Scientific?

Yesterday morning in Jaya T.V. one Vedic scholar (or business man) was giving interview.  As usual, like present trend in India (or everywhere in the world among the Hindus) he too began to explain every thing vedic is scientific.  And while explaining about the vedic mantras related with cosmos, he began to tell about Ganapati or Ganesha.  His explanation is that ganas is the five elements (water, fire, wind etc.) and isha or pati is the Lord.  And therefore  Ganesha is the Lord of the elements, which controls the entire cosmos and continued his explanation about each deity and related with viedic mantras. 

But as far as my knowledge goes there is no mention of Ganesha in Vedas and in later purans tells various stories about his origin.  Now this vedic scholar never bothers about it and began to read back the vedic mantras, interpreting them for elements and relating with Ganesha.  Then he also talked about the vedic kit in which everything required for meditation and small puja (just for ten minutes even in your office) also demonstrated.

Now why everything related with our faith and tradition needs to be interpreted both scientific and vedic?  It looks very superficial and artificial to me.  Of course there is no point in challenging such views now among the educated Hindus.  They will began to defend such views more vigorously than to think reasonably that everything related to our faith and tradition need not be scientific.  Finally what is scientific? 

From my understanding, while Scriptures play an important role in our Hindu worldview, especially in philosophy, the lives of ordinary Hindus are not strictly dictated by the precepts of any particular Scripture. Of course, various scriptural teachings may be frequently quoted in relation to life’s events. For instance, my mother once told her father, who urged her to move in with him after my father suffered a significant business loss, “Where Rama is, that is Ayodhya for Sita.”

In contrast, followers of Abrahamic faiths are generally expected to live according to the teachings of their respective scriptures; however, this is not always strictly adhered to in practice. In the case of Hindus, our lives revolve around values that often dominate and influence of family every aspect of life. Nevertheless, no common Hindu believes that their life should be validated by so-called science or by scriptural teachings that are specifically interpreted by others.

Mathigiri, December 20, 2005.