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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 8:34
AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Dangers Of
Religious Environmentalism In India
"Dangers
Of Religious Environmentalism In
India"
DHARMIC
ECOLOGY AND THE NEO-PAGAN INTERNATIONAL:
THE DANGERS OF RELIGIOUS
ENVIRONMENTALISM IN INDIA
by Meera Nanda
Uhttp://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/072004_D_Ecology_MeeraNanda.pdfU
[Paper
Presented at Panel No. 15 at the 18th
European Conference on Modern South
Asian
Studies, 6-9 July 2004
Panel Title: From Landscapes to
Genomes:
Authoritative Knowledge in Contested Domains 8
July, Lund,
Sweden ]
Paper Abstract:
The Context: Politics in India is
undergoing a
process of sacralization, or religionization. The
founding
principles of India's secular democracy
are being reformulated in the
concepts, symbols
and rituals derived from the elements of orthodox
and
neo-Hinduism. In keeping with the fabled
"inclusivism' of Hinduism, Hindu
nationalists are
trying to co-opt the key modern ideals of
liberalism,
secularism and humanism as being
always-already present in the eternal
truths of
the Vedas. Hindutva is "modern" in rhetoric, for,
unlike the
paleo-religious fundamentalists like
the Taliban, it is not turning its
back to the
modern world. But Hindutva is deeply anti-modern
in reality,
for, like all "respectable" religious
fundamentalist parties (e.g., Moral
Majority in
the US, or the Mullahs in Iran), it seeks to
co-opt modern
ideals and deny any contradiction,
any break and any secularization of the
Hindu
understanding of nature and society.
The problematic: The
rhetoric of "Vedic
spirituality-as-science"/ "spiritual science"
is
playing a key role in the erosion of secular
public discourse in
India. There is a concerted,
state-sponsored effort by Hindu ideologues
to
reinterpret modern science as a mere footnote to
Hindu spiritual
traditions which see the
phenomenal world of nature as an _expression_
of
the Spirit or Brahman. Hindu nationalists and
their intellectual
allies including numerous
gurus and swamis, inside and outside
the
government, all claim that the most advance
research in physics,
neurosciences, biology,
ecology and mathematics all confirm the
holistic
worldview of the Vedas and/or are already
presaged in the
Vedas. Conversely, they justify
esoteric, paranormal and pseudo-sciences
like
astrology, vastu, faith-healing, telepathy, and
reincarnation
memories etc. as legitimate
sciences within the holistic,
non-dualistic
worldview of Vedic Hinduism. The introduction of
astrology
is one prominent example of such
thinking, as is the state-sponsored
"research"
and propagation of Vastu shastra, cow-urine,
scientific
benefits of
yagnas
and "Vedic"
mathematics. The question this panel asks is: how
and where
"authoritative knowledge is created
about such imponderables as genes - or
atoms. Who
is the God of the really small things?"
My paper will offer
one possible answer to this
question: authoritative interpreters of
knowledge
of material things, big and small, are none other
than the
"Intellectual kshatriyas" of the Sangh
Parivar.
Complete text
at:
TUhttp://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/072004_D_Ecology_MeeraNanda.pdfUT
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