> Why Hindutva Loves "Science" > > Meera Nanda
Interesting essay. Thanks to Vaj for posting it. Comments interleaved below. I admit at the outset that they betray my TM bias. Mark Meredith wrote: > > While I'm sure there are hindu fundies who are cynically using the > guise of science to advance their religious-mythological dogma, I > don't see why there can't be a legitimate attempt to expand science's > reach into those more subjective or even superstitious areas in an > attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. Nanda's bias from the outset is that Vedic traditions are nothing *but* chaff. Instead of arguing for a proper application of science to traditional myths, she is content to point out the dysfunctional appropriation of science by the god-men. She doesn't say how they do it, however; she's content to say simply that what they're doing is wrong. > Mother India will be called upon to heal the wounds inflicted > on the entire world by the "violence" of soul-less modern science. That would be a bad thing? Obviously she believes this is just the packaging of an empty promise. > We are heading toward a schizophrenic national culture in which the > technological products of modern science will be eagerly embraced, but the > secular culture which science was supposed to help create will be > strenuously denied. Haven't we in the West demonstrated that a secular culture isn't something that people particularly desire? And since when was the purpose of science to create a secular culture? Again, her assumptions don't bode well for a reasoned argument -- or for one that appeals to the emotions of people in the middle. > Instead of a genuine secular culture, which denies the > existence of gods in nature and the authority of god-men in culture, the > intellectual Kshatriyas are intent on declaring the dharmic worldview, with > its nature-gods and miracle-working gurus, to be the essence of a "higher" > science and "authentic" secularism. I didn't think secularism denied the existence of gods; I thought it unfit to deal with those realms. I guess the rules are different in India. No wonder the god-men are fighting back -- secularism has been positioned as their enemy. > Symptoms of such schizophrenia are > already evident: This Hindu modernity, incidentally, bears a frightening > similarity with the reactionary modernism of Hitler's Germany, where high > technology was allowed to mix with a highly romanticized dream of recreating > an Aryan society. The Nazis, too, assumed that Germany could be both > technologically advanced and remain true to its "Aryan soul". The obligatory parallel with Nazi Germany. It seems one can't have a political discussion without raising this specter. I suppose it's a good thing to get it out of the way. > If it > is given the cultural authority as a superior way of knowing, modern science > has the potential to demystify the hallowed truths of Hinduism itself This seems to be the rub in India: modern science needs to be "given cultural authority" to be honored, but the bestowers of cultural authority are the god-men who stand to lose the most from science ascending. I guess I'm wondering, why cannot science rise in status on its own merits, without having that authority bestowed by someone? > measurements and controlled tests are declared to be Western. Hindu sciences > use "their own" methodology of meditation and direct realization. Here's another problem I have with Nanda's essay. She dismisses all subjective means of gaining knowledge. But it's not just Hindus and neo-Vedists who champion subjective means of gaining knowledge. Rudulf Steiner did it, and it seems we have some people in this forum who will stand up for it. Instead of dismissing it, wouldn't an open-minded scientists design a method of investigating whether it's valid? > Hinduism has always protected itself form the new and the alien by turning > it into an inferior aspect of itself, quietly metabolizing it until it is > absorbed into the existing belief structure. ... Hindutva gets a good name > for "openness" and "tolerance," while the end-result is as conservative as > the Taliban could've hoped for. In the end, the old decides what parts of > the new will be fitted where, and what parts will be unceremoniously thrown > out. In the end, the old has always won in India. This graf echoes a theme that L B has championed -- that he who defines the issue controls the issue. Could it be that the Indian culture is so condescendingly all- embracing precisely because the Veda is so universal? > .... radical critics have claimed that non-Western, traditional ways of > knowing are as scientific in their social context as modern science is in > the Western context. I'd be interested in reading more about how traditional ways of knowing are "scientific." > Astrology must the most rigorously falsified body of "knowledge" in the > entire history of ideas). I'd be real interested in a review of the literature that falsifies astrology. Any study I've ever seen is comically superficial. And how do they explain the correlations between people's charts and their actual lives? Random thoughts on my part, I admit. But the big points I see are these: 1) People yearn for the mystical, so why not face that head-on, instead of plump for secularism that denies the mystical? 2) Have we totally invalidated subjective means of gaining knowedge, or is there room for study there? 3) The champions of Hindutva are conflating Veda and science to the disadvantage of science. Instead of fighting to keep them separate, could not the secularists apply science to the Veda in a way that, as Mark Meredith says above, separates the wheat from the chaff? Instead of saying it's all chaff? - Patrick Gillam To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
