Should religion be left out of the domain of science?

There’s no evidence to prove that Ram Sethu is a manmade structure. There’s no historical evidence to prove that Rama existed and the events portrayed in Ramayana actually occured – that’s what the ASI said in its affidavit to the Supreme Court.

They were actually supposed to tell the court if the Ram Sethu, in their opinion, is a manmade structure or not. They went too far in questioning the existence of Rama itself. The ASI affidavit was later withdrawn.

Strong reactions followed. The pseudosecular nexus was horrified that the govt. retracted the affidavit. Earlier, in a show of mass anger, sangh parivar groups went berserk stopping traffic and burning vehicles.

Saner minds rightly said the ASI affidavit went a touch too far because the existence of Ram maybe irrelevant to the issue at hand. Besides, the absence of evidence should not be confused with the absence of the occurence of an event or a person.

Anyway, others went too far in stating that the existence/nonexistence of Ram (or any other religious figure for that matter) shouldnt be put to the test of science and “matters of faith should be left alone.”

Should religion be left out of the domain of science? Should science be used to invalidate the existence of Gods? For all the muck that this issue has thrown up, one good outcome is that it got society debating these two questions.

Hindus (maybe not all Hindus) believe that Rama did exist. Which means that they believe Ram is a mortal – a human being – and not necessarily a God. Ramayana itself portrays Rama as a mortal.

In his classic “Ramayana”, C. Rajagopalachari states that

The story of Bharata in the Ramayana portraying a character of unrivalled purity and sublime selflessness is something, more than an episode, and stands out by itself even in that noble epic, as holy shrines do on the banks of the Ganga. It uplifts the heart, and gives one a glimpse of the heights to which human nature can rise when cleansed by love and devotion. Whether Rama and Bharata were incarnations of the Deity or merely supreme creations of a nation’s imagination this episode is among the masterpieces of the world’s literature.

So whether Ram existed or whether Ram is a myth shouldnt be such a cause for worry – both for the pseudosecular nexus and for the Hindu right.

Ram is an eminently reverable character. He was an ordinary human being who rose to great heights by cultivating qualities that were – after all – human. He was prone to mistakes/errors/sins (whatever you choose to call) and he’s even more likeable for that. Here’s a man who was an exceptional human being but who was also prone to shortcomings and errors because of his human nature.

This model of a purshottam is much more acceptable to an ordinary human being than some extraordinarily powerful superman who could do anything at any day at any time, vanquish all enemies at will and never fail. Simply because such men dont exist and will never exist and also because such a character is more identifiable to an ordinary human being.

Try as they might, the pseudosecular nexus will never be able to reduce/diminish the greatness of Ramayana. Its beyond them because Ram will continue to remain in popular consciousness. Outside their scotch-soda parties, where they pontificate on poverty while sipping on expensive scotch, their ideological rants will have no takers. Massmurderes like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot will never make ideal role models.

On the other hand, I do not agree with the view that matters of religion shouldnt be put to the test of science. It is only when religious beliefs evolve with time and new developments in knowledge about the natural world that religions get enriched. Blind beliefs revealed to be as such by findings of science should be avoided.

When they dont evolve and choose to remain “pure” or “authentic”, religions become systems of dogma and superstition. Hinduism is lucky to have a tradition of critical analysis but this tradition has gone through tough times as the existence of superstition and caste prejudices in Hindu society shows.

Buddhism is an excellent example of an evolving religion. Beliefs/theories/hypotheses are constantly put to the test against new developments and are changed accordingly. Its an example of “rational religion,” if there can be one.

The tradition of critical analysis so integral to Indic religions is precious and should be preserved. Science and religion should be married and not divorced. Science should be the head of the family while religion should dutifully obey the findings of science. Religion should be the homemaker while science should be the guide.

Usually, it is religion which tends to be the more problematic partner refusing to obey the findings of science. Religion should make amends for if the two are locked eternally in conflict, they’d make a bad marriage! Science, on the other hand, should be more patient in trying to make religion understand its new findings instead of adopting a contentious posture.

Should they file a divorce instead? Albert Einsten once said: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. He was stating a fact. The two may fall out temporarily and sometimes for long durations (for ex., the Dark Age) but cannot avoid marriage because:

1. Both exist.

2. More importantly, their marriage is important to society and human progress.

(This article was first published at Desicritics.org)

Some racist and xenophobic Tamils dont represent all of South India

CNN-IBN asks, in a highly irresponsible interview, ” Is Ram Sethu an irrelevant issue down south?” Irresponsible for out of all people, they gave credence to the views of the socalled “Dravidian rationalists” who have such rational claims to Tamil heritage as an ancient continent called Kumari Kandam that was present in the Indian Ocean region and got submerged long time ago. The people in today’s South India are the descendants of this ancient continent.

Is Ram Setu a nonissue in the South? Why do you have to go too far to answer this question? Stay in Tamil Nadu itself and you’ll find the AIADMK, a south Indian party, protesting against the SSCP. In Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Ram remains popular today irrespective of what Ram’s popularity status was in the past.

The socalled Dravidian movement, purportedly based on rationality and opposed to superstition, relies on a mixture of linguistic fanaticism, myths like Kumari Kandam, racism and xenophobia of people with white skin (read “destructive Aryan North Indians”) to perpetuate its purely political propaganda.

The theory on which their movement relies – broadly speaking, invading Aryans from North India imposing their destructive Gods over south Indian Dravidians – has been discredited long time ago by numerous scholars and is today considered pseudoscience. What’s more, this outlook is not shared by many south Indian Hindus themselves. As far as they are concerned, it was a sage who crossed the Vindhyas into southern India who brought Sanskrit and the Vedas to south Indian, not some destructive warmongering Aryan warrior God.

The rallying points of this political propanganda – a deadly mixture of ethnicity, myths, prejudices against specific groups based on skin colour, origin and language; racism and xenophobia is strikingly similar to the rallying points of the Nazis in their destructive genocide of the Jews. One can already see the results of this genocidal propaganda – many Tamil Brahmins have left Tamil Nadu and are living in other states and abroad.

Another reason why this interview was irresponsible was the fact that it tried to portray if south India is a monolithic entity and that the Dravidian parties are the main articulators of the issues of south Indians.

As a south Indian, I can state that the only thing that Tamil Nadu and the other south Indian states have in common is the common roots of their language – protoDravidian. Even food habbits, though largely similar in nature, show wide variations. There’s a Tamil cuisine and there’s a Telugu cuisine, a Kannada cuisine and a Malayali cuisine. Dressing styles are different. Festivals are different.

The outlook of the people is also different. While Dravidian nationalists base their movements on hatred of other groups – attributing the presence of social evils to specific groups, caste or religious – the rest of the people in south India practice a healthy and open outlook towards life without practicing any sort of prejudice or hatred towards specific groups. They go about solving problems instead of incessantly ranting about them or their supposed creators.

The people of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka do NOT share the racist and xenophobic outlook that some people from Tamil Nadu feel proud about, especially those from the Dravidian rationalist camp.

This camp is hardly rationalist. All you have to do is read the following claims about Kumari Kandam (from the Wikipedia article):

In modern Dravidian ethnic nationalist literature, Kumari Kandam or “Lemuria” was the “cradle of civilization”, the origin of human languages in general and the Tamil language in particular. These ideas gained notability in Tamil academic literature over the first decades of the 20th century, and were popularized by the Tanittamil Iyakkam, notably by self-taught Dravidologist Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects.

R. Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamilnadu, in 1991 claimed to have deciphered the Indus script as Tamil, following the methodology recommended by his teacher Devaneya Pavanar, presenting the following timeline (cited after Mahadevan 2002):

ca. 200,000 to 50,000 BC: evolution of “the Tamilian or Homo Dravida”,
ca. 200,000 to 100,000 BC: beginnings of the Tamil language
50,000 BC: Kumari Kandam civilisation
20,000 BC: A lost Tamil culture of the Easter Island which had an advanced civilisation
16,000 BC: Lemuria submerged
6087 BC: Second Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king
3031 BC: A Chera prince in his wanderings in the Solomon Island saw wild sugarcane and started cultivation in Tamilnadu.
1780 BC: The Third Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king
7th century BC: Tolkappiyam (the earliest extant Tamil grammar)

Mathivanan uses “Aryan Invasion” rhetoric to account for the fall of this civilization:

“After imbibing the mania of the Aryan culture of destroying the enemy and their habitats, the Dravidians developed a new avenging and destructive war approach. This induced them to ruin the forts and cities of their own brethren out of enmity”.

That folks, is the rationality that the Dravidian movement claims to pursue – an advanced civilization about 20,000 BC. That sort of thing is usually called pseudoscience. Quite similar in nature to the pseudoscientific claims that the Ramayana occured 1.7 million years ago, when human beings havent yet begun to live in large cities like Ayodhya!