD III: 492]. Nevertheless, they agreed to retain the formula about the propagation of religion, because they desired to stay on good terms with the Christian minorities in India. Tandon again: “Generally, we, Congressmen, do not think it at all right – I say so frankly – that people should strenuously go about trying to convert peoples of other faiths into their own, but we want to carry our Christian friends with us […]” [CAD III: 493].

The debates of the last few decades have been variations on the same theme. On the one hand, there are Christians and secularists who insist that conversion is a fundamental right, which is part of the universal freedom of conscience: “The right of an individual to convert to another religion must be considered a universal human right and should be vigorously defended by Christians and other religious leaders. No state, church, or institution should stand in the way of an individual’s pursuit of religious truth” [Christianity Today 1999:28]. On the other hand, we have Hindus who say that conversion is an act of violence, which violates religious traditions and disrupts families, communities, and society in general: “Religious conversion destroys centuries-old communities and incites communal violence. It is violence, and it breeds violence” (Swami Dayananda Saraswati 1999). While it is obvious to one party that belonging to a religion implies the need and the right to convert others to that religion, the other party shows nothing but incomprehension towards this professed link between religion and conversion.

These different stances bring about confusion. Consider the following interpretation of the constitutional right to propagate religion. In a 1977 Supreme Court judgment, chief justice A N Ray said Article 25 does not grant the right to convert another person to one’s own religion. In fact, he continued, “there is no fundamental right to convert another person to one’s own religion because if a person purposely undertakes the conversion of another person to his religion … that would impinge on the ‘freedom of conscience’ guaranteed to all the citizens of the country alike” [cited in Kim 2003: 79]. From the very beginning, the Christians had argued that freedom of conscience also implied the freedom to convert: “Freedom to believe without freedom to spread that belief is nothing but bondage” [Christianity Today 1999:28]. Justice Ray, however, thought differently. Religious conversion, to him, is a violation of the freedom of conscience of the Indian citizens. Thus, to one group, freedom of religion means to be free to convert; to the other, it means to be free from conversion.

What is happening in the Indian debate on conversion? The two parties do not seem able to make sense of each other’s claims about religion and conversion. The Christians consider it self-evident that conversion lies at the heart of what religion is all about, while the Hindus cannot see how this could possibly be the case. In the words of a participant in an internet discussion on the topic: “Indeed this whole notion of conversion seems all wrong to me. What are they converting? Why can’t anyone who wants to practise Christian religion do so without converting? I may be asking stupid questions here, but at this moment, the whole premise of conversion strikes me as odd.” In this article, we take the first steps towards an explanation of the difficulties the two parties have in making sense of each other’s claims. Our tentative hypothesis is that Hindus and Christians are not talking about the same object when they discuss ‘religion’ and its relation to conversion. Religion according to the Hindus is something completely different from what the Christians refer to as religion.

On the one hand, we will look at how Christians have attributed certain traits to religion throughout the history of their encounter with the Hindu traditions. These traits explain why, according to the Christian view, belonging to a religion entails the duty and the right to convert others to that religion. On the other hand, we show that Hindus have attributed a different set of properties to religion in their encounter with the Christians. From this perspective, the incomprehension they express towards the professed link between religion and conversion becomes understandable. Finally, we come to the suggestion that Hindus and Christians do not have the same object in mind when talking about religion. If this turns out to be true, the current debate on conversion is predestined to remain the dead end it is today.

Triumph of the Cross over Idolatry

From the earliest encounters, missionary zeal characterised the way the European Christians approached Hindu traditions. The Portuguese Catholics who conquered the isle of Goa were the first to put the typical Christian stance towards the traditions of the Indian subcontinent into practice. In 1545, King John III of Portugal gave a series of detailed instructions to the governor of Goa about dealing with Indian heathens:

In this brief the king orders that neither public nor private ‘idols’ be tolerated on the island of Goa and that severe punishment must be meted out to those who persist in keeping them. The houses of people suspected of keeping hidden idols are to be searched. Heathen festivals are not to be tolerated and every brahman is to be banished from Goa, Bassein and Diu. Public offices are to be entrusted to neophytes and not to heathens; Christians are to be freed from heavy labour at the port of Goa, such tasks in the future being reserved exclusively for heathens. Portuguese, under pain of severe punishment, are forbidden to sell heathen slaves to Muslims, since heathens are converted more easily to Christianity under the Portuguese and to Islam under Muslim ownership. Revenues previously used for the support of mosques and temples should be diverted to aid in spreading the gospel [Lach 1965:239-40].

In the Portuguese view, the future of the indigenous traditions was clear: these had to be eradicated. The ‘idols’ could not be tolerated and neither could the heathen festivals. Measures had to be taken to spread the gospel and to promote the conversion of heathens to Christianity. The Christian religion was something to be spread, if not peacefully, then through force. Apparently, there was something deeply wrong with the native traditions, and the only way to right this wrong was to guide the natives into the Christian faith.

What exactly was wrong? To answer this question, let us turn from the Catholic Portuguese to a German Protestant who landed in India a few centuries later. In the early 18th century, the Lutheran missionary Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg composed a pamphlet entitled Abominable Heathenism, which contains a clear formulation of the reasons behind conversion. Originally written in Tamil, this pamphlet was spread in Tamil Nadu in order to convince the local Hindus that their lives were rooted in error. Using the word a-jnana to convey the idea of sin or error, Ziegenbalg told these Hindus the following: “We have come to you to save you from a-jnana. … Make a study of the Christian precepts and accept them in faith, and so become the people of God” [cited in Grafe 1972: 59]. In the eight chapters of the pamphlet, Ziegenbalg told the heathens how the gospel would save them from their ignorance:

(i) What is a-jnana? – It is idol-worship and moral perversion according to Rom 1: 21-32. (ii) How a-jnana spread in this world. – It did so because of the devil’s deceit and men’s guilt and not because of God. (iii) There is much a-jnana in the whole of Tamil Nadu. (iv) How detestable a-jnana is – Because by a-jnana soul and body will be perverted and punished. (v) How God is helping those in a-jnana to be saved. – Jesus Christ took upon himself the burden of a-jnana and delivers from a-jnana saving soul and body. (vi) What the things are which those who wish to be saved from a-jnana have to do – Answer: Scripture reading, realisation and confession of sin, faith in Jesus Christ, asking for baptism with renunciation of a-jnana and acceptance of the triune God, living in the communion of the Word of God and the Lord’s Supper, living a life of witness and suffering and a life of love and justice. (vii) The trials and tribulations which those who give up a-jnana and enter the church experience in the world for the sake of righteousness. (viii) The benefits promised to those who give up a-jnana, accept the true religion and stand in the Christian faith unshaken [cited in Grafe 1972: 59].

This summary discloses what type of a phenomenon religion is to a Christian like Ziegenbalg. On the one hand, the false religion of the heathens consists of sin and error. It perverts soul and body. It is the religion of the followers of the devil. The heathens should be saved from this false religion. On the other hand, there is the true religion of the people of God. This Christian faith is a divine gift to humankind. It is the only way to salvation of body and soul. To escape from false religion, the heathens have to turn to God: they have to read the scripture, accept the triune God, confess their sins, have faith in Jesus Christ, etc. In short, they have to give up false religion, “accept the true religion and stand in the Christian faith unshaken”.

Naturally, not all Europeans travelling to India in this period shared the missionaries’ fanaticism to do away with the heathen idolatry. Some of the East India Company officials, for instance, gave more sympathetic accounts of ‘the Hindoo religion’. Among the latter was Alexander Dow, who wrote a dissertation on ‘the Hindoos’ in his History of Hindustan (1768). What struck him about these Hindus was that they did not try to convert:

Contrary to the practice of all other religious sects, they admit of no converts; but they allow that every one may go to heaven his own way, though they perhaps suppose, that theirs is the most expeditious method to obtain that important end. They chuse (sic) rather to make a mystery of their religion, than impose it upon the world, like the Mahommedans, with the sword, or by means of the stake, after the manner of some pious Christians [Dow 1768:110].
As he repeats a few pages further, the Hindus never tried to convince others that theirs was the one true way to heaven:

It is, as we have already observed, a principle peculiar to the Hindoo religion, not to admit of proselytes. But instead of being solicitous about gaining converts, they always make a mystery of their faith. Heaven, say they, is like a palace with many doors, and every one may enter in his own way [ibid:115].

Many would later join Dow in pointing out the peculiar absence of an urge to convert in the Hindu religion. This absence becomes peculiar only if one expects each and every religion to convert. How does one come to such a belief? On the one hand, Dow could have reached this point through induction. All religious sects he had encountered so far did convert, and thus he expected the same to be true of the Hindus. Considering the limited number of religions he could possibly have known in the 18th century, this makes a rather weak case. On the other hand, Dow could simply have assumed that all religions do proselytise. That is, he may have held an image of religion which told him that there is continuous competition among religions with respect to gaining converts. Dow may not have been a fanatic or a missionary, but of course he was a Christian. He shared this image with his fellow Christians. It derived from the belief that religion revolves around the struggle between God and the devil for the souls of men and women. Satan seduces humanity with subtle lies; God saves with the gift of truth. Given this background, the surprise must have been great indeed when one came about a religion that did not in the least bother about gaining converts.

To the more zealous Christians, the Indian subcontinent literally appeared as a battleground of the clash between God’s truth and Satan’s fraud. In the early 19th century, the evangelistic missionaries of the London Missionary Society already knew what to expect when they set foot on Indian soil. One of them, George Gogerly, tells us “an unusual feeling of solemnity” gradually crept over his mind as he caught his first sight of India:

Before me was the land of idolatry, concerning which I had heard and read so much; and I was now to come into contact with that mighty system of superstition and cruelty which was holding millions enslaved in its bonds; to see its hateful rites, and by the exhibition of the Truth, to contend with its dreadful power [cited in Kitzan 1970:29-30].

The missionaries had their expectations confirmed everywhere in the traditional practices and stories of the Indians. When they were confronted by “the vaunted holy books of the Hindus,” the strongest terms of denunciation could not do. In the words of William Campbell:

In what terms shall I describe the Hindu mythology? There was never, in any age, nor in any country, a superstition so cruel, so atrocious and so diabolical as that which has reigned over this people. It is a personification of evil. Satan seems to have used all his ingenuity, his malice and his gigantic power to create a system which would represent all his own attributes upon the earth, render its votaries as much like his angels as possible, and make Hindosthan an image of the infernal regions [cited in Kitzan 1970:31].

When this is how one views the practices and the stories of the Hindus, the desire to convert must be strong indeed: the Hindus have to be liberated from the mighty system of superstition that holds them enslaved in its bonds. What should come in its stead? Why, the Truth, of course! That is, the true message of the atoning death of Jesus Christ has to replace the false Hindu mythology. The worship of the true God must replace the honouring of the false gods. For instance, when Christian Wolff arrived at Goa on October 31, 1833 and saw the cross of Christ planted and heard the church bells ringing, he could not help but exclaim: “Behold! the triumph of the cross over idolatry” [excerpted in Kaul 1998:56].

This was not just the victory cry of an aggressive religion out to rule the world. Instead, these Christians were honestly and deeply concerned about the souls of the Indian subjects of the Empire. In his Letters on India: With Special Reference to the Spread of Christianity (1840), for instance, Reverend William Buyers writes the following:

The fact that nearly one hundred millions of our fellow-subjects are living and dying in a state of awful estrangement from God, and without the means of having that estrangement removed – the victims of error, superstition, pollution and horrid cruelty – while we possess every facility of access to them, involves a responsibility the most tremendous that can possibly be conceived [Buyers 1840:viii].

Another missionary, William Carey, also reminds the Christians of their obligations in his An inquiry into the Obligations of the Christians, to Use the Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. He asks rhetorically:

After all, the uncivilised state of the heathen, instead of affording an objection against preaching the gospel to them, ought to furnish an argument for it. Can we as men, or as Christians, hear that a great part of our fellow creatures, whose souls are as immortal as ours, and who are as capable as ourselves, of adorning the gospel, contributing by their preaching, writings, or practices to the glory of our Redeemer’s name, and the good of this church, are inveloped (sic) in ignorance and barbarism? Can we hear that they are without the gospel, without government, without laws, and without arts, and sciences; and not exert ourselves to introduce amongst them the sentiments of men, and of christians? [Carey 1792:69-70]

Why were the Reverend Buyers, the Reverend Carey, and their Christian audience burdened by the responsibility to bring their fellow-human beings back to God? In Christ, they believed, God had disclosed His will to humanity. It is only through belief in – and submission to – His revealed will that human beings can be saved from the devil and eternal damnation. Thus, it becomes the duty of the Christians to try and convert others. It would be sheer cruelty and a violation of God’s will not to do so.

This background allows us to make sense of the claims of both Indian and European Christians that conversion is a right and a duty of the religious. They simply have to share the universal truth of Christ with the rest of the humankind. They should at least attempt to convince the heathens that the latter’s corrupt beliefs ought to be replaced with pure Christian doctrine. This explains why E Stanley Jones reacted so strongly to Gandhi’s claim that every nation’s religion is as good as any other. And it also accounts for the position of the Indian Christians in the constituent assembly debates. Listen to how two Christian authors, J F Butler and S Samuel, summed up the issue in a pamphlet entitled The Right of Conversion, issued shortly before the inauguration of the constituent assembly:

Truth is universal – true, and therefore good, for all: hence, when it fully grips a man, it (or what is sincerely taken to be it) grips him not only as a thing to hold, but as a thing to spread. And (subject to the usual provisioes (sic) about anti-social conduct) a man has a right to give due expression to so fundamental a conviction as this. This right is a universal one (cited in Kim 2003:40).

As the true religion conveys the will of God for the humankind, its truth should be spread among all the nations. Although God and Satan are not always explicitly present in the contemporary pleas for the right to convert, the notion of turning from false to true religion presupposes the opposition between the true God and the false god. This remains the implicit background that propels demands for the right to convert.1

From the 16th to the 21st century, the Christians have viewed their encounter with the Hindu traditions as a battle between Christianity and idolatry. This theological framework attributes certain characteristic properties to religion: it is conceived of as a struggle between the true and the false. The struggle has different aspects to it. Firstly, it involves rivalry between religions with regard to the truth of doctrines. Insofar as different religions are either true or false, they revolve around a set of doctrines or beliefs. Therefore, the Christians oppose the Hindu traditions to the Christian religion in terms of the beliefs these ‘rival religions’ proclaim. The main issue of religion is to make a choice between these different sets of beliefs – the message of the atoning death of Jesus Christ and the related precepts on the one hand or the errors of false religion on the other. Secondly, the competition between religions revolves around the gaining of converts. The true religion strives to save the souls of men and women, while false religion keeps them in the command of the devil. This can also be put in terms of their respective ends. The true religion is the only path to salvation. Hell is the fatal destination of all other religions. Thirdly, the rivalry does not only concern the life to come, but is also expressed in the conduct of the followers of the different religions here on earth. As false religion, Hinduism embodies immorality.2 And the true religion of Christianity exemplifies morality. Conversion, then, cannot but be a fundamental right, since it allows individuals to be guided from falsity to truth and from depravity to the good.

Countless Rivers Flowing Seaward

The attacks of the Christian missionaries on the native traditions provoked reaction among the Indians. Surprisingly, this did not take the form of a plea for the truth of the Hindu religion. Nor did the response consist of a counter-attack on the Christian teachings. We can move back to the 18th century to get a flavour of Hindu resistance to the missionary zeal. In 1719, Ziegenbalg published reports of some conferences in which he had discussed the truth of the Christian religion with the ‘Malabarian’ natives. The first conference gives an account of Ziegenbalg’s attempt to convince one of the local brahmins of the falsity of his religion. When the missionary urged him and his fellow Hindus to “break off the Cords of inveterate Errors, and save your own Souls, seeking diligently the knowledge of the One only True God,” the brahmin gave the following retort; “Our Religion is Venerable for its Antiquity, and has been professed by many pious Kings and holy prophets, thro’ an Uninterrupted Succession of many incircling Ages …” [Ziegenbalg 1719:4-5]. His religion could not be an imposture, the brahmin continued, since so many generations had continued its practice. In Ziegenbalg’s opinion this was a ridiculous argument:

Uninterrupted succession, and great throngs of proselytes are no characteristicks of the truth of any religion; else it would follow, that the devil is very orthodox: For he is as famous for the multitude of his disciples, as he is for his hoary venerable antiquity. But you must judge of the goodness or badness of religion, by the Fundamental Articles thereof, agreeing or disagreeing with the revealed word of the true God; but you Malabarians having no Knowledge of God’s Word, can take no Cognisance of what is true Worship, believing with an implicit Faith, the Fables and Reveries of Tradition-mongers, your Poets and Doctors …[ibid:5].

The brahmin’s conclusion that his religion must be ‘true’, because it had existed for so many ages, was “altogether illogical and an unjust Way of arguing,” according to Ziegenbalg [ibid:6]. Nevertheless, the Hindus consistently defended their tradition in terms of its antiquity, rather than in terms of truth. In another conference, while Ziegenbalg was heaping ridicule on the Hindu deities, “a Venerable Old Man” stood up and said: “… that we have no True, but false Gods in our Country, this you are still to demonstrate: For tho’ the Christians call us Heathens, we are not so in Reality; but we are a very Ancient Nation, whose Religion is as Old as the World itself…” [ibid:103].

To a Christian missionary, these claims to antiquity provided no proof for the value of a religion. The European heathens had also worshipped the devil for thousands of years before they were enlightened by Christianity. Besides, Ziegenbalg asserted, God had from the beginning of time given to human kind the promise of sending his son as the redeemer: “And thus you see, that the Christian Religion has been professed from the Beginning of the World, and is certainly the most Ancient of all Religions; and your Religion is nothing else but the Corruption of ours” [Ibid: 11]. But when Ziegenbalg explained the promise of God’s grace in Christ, his brahmin opponent was equally unimpressed:

I believe all you say of God’s Dealings with you White Europeans, to be true; but his Appearances and Revelations among us Black Malabarians, have been quite otherwise: And the Revelations he made of himself in this Land are as firmly believ’d here to be true, as you believe those made in your Country: For as Christ in Europe was made Man; so here our God Wischtnu was born among us Malabarians; And as you hope for Salvation through Christ; so we hope for Salvation through Wischtnu; and to save you one way, and us another, is one of the Pastimes and Diversions of Almighty God [Ibid:14].

The Christian religion might be fine for the Europeans, the brahmin suggested, but the Hindu traditions were as good for the Indians. In other words, the Hindus simply refused to see Christianity as a rival to their own traditions. No matter how much the missionaries stressed the falsity of the Hindu religion, their subjects of conversion maintained that “every one may be saved by his own religion, if he does what is Good, and shuns Evil” [Ibid: 15]. And when Ziegenbalg tried to show how wicked and ridiculous their Gods were, one of the “Malabarian” Hindus stood up and told him “that it does not become an holy Man to blaspheme our Gods; for true Piety despises no Man upon Account of Religion; and ’tis therefore we Malabarians do neither condemn nor despise the Christians upon the Account of their Religion” [ibid:107].

Over the next few centuries, the Christian colonials would make more attempts to convince the Indians that Jesus Christ was the only way to salvation. In 1839, the East India Company servant and Orientalist John Muir published the Matapariksa, a Sanskrit tract that – as always – was to prove that Christianity was true religion while Hinduism was false. When three Hindu scholars wrote rejoinders to this tract, they opposed the idea that one single religion was to be followed by all human beings. One of them, Nilakantha Goreh, pointed out the many different ways of attaining ‘moksha':

If someone located in Gaya wants to go to Kasi, he asks people there and they tell him, ‘You must go west,’ whereas an inhabitant of Prayaga, wanting to go to Kasi, asks people there and is told, to the contrary, ‘Go east’. Going both east and west, which is by all means contradictory, yields one result on account of being located in different places. By the same token, one way (to salvation) would not be rewarding to (all) men, whose aptitudes are different, on account of the unarguable maturation of their good and bad deeds. Reflecting in these terms, Bhagavan, an ocean of compassion, made various kinds of margas by which everyone may attain salvation. For instance, among all the scriptures, the Sankhya, Vaisesika and others, likewise the devotional margas of Vaishnavas, etc, in which their faults are completely done away with by means of much examination and meditation, some people esteem the Vaisesika, some the Sankhya or others, some the Vaisnava marga, and others the Saiva, etc. This indicates that people have different aptitudes … Yet only one among the margas yields a direct result, it alone is followed by people whose aptitude is pure [excerpted in Young 1981:123].

As there are various kinds of people with different capacities and skills, so there are several paths they can take to arrive at moksha. This is not to say that all paths are equal. As another critic of Muir’s, Somanatha, wrote:

Men who travel on other roads are not said to be competent for the Vedic marga. It is for this reason that Hari would be displeased when someone spurns his own religion. … When men who dwell in various quarters are going to a certain city, in no way whatsoever would they reach it by [travelling] only on one path. Likewise, those men, whom the all-creator made to possess different qualifications (adhikara) and (put into) different situations, would be unable to attain God by means of any single path. …For each person his own religion is best; the same religion would be perilous for another person. Now, therefore, praise be to those who worship Hari according to their religion without reviling other [paths] [excerpted in Young 1981:145].

The religion one should follow depends on one’s specific situation. Therefore, persons belonging to different religions should neither dismiss their own religion nor that of others. In fact, the deities would be displeased to see this happen. If this is basic to religion, this ‘religion’ is different from the phenomenon the Christians were describing. In one case, the diversity of religions is said to consist of one path through which God saves humanity from eternal damnation, while the other paths are the devil’s snares. In the other case, the diversity of religions corresponds to the innate diversity among human beings. Various valid paths exist, which have been developed for – and by – different groups of people.


In the 18th and the 19th century, the Hindus had not as yet adopted the tendency of the Christians to conceive of religion in terms of truth and falsity. This would change in the 20th century, when Mahatma Gandhi began to expound his views on the relation between religion and truth. In a ‘discussion on fellowship’ between Gandhi and some members of the Council of International Federation, which was published in Young India in 1928, Gandhi explained his position on this issue:

I came to the conclusion long ago, after a prayerful search and study and discussion with as many people as I could meet, that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and that whilst I hold my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism, from which it logically follows that we should hold all as dear as our nearest kith and kin and that we should make no distinction between them. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu, or if we are Musselmans, not that a Hindu or a Christian should become a Musselman, nor should we ever secretly pray that anyone should be converted, but our inmost prayer should be that a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim and a Christian a better Christian [Gandhi 1986:536].

Different Paths to Realisation

All religions are true, Gandhi suggests, and all have some error in them. Again, we can only note how strongly this notion differs from that of the Christians. If no religion is false, there is simply no point in religious conversion. There is no question of turning from falsity to truth by converting from one religion to the other. So, even if Gandhi appropriates the Christian vocabulary of ‘religion’ and ‘truth’, the statement ‘a religion is true’ has a completely different meaning to him. It does not mean that this particular religion is the unique gift of God that leads humanity to salvation. Rather, it means that this religion is one of various roads human beings can take to reach ‘the goal’. In his own words: “Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?” [Gandhi 1942: 2] When all religions lead to the same goal, one should not try to have others follow one’s own path. One should rather strive to improve one’s own practice of religion and stimulate the devotees of other religions to do the same.

Gandhi was not the only one to translate the Hindu view that human beings could follow various paths to moksha into the proposition that all religions are true. In the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna is recorded to have made the same point about the variety of paths: “God can be realised through all paths. It is like your coming to Dakshineswar by carriage, by boat, by steamer or on foot. You have chosen the way according to your convenience and taste; but the destination is the same. Some of you have arrived earlier than others, but all have arrived” (cited in Neufeldt 1987:67). And he also presented the claim that all religions are true as the equivalent of this point: “God can be realised through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole” (cited in Neufeldt 1987:68).

What does it mean for these Hindu sages to say that all religions are true? When the Christians attribute truth to their religion, they are referring to a particular set of doctrines – including, for instance, that humanity is tainted by original sin and can be saved only through Christ’s redemptive death – which is god-given truth according to them. Other religions consist of deviant sets of doctrines and therefore they are necessarily false. If the Hindu thinkers were addressing the same issue of doctrinal truth, the claim that all religions are true would render them inconsistent. That is, if this means that all doctrines of all religions are true – even when standing in plain contradiction – then it also implies each and every statement about the world is true. This was not the message the Hindu thinkers intended to convey. As yet, we cannot argue conclusively what ‘truth’ did mean to them. But it certainly does not concern the truth of doctrines or claims about the world. In their view, this kind of truth predicate does not apply to religion. In Radhakrishnan’s words: “The Hindu attitude to religion is interesting. While fixed intellectual beliefs mark off one religion from another, Hinduism sets itself no such limits. Intellect is subordinated to intuition, dogma to experience, outer expression to inward realisation” [Radhakrishnan 1969:131].

When religion does not revolve around the truth of a particular set of beliefs, it becomes futile to compare different religions in terms of their respective truth or falsity. Or, as Swami Vivekananda put it, only those who do not properly understand religion, insist that religions be compared in order to decide which is the best. Religion, according to him, has nothing to do with the truth of certain views, but everything with “the great universal truth”. Instead of being contradictory, religions are supplementary, said Vivekananda, “each religion, as it were, takes up one part of the great universal truth and spends its whole force in embodying and typifying that part of the great truth” [Vivekananda 1963:365]. Different religious traditions are not conceived of as rivals, neither when it comes to the ultimate goal they pursue, nor where it concerns the morality of their followers:

We do not say that ours is the only way to salvation. Perfection can be had by everybody, and what is the proof? Because we see the holiest of man in all countries, good men and women everywhere, whether born in our faith or not. Therefore it cannot be held that ours is the only way to salvation. “Like so many rivers flowing from different mountains, all coming and mingling their waters in the sea, all the different religions, taking their births from different standpoints of fact, come unto Thee.” This is a part of the child’s everyday prayer in India. With such everyday prayers, of course, such ideas as fighting because of differences of religion are simply impossible [Vivekananda 1964:210].

It is not as though the Hindu spokesmen were ignorant of Christianity’s claims to universality. But even after spending many years on “the comparative study of religion”, the philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan did not consent with the Christian notion of true and false religion. In fact, he went so far as to say that the idea of one single religion for the humankind is illogical:

The illogical idea of one single religion for all mankind, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies which all individuals must accept on pain of persecution by the people and punishment by God, is the product of unreason and intolerance. A religion represents the soul of the people, its peculiar spirit, thought, and temperament. It is not a mere theory of the supernatural which we can put on or off as we please. It is an expression of the spiritual experience of the race, a record of its social evolution, an integral element of the society in which it is found [Radhakrishnan 1969:81-82].

The religion of a people is a record of its social evolution and an expression of its spiritual experience. To understand what Radhakrishnan means, we can turn back to the Hindus who told Ziegenbalg that they had venerable antiquity on their side, since they were “a very Ancient Nation whose Religion is as Old as the World itself”. Religion, both to these 17th century Indians and to a 20th century Indian philosopher, is the tradition of a people or a community. It consists of the practices, customs, and stories that have been passed on by the ancestors of this community from ancient times.3 Therefore, the older it is, the more respectable. When they are accused of being followers of false religion, the Hindus reply that their religion is tradition, so how can it be false? As tradition, religion represents the past experience of a people, and hence the idea of one single religion for humankind becomes illogical or even inconceivable.

The foregoing permits us to sum up some of the properties which Hindus attribute to the phenomenon they have called ‘religion’ since colonial times. On the one hand, religion consists of a variety of paths an individual can take to attain moksha. On the other, religion is the ancestral tradition of a people, viz, the system of practices, customs, and stories a particular community has passed on over time. In both aspects, different religions are not rivals with respect to gaining converts nor competitors with respect to truth. Religion does not revolve around the belief in a system of doctrines, which is either true or false. Therefore, truth predicates do not apply to the object that religion is. All religions may be true in the sense that they all lead to the same goal of moksha, but no religion can possibly be false. Finally, the various religions are not rivals when it comes to the morality of their followers. All religious traditions produce good men and women.

These traits of religion, as the Hindus view it, allow us to take a first step in understanding the antagonist position in the conversion dispute. For instance, in December 1946, a conference of the heads of various Hindu institutions issued a memorandum to the constituent assembly, in which they concluded that “[s]ocial peace and political stability can best be secured by allowing cultural and religious groups to live their own life, unhampered by external interference and aggression,” letting the people “continue in the faith in which they were born,” free from “proselytising interference” [cited in Kim 2003:42]. Or, as the Constitution of the Hindu nation of Nepal puts it: “Every citizen, subject to the current traditions, shall practice and profess his own religion as handed down from ancient times. Provided that no person shall be entitled to convert another person to his religion.” When religion is the tradition of a community and one of various valid paths, this advocacy of non-interference makes perfect sense. The proselytising drive of the Christian religion, then, indeed becomes “one-sided violence”, as Swami Dayananda Saraswati (of the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu) wrote in his Open Letter to His Holiness The Pope John Paul II. This document – composed on the occasion of the pope’s visit to India in 1999 – voices the hurt conversion causes to those who conceive of religion as tradition:

Any protest against religious conversion is always branded as persecution, because it is maintained that people are not allowed to practice their religion, that their religious freedom is curbed. The truth is entirely different. The other person also has the freedom to practice his or her religion without interference. That is his/her birthright. Religious freedom does not extent (sic) to having a planned programme of conversion. Such a programme is to be construed as aggression against the religious freedom of others.

“Religious conversion is violence and it breeds violence”, the Swami concludes. Thus, when religion is the tradition that makes a people into a people, conversion becomes a disrupting interference in the life of a community.

Misunderstanding Religion and Conversion

To conclude this interim research report, we will formulate a hypothesis to account for the lack of mutual understanding in the Indian debate on conversion. In the foregoing, it has become clear that the Christians and the Hindus attribute mutually exclusive properties to religion. The former claim that some religions are false, that different religions are rivals, and that one religion leads to heaven and all others to hell. The latter say that no religion is false, that religions cannot be rivals, and that all religions lead to the same goal. These are contradictory predicates that cannot be ascribed to one and the same object.4 Therefore, we are compelled to conclude that the Hindus and the Christians are talking about two different things when they discuss ‘religion’. The implications for the dispute on conversion need further investigation. However, one implication is clear. If it turns out to be true that the advocates and the opponents have different objects in mind when discussing ‘religion’ (and its relation to conversion), they should continue to have great difficulties in making sense of each other’s statements and arguments.

This raises several problems. How come the two parties involved in the debate have not seen that the term ‘religion’ as they use it does not refer to the same object? This cannot be answered hastily. The conversion debate has gone on for a few centuries and the participants have been as gifted as they come. Thus, the lack of understanding they show towards each other becomes all the more difficult to explain. Likewise, why have they continued to engage in this debate with such vigour, in spite of the mutual incomprehension? Our future research on the question of conversion in India will focus on these and other questions.

Notes

1 We have tried to elaborate this point in our ongoing work on conversion, truth, and violence.
2 For an analysis of the impact which the Christian view of Hinduism as an immoral and false religion has had on the contemporary understanding of the Indian caste system, see Raf Gelders and Willem Derde (2003).

3 For a scientific account of the dynamic of religion and its implications for the relation between religion and tradition, see S N Balagangadhara (1994).

4 For a further analysis of this aspect of the Indian debate on conversion and its implications for the neutrality of the secular state in India, see S N Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover: ‘Secular State as the Harbinger of Religious Violence’ (forthcoming).

References

Balagangadhara, S N (1994): ‘The Heathen in His Blindness…': Asia, The West and the Dynamic of Religion, E J Brill, Leiden.

Buyers, Reverend William (1840): Letters on India: With Special Reference to the Spread of Christianity, John Snow, London.

Carey, William (1792): An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, Leicester.
Christianity Today (1999): ‘Protecting the Right to Convert’ in Christianity Today, 43(3), p 28.
CAD (1946-1950): Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report, Manager of Publications, Delhi.
Dow, Alexander (1768): ‘A Dissertation Concerning the Customs, Manners, Language, Religion and Philosophy of the Hindoos’ in P J Marshall (ed) (1970), The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, pp 107-39.
Gandhi, Mohandas K (1942): To the Hindus and Muslims, Anand T Hingorani (ed), Hingorani, Karachi.
– (1960-1993): The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Government of India, Publications Division, New Delhi.
– (1986): The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol I, Raghavan Iyer (ed), Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Gelders, Raf and Willem Derde (2003): ‘Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: Colonial Experience of Indian Intellectuals’ in Economic and Political Weekly, 38(43), pp 4611-17.
Grafe, Hugald (1972): ‘Hindu Apologetics at the Beginning of the Protestant Mission Era in India’ in the Indian Church History Review, 6(1), 43-69.
Jordens, J F T (1987): ‘Gandhi and Religious Pluralism’ in Harold G Coward (ed) (1987), Modern Indian Responses to Religious Pluralism, State University of New York Press, Albany, pp 3-18.
Kaul, H K (ed) (1979): Travellers’ India: An Anthology, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
Kim, Sebastian (2003): In Search of Identity: Debates on Religious Conversions in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
Kitzan, Lawrence (1970): ‘The London Missionary Society and the Problem of Conversion in India and China, 1804-1834′ in Canadian Journal of History, 5(2), pp 13-41.
Lach, Donald F (1965): Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol I: The Century of Discovery, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Menon, Nivedita (2004): ‘All Ye Faithless: Why Is Religious Conversion any Different From Other Conversions?’ in The Telegraph, May 6.
Neufeldt, R W (1987): ‘The Response of the Ramakrishna Mission’ in Harold G Coward (ed) (1987), Modern Indian Responses to Religious Pluralism, State University of New York Press, Albany, pp 65-84.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli (1969): Radhakrishnan Reader: An Anthology, P Nagaraja Rao, K Gopalaswami and S Ramakrishnan (eds), Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay.
Sarkar, Sumit (1999): ‘Hindutva and the Question of Conversions’ in K N Panikkar (ed), The Concerned Indian’s Guide to Communalism, Viking, New Delhi, pp 73-106.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1999): Open Letter to His Holiness The Pope John Paul II, at URL: http://hindunet.org/conversions/pope99/to_pope_from_swami_dayananada_sa.htm
Swami Vivekananda (1963): The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume II, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata.
– (1964): The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume VIII, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata.
Vyas, Neena (2002): ‘When Their Gods Failed Them’ in The Hindu, Sunday October 20.
Young, Richard Fox (1981): Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit Sources on Anti-Christian Apologetics in Early Nineteenth-Century India, Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Vienna.
Ziegenbalg, Bartholomeus (1719): Thirty Four Conferences between the Danish Missionaries and the Malabarian Bramans …in the East Indies, Concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion, Trans by Philipps, London.

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What is Colonial Consciousness?

Colonial consciousness incorporates the following element: in making statements about the colonized, the colonizer thinks that he is describing the colonizer. The latter, for his part, takes such statements as true descriptions of himself. What is involved is not the authority of the explainer (the colonizer) but the truth-value of the statements. How do we know this to be the case? Because we continue to think such statements are true even after `direct’ colonization has ended.

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Two kinds of research in social sciences

S.N Balagangadhara 

There is, on the one hand, the intellectual tradition of expressing opinions and points of view. Here, as it suits thoughtful minds, one tries to express ideas carefully and in a nuanced fashion. Recent peer-opinions are taken into account; generalizations are avoided; the attention is on the specific and the concrete; and, where possible, one’s ideas are either founded upon or embroidered by some or another of the many philosophical stances that are available.

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Posted in PhD, Research, S.N Balagangadhara, Social Sciences

Ill-formed questions

S.N Balagangadhara

Assume that you get a Ph.D student who wants to do medical research. He comes to you and tells you that he wants to find out an answer to the burning question about why people get sick. Would you be able to guide this student in answering his question or give one answer to it? Your answer would be: it depends.

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Posted in PhD, Research, S.N Balagangadhara

ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲಿ ಜಾತಿಗಳಿವೆ, ಜಾತಿವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆ ಇಲ್ಲ: ಪ್ರೊ ಎಸ್. ಎನ್. ಬಾಲಗಂಗಾಧರ ಅವರ ಸಂದರ್ಶನ

'ಚಿಂತನ ಬಯಲು' ಎಂಬ ಸಂಶೋಧನಾ ಪತ್ರಿಕೆ(Research Journal) ಯಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಟವಾದ ಪ್ರೊ. ಎಸ್. ಎನ್. ಬಾಲಗಂಗಾಧರ ಅವರ ಸಂದರ್ಶನ  

* ರಮೇಶ್ ನಿಂಬೆಮರ್ದಳ್ಳಿ

ಕುವೆಂಪು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯದ ಸ್ಥಳೀಯ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿಕಗಳ ಅಧ್ಯಯನ ಕೇಂದ್ರ'ದ ನಾಡಿನ ಚಿಂತಕರೆನಿಸಕೊಂಡವರು ಧ್ವನಿಯೆತ್ತಿದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಡಾ ರಾಜಾರಾಮ್‌ ಹೆಗಡೆಯವರ ಲೇಖನ ಹಿಂದಿನ ಸಂಚಿಕೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಟವಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಈ ಕೇಂದ್ರದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮತ್ತು ವಿವಾದದ ಹಿನ್ನೆಲೆಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಇದ್ದರೆ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯದಿತ್ತು ಎಂದು ಹಲವು ಓದುಗರು ತಿಳಿಸಿದ್ದರು. ಆದ್ದರಿಂದ, ಕನ್ನಡ ನಾಡಿನ ಬುದ್ಧಿಜೀವಿಗಳು ಈ ಕೇಂದ್ರವನ್ನು ವಿರೋಧಿಸಲು ಕಾರಣವಾದ, ಬಾಲಗಂಗಾಧರ ಅವರ ಚಿಂತನೆಯನ್ನು ಪರಿಚಯಿಸುವ ನಿಟ್ಟಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಅವರ ಕಿರು ಸಂದರ್ಶನವೊಂದನ್ನು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಲಾಗಿದೆ.

- ಚಿಂತನ ಬಯಲು ಸಂಪಾದಕ

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Reference managers

Over the course of your PhD studies you will collect, read and review a large body of literature and information in various formats. Keeping track of the literature you encounter can be facilitated by using a reference manager. An efficient reference management workflow simplifies the academic writing process.

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Posted in Bibliography, Citation, PhD, Reference Manager, Research

Why Indian Secularists do not think but talk?

S.N Balagangadhara

I want to go deeper into the claim of my earlier post that Shabnum Tejani s and Neera Chandhoke s of this world do not think but merely talk. In other words, is it possible to identify the problems with their accounts (that explicates more clearly why I say that they do not think) in such a way that it is susceptible to some sort of solution? If, indeed, we can show that such people do not think and we can show that their mistakes have some cognitive roots, then we can also provide additional explanations. In such a case, our answer would be richer and more complex than any other available at the market place.

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Posted in S.N Balagangadhara, Secularism

Unresolved Question of Funeral in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara

Ms. Sridevi

Knowingly or unknowingly, Anantamurt(i) has portrayed a barbaric civilization, where books, the laws are buttressed by magic and where a too elaborate social organization is unquickened by intellect or creativity or ideas of moral responsibility (except to the self in its climb to salvation). These people are helpless, disadvantaged, easily unbalanced; the civilization they have inherited has long gone sour, living instinctive lives crippled by rules…they make up a society without a head

-          Naipaul .V S. India: A Wounded Civilization.

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