Scientific Religion?

Scientific religion?

People’s life in every period reflects that particular timeline than any specific interpretation of the past or prediction about the future.  Of course, without the past, there is no present and without the hope of a future, the present has no meaning in life.  But inventing our own ideas and ideals in the life of the past rather reflects our curiosity to say something new or different than giving a correct picture about life of the past, present and future.

In this month of Margazhi (December 15^th to January 14^th), as usual a lot of religious devotional programs are broadcasted in almost all T.V. channels and the highlight of this season is the poems of Andale’s Tiruppavai and Manikkavasagar’s Tiruppaliyezhuchi in which the former wakes her friends up in the early morning urging them to join her to worship Narayana to get their wishes while Manikkavasagar is worshipping Siva.  And as usual, speakers from various walks of life will explain the meaning of each song every day. Most of the speakers will be religious figures but several times, speakers from other professions like—teachers, doctors and writers also are invited to share.  And in recent one such T.V. broadcast in one channel, one woman, whom I think is a doctor, after giving the meaning of one of Andal’s songs began to give all scientific and even medical explanations about the song.  And one day, she even shared about ‘ARAS’ (Ascending Reticular Activating System, whatever it may be) and found it in Andal’s songs.

Well, my intention is not to challenge or question such interpretation.  But if Andal were to be at present, she would be wondering why such distortion is done to her simple songs of bhakti.  She wrote those songs living in her life of bhakti which also reflects her time.  And instead of helping people to get that experience of bhakti in their life that too in such a month like Margazhi, which is specifically assigned for that, if we begin to find all kinds of modern scientific and even medical meaning in them, then we are neither serving people in our time nor representing the people of the past.  There is another lady doctor who regularly gives such meaning to all Tirumandiram in Podhigai Channel.

Such professional speakers might think that they want to make our Indian thought of the past relevant to the modern time and need (and also make it universal).  And for this, they use the famous art of text torturing which began in the recent past since Neo-Hinduism.¹

Reading our modern scientific interpretation is not limited to the professionals.  Even lay people share such views when they have a chance to speak.  I often hear about all the modern scientific inventions found in our ancient scriptures, particularly in Vedas in coded language, which Western scholars decoded and invented all the recent scientific discoveries already found in our Vedas.  To support such a claim, they even point out that all the main MSS of Sanskrit texts are with foreigners which were taken from India.  Only by reading and decoding the secrets in our Vedic language, those Westerners managed to make all scientific inventions and discoveries.  Occasionally such views are even endorsed by pseudo scholars without themselves reading or doing any research in these fields.  And lay people, not knowing anything about them, take them to be true and begin to make all kinds of claim.2

For example, in one T.V. program (Makkal arangam by Sri Visu in Jaya T.V.) one young man said that the center of the entire world is India³, and the center of India is Tamilnadu; center of Tamilnadu in Chidambaram and the center of Chidambaram is the Nataraja temple and center of it is the garbhasthana (sanctum) where Nataraja is dancing.  And from there alone the cosmic vibration is sustaining the entire cosmos. And has this been proven scientifically?!? I understand his affection for Tamilnadu and his bhakti to Siva.  But projecting such a view as scientific is beyond my comprehension.  Even Nagpur is officially designated as the center of India having zero mile stone there.  Just glorifying our local favorites and making them universal is a common trend in modern India.  Neo-Hinduism initiated such a trend by making Vedanta as universal philosophy/theology transcending all kinds of textual, historical and religious (and also exegetical) context and limitation.  India as the origin of civilization, (and some Tamilians claim it as their exclusive contribution), Sanskrit as the mother of all languages, Veda as the origin of all kinds of philosophies found in the world etc.

Well when serious scholars will ignore such claims, without listening and paying any attention to them, as they will irritate them.  However, sometimes such claims serve as amusement, though they reveal our naïve innocence on such matters.

Dayanand Bharati, Gurukulam, January 3, 2011 (later revised in March 2012).

Notes

1.. All such issues began to emerge after the Indological studies by Western (Oriental) scholars and some debate about the Aryan ‘migration’ or ‘invasion’ theories.

2..  …some Indian leaders, suffering from foreign domination and from a sense of inferiority before the technological and scientific progress in the West, used to cultivate a sort of defensive position.  They claimed that every new scientific truth can be found in the Vedas and epics.  Only one had to know how to look for it there!  Thus, airplanes, jets and atom bombs are all to be found in the mythological accounts of the epics—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.  Sometimes, even educated (p.336) Indians, without caring to look minutely into our past history and ancient texts, believed that their forefathers were much more scientifically advanced than modern Westerners.  By now, perhaps, this belief has generally been abandoned with the exception of a few over-zealous traditionalists as well as some new converts who are influenced by such recent books as The Chariot of the Gods….— The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal: Ethics and Epics, ed. Jonardon Ganeri, New Delhi, Oxford, 2002, pp. 337-6-37

…Veneration of the Veda and ignorance of its content caused some credulous Hindus to attribute German scientific advances to German knowledge of the Veda.— David Smith, Hinduism and Modernity,  Blackwell, Indian edition, 2003. p. 37

3.. Once  I saw a world map in which Australians printed their country at the center as they are not happy to see their country in a corner of the normal world map.  Though it made me to laugh, yet I understood their nationalistic aspiration.