(continued from the previous page)
4. Notice that one could cultivate the civic virtue of tolerance without, in the least, being required to be religiously tolerant as well. One cannot be religiously tolerant without, at the same time, having the civic virtue of tolerance as well. (This is a further indication that these notions have different extensions.)
At first sight, then, it looks as though religious tolerance implies civic tolerance. However, that is not quite the case: one could be religiously tolerant, i.e., accept that all religions are either equally true (or equally false, as the case may be), and yet be intolerant, say, of fascists. This shows that the implication between religious and civic tolerance holds only in the context of discussion about religions.
This is a further indication that there is a substantive difference between civic tolerance and religious tolerance.
5. Even though more nuances can be added and more reasons adduced to distinguish between civic and religious tolerance, I hope this is enough to provide a prima facie plausibility to my suggestion that, for the sake of clarity, we would do better to distinguish the two from each other.
6. In my book, and throughout the posts, I have been insisting that Christianity is an intolerant religion because it is a religion in the first place. In my book I have shown why this is the case. I have argued there, as I mentioned in one of my posts, that faith and intolerance are two faces of the same coin, i.e., one is intolerant precisely because one believes.
To put it in terms of the distinction I have introduced: Jews, Christians and Muslims (of today) might or might not have learnt the civic virtue of tolerance; but as Jews, Christians, and Muslims they are religiously intolerant. That is, they cannot accept that each of them is as true as the other.
7. Not only that. While each of the above three religions (and their believers) think that the other is deficient in their worship of God, all of them believe that our traditions are false religions. The latter are that because they worship the false gods. In other words, there is a difference even with respect to their religious intolerance: regarding each other, the above three religions think that the other is deficient in worshipping God; regarding us, all three believe that we worship false gods.
8. Let me actualise the points that Jakob, Willem, Tom, Sarah and I are making in terms of the distinction I have just introduced and establish the difference between our position, and that of Alex, Maria and some others.
(a) Alex is claiming that the Orthodox Christians have learnt civic tolerance in India, and that they are different in this regard from the Catholics and Protestants in India. That is, he says, the Orthodox Churches in India do not proselytize the way other Christians do.
About the empirical issue: I have not done any study myself to find out whether or not the Indian Orthodox Churches proselytize or not; or do so as aggressively as the Catholics or the Protestants. I am not disputing this.
(b) He further feels, (I think), that ordinances against proselytization is necessary because we need to inculcate the virtue of civic tolerance among proselytizers in India.
I disagree about the need for legislation to curb conversion for several reasons, some of which are connected to the next issue.
(c) He claims that the Orthodox Churches, because they represent 'Eastern Christianity', are tolerant. One could interpret his claims in a charitable way and assume that he is saying the following: somehow, 'Eastern Christianity' is more prone to being more tolerant in civic life than 'Western Christianity'. I disagree with this claim on historical grounds. The history of 'Eastern Christianity' is every bit as violent as the history of the 'Western Christianity'. [For those who know German, I would suggest the following work of Karlheinz Deschner. He has so far written 6 volumes of the history of Christianity, called, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums. The title translates as "The Criminal History of Christianities" and the first six volumes are about 'Eastern Christianity'.]
(d) We can also assume that because Alex speaks of the difference between 'Eastern' and 'Western' brands of Christianities, he is making the claim that the 'Eastern' Christianity is religiously tolerant, whereas the 'Western' brand is not. I contest this claim too, and my posts so far are centred on this issue.
9. The point that Jakob has been raising since the beginning of the discussion can be put in these terms: the nature of the Indian culture is such that it has the power to impact on Islam and Christianity in India to make them religiously tolerant. And that such an impacting occurs in our culture when the Indian traditions themselves are vibrant. When this vibrancy goes away, or becomes muted, one begins to raise the issue of inculcating civic tolerance through legislations to curb proselytization. If true, these are immensely interesting claims. They have little to do with Indian Christians wearing mangala sutra or bindis, or even whether they accept prasadams in temples. Rather, they have to do with whether or not our culture can tame the aggressive truth claims of these three religions. All our posts have been oriented towards this issue.
Hopefully, this post has brought some clarity regarding our posts.
Friendly Greetings
Balu
Dear Chand,
It is unclear to me why you think I am either spreading hate or nonsense.
Regarding hate. I have not cited a single atrocity that Christianity has committed in order to incite hate towards Christianity. In fact, I have not even discussed any specific theological doctrine of any kind of Christianity, except to speak of the Christological dilemma. This dilemma is discussed by theologians, themselves Christians, in the field of Christology. And even here, I localise in it the dynamics of Christianity. The intolerance of Christianity, I say very explicitly, is its property by virtue of being a religion. That is to say, according to my research, all religions are intolerant. You might want to disagree with it; you are welcome to put your arguments across that refute the result of my research. But how does this constitute spreading hate? I am puzzled.
You seem offended by the reference I give to Deschner's work, and you say that ANY idiot knows even the title is stupid. For your benefit, I have cut and pasted some reviews (in my #324) from many different types of people: philosophers, theologians, doctors, historians both secular and Christian, and so on. You might want to think that all these people are idiots; but think of what it does to your credibility if you make such a statement without having read the books or without being able to back up your assertion.
Regarding nonsense. I take it you mean that my claims are false or wrong. In that case, I would like to read your reasons. There is no point in simply saying something like that without telling which other theory of religion does better than mine. Even if there are problems in my theory, I claim that this is the best theory we have in the market place. If you think differently, I would like you to tell us the way in which any of the competitor theories in the market place does better. Of course, as a scientist, I do know (and accept) at a meta-level that all my claims are hypothetical and tentative. I very honestly hope to see and greet, before I die, a much better theory of religion than the one I am developing. Such a process will come into being, if people like you discuss the theory in a critical but rational way. It will not, if people continue nit-picking and come up with irrelevant criticisms.
Of course, I am not accusing you of either nit-picking or of coming up with irrelevant criticisms. But what is not clear to me is whether you have a criticism at all. If you do, may I hope to read them?
Friendly greetings
Balu
Assuming that the distinction I proposed in my #311 between civic tolerance and religious tolerance is acceptable, let us proceed further to analyse the notion of civic tolerance more closely. (I am simply assuming that it is desirable and that, from now on, we are talking about religious matters.)
1. It is (logically) possible that there could be religious intolerance and yet the believers in such religions could have the virtue of civic tolerance. That is to say, even (a) if there is religious intolerance, believers in some religion or another could have a society where there is civic tolerance. As suggested earlier, (b) religious tolerance implies the presence of civic tolerance.
2. What do the above two statements suggest? That there could be a possible world (or a possible society) where both are true as a matter of empirical fact. Let us further assume that western democracies are examples of such a society.
3. We can now rewrite this as follows. Under certain circumstances, the existence of civic tolerance is indifferent to whether there is religious tolerance or religious intolerance. What are these circumstances?
4. Let us accept the story about Europe at face value. There is a neutral umpire with respect to religious maters (namely the state) that enforces civic tolerance. When does such a state come into being? Here, the stories about the western culture are of no use. Why? These stories tell us that (a) generations of religious strife results in the creations of such a state (because people get tired of religious strife) and/or (b) European psychology became 'enlightened'. (a) is empirically false: Lebanon, Palestine, Ireland, etc. are examples that show us that generations of religious strife drives violence deeper into the body of society instead of generating some kind of 'tiredness'. (b) is also false: Ireland tells us that much.
5. Consequently, a neutral state might be a necessary condition but it is not sufficient. What more is required? It appears that this umpire must be seen to be neutral by the participants. If it is not seen as neutral, then this state cannot enforce civic tolerance. In the case of Ireland and Lebanon, believers do not see the state as a neutral entity (with respect to religious matters) and, consequently, there is continuous religious strife. (To put it in the language familiar to us, a secular state cannot enforce civic tolerance in a society if the participants do not perceive the state as a neutral entity with respect to religious matters.)
6. What is required for the state to be seen as a neutral entity with respect to religious matters? Let us look again at the western history. (i) The state must not take any position regarding the truth or falsity of the religions. That is to say, the state does not say (a) religion is the revelation of God; (b) religion is not the revelation of God. (It does the same with respect to different denominations.) That is to say, the state must remain agnostic with respect to God and His revelation. (ii) It is not enough that state is agnostic but it must be seen to be agnostic as well. What does that mean? The participants must recognise agnosticism as a possibility they can countenance in their strife. That means, for both believers and atheists, agnosticism must appear as a reasonable option within their discourse. That is, in more general terms, agnosticism is a choice both within a theistic discourse and an atheistic discourse and, as such, is a part of such discourses. And, as such, is not an independent third choice that is above and beyond theism and atheism.
7. Let me introduce my research at this stage. I claim that atheism is secularised theism. If that is the case, agnosticism is a part of both theism and its secularised version (namely, atheism). Better put: agnosticism is one of the mechanisms in secularising theism itself. (AG, does this answer the question you raise in your #315?) And, in so far as the state is an agnostic entity, it suggests that the 'neutral' state that the western democracies speak of is one of the mechanisms in the secularisation of Christianity itself. That is, it spreads dechristianized Christianity. Hence, it is acceptable both to the Christians and to the disguised Christians.
Christianity, as we know empirically, comes in different brands. Consequently, the 'neutral' state in western democracies not only spreads a dechristianized Christianity but also a particular brand of dechristianized Christianity. And this brand must be acceptable to all the citizens in that society.
8. This hypothesis, I think, is also sufficient to account for the failure for "western secularism" to take hold (a) in the Middle East, (b) in India, (c) in Ireland. This has nothing to do with the psychology of peoples in these cultures or the 'genius' of the Western people but do with what the so-called 'neutral' state is all about. The state cannot spread any brand of dechristianized Christianity in cultures that are not Christian; in Ireland, the strife is precisely about which brand of dechristainized Christianity the state ought to spread.
9. This is not the only reason why this hypothesis is worthy of further investigation. It also explains the perceptions of (some) people as well. In India, the "secular state" that Nehru dreamt of is not only seen not being neutral but also as something 'alien' to the Indian traditions. If the 'secular' state spreads some brand of dechristianized Christianity, then it is obvious that it will be seen as something 'alien' to the Indian traditions. Further, where a majority of people are not Christians (but, say, Muslims or Jews) then, it is also obvious that they will be against any brand of dechristianized Christianity. This might tell us a bit more both about the state of Israel and the fact that Muslims seem to reject the necessity of a "secular state".
10. There is also another intriguing issue that this hypothesis can shed some light on. Despite claiming to be a 'neutral' state, the Indian state interferes in the Indian traditions. Of course, this is a British legacy. But is there also a logic to it? I do think so, and I think this hypothesis can also shed light on that issue. But that is for another post because this post has become very dense already.
One final request though. I am putting across a hypothesis that appeals to but one thread. There could also be other threads (say, social, political, economic) that could be adduced to explain what I have tried to explain. Please do not sidetrack the discussion by pointing out that 'other' explanations are also possible. Let this be your point if and only if these other explanations necessarily exclude the thread I have used.
Friendly Greetings
Balu
I do not say that some or another person does not exist; nor do I claim that such a person cannot represent a position, let us say, that is hitherto undreamt of by our theories. (If I were to say the last, it would suggest that no new scientific theory could emerge, after all!) With respect to the discussion at hand, I do claim that the Christological dilemma (as a problem) provides us with the limits in the possible variations of recognisably Christian answers.
Imagine that I were to say the following: Christ and Ganesha are manifestations of the same divinity; Christ came about 2000 years ago in the Middle East, whereas Ganesha is how he has appeared in India some 4000 years ago. Now no one can forbid me from saying this and calling myself a Christian. Question: what should a theory about Christianity do? Show how anyone who decides to call himself a 'Christian' is, in fact, also a Christian? In that case, all such a 'theory' can do is say something like the following: anyone who calls himself some name ('Christian', 'Democrat', 'Marxist', etc) is also whatever he calls himself. Such an attitude simply ends up making any knowledge of society and human beings impossible.
The second possibility is to 'norm' the discussion. Someone, anyone, is a Christian if and only if he has the following properties: X, Y, Z. Such a discussion has been conducted during the two millennia that Christianity has been in existence by the different Christian sects. Each has called itself the 'true' Christianity and stipulated conditions for being a "true Christian". This discussion is an internal problem within Christianity and their answers do not interest me, except in one particular way.
What I need to understand is why each sect within Christianity (from the Catholics through the Orthodox to the Protestants) finds it an important problem. That is to say, as a scientist, these facts constitute the problem-situation that I need to understand, assuming I want to produce knowledge about the phenomenon that Christianity is.
Even here, we know that Christianity is simultaneously several things: it is a movement of people, it is a landlord and share holder, it is a marketing bureau and a political force... and it is also what it is to its believers, namely, the revelation of the biblical god in Jesus of Nazareth. I am primarily interested in understanding Christianity in its last aspect, namely, as a specific religion. I do not want to claim that their beliefs are either illusions or are true: my primary facts are their self-descriptions, which not only change from one sect to another but also over time.
Consequently, I set up a hypothesis about what religion is and how Christianity is also a religion. I locate its dynamics of expansion in what is called the Christological dilemma. Using this hypothesis, I explain certain other features that are empirically observable in history.
If one has to criticize me, one has to follow the rules of the scientific game: come up with an alternative hypothesis that not only explains everything I explain, but also more. In all honesty, I have not yet come across such a hypothesis. But I do fervently hope that I will come across such an explanation in the future.
In other words, I am not quite sure what you mean when you say I deny the existence of some or another person, or cause him offence by calling him a contradictio in terminis.
At times, I confess, I am puzzled by the turns in the discussion. This is one such. You ask, whether a Dharmic Christianity is possible. I have kept insisting (as Jakob has done it from the beginning) that the Indian culture, under certain conditions, can tame the religious intolerance of Christianity. This is my reformulation of the notion of Dharmic Christianity.
What has been the discussion so far about? Some Christians on this board insisted that their Christianity was always tolerant and that only the 'others' (this time the other is the western Christianity) are intolerant. I disagree on historical grounds that Eastern Christianity is any more religiously tolerant than its Western variety. Those who disagree with me better come up with solid historical proof. One does not need Deschner to speak of the religious intolerance of Christianities of all brands; every single early church father (before Constantine) and their writings illustrate this. Only someone who has not read the writings of the Ante-Nicene and post-Nicene Church Fathers can make the ridiculous claim that the early or Eastern Christianity has been religiously tolerant.. That is to say, there are theological grounds to show that, as a religion, Christianity is intolerant. Further, I disagree on scientific grounds that Christianity is tolerant as a religion.
It is possible that some Christians get miffed by the claims I have advanced, as some indeed have been. When one participates in a scientific discussion, such feelings should play no role in evaluating the truth or falsity of the claims advanced. This is not a Church meeting where people come to bear witness to Christ, Arun, but one of the forums that could contribute (in whatever infinitesimal way it can) to what Indian culture needs so badly today: knowledge about itself and the world
It was my intention not to post any further to this thread because the discussion is beginning to get sidetracked into issues about individuals. However, out of respect for people like Arun, Sankrant, Venki, Tapori, VSM etc., and some of their questions, I would like to undertake a last attempt to re-shift the tracks.
1. Even if one insists (wrongly in my view) that I am suggesting that Alex Alexander is not a Christian, there are two ways of looking at the object of my assertion: (a) it is about the unique individual that Alex Alexander is; (b) it is about him in so far as he is an instance of the tolerant Christianity that some Indian Churches are supposed to be. I am not discussing (a): I do not know this unique individual, his history, his feelings and such like. Let us look at what discussing (b) entails.
2. Consider the following two assertions he makes in his #357:
(i) My Christianity does allow me to accept the rights of others to seek God in whatever manifestation they like.
(ii) I value and cherish the teachings of Jesus as conveyed to me through my early religious influences in my childhood.
On the basis of these two statements alone and asking further clarifications and amplifications one can know more about the kind of Christianity Alex Alexander's Church represents.
3. Regarding (i), some of the questions are:
(a) Does it imply that there are no obstacles to finding God in manifestations like Shiva, Vishnu, Saraswathi, Hanuman, and such like? That is, if one believes that these are manifestations of God, are they also the manifestations of God?
(b) Could one earn salvation through personal efforts? That is, is salvation a reward for the efforts a human being puts in?
(c) What should be saved and from what? Can an individual save himself? through his own, individual efforts?
(d) Could a moral individual who denies God also attain salvation?
(e) Is doing puja to the idol of Ganesha identical to the worship of God?
(f) Supposing an individual explicitly denies that Jesus is the Saviour and follows Ramana Maharshi instead equally explicitly. Are there impediments to his salvation?
Thus one could go on. Answers to these questions will tell us whether the Church Alex Alexander belongs to is religiously tolerant or not.
4. Regarding (ii), the following questions can be raised.
(a) Is one who follows the ethical teachings of Jesus (e.g. love thy neighbour) is saved if heonly followed these ethical teachings?
(b) What, if any, is the difference between Jesus and Christ?
(c) Is a figure like Buddha also the Christ figure? Are Shankara, Ramakrishna Paramahmsa, Ramana Maharshi the same as Jesus of Nazareth or the same as Jesus Christ or both or none?
(d) I value the teachings of, say, Ramanujacharya, and Shishunala Sheriff (a Sufi Dasa). Does Alex Alexander value the teachings of Jesus the same way, i.e. because they provide insights into human beings? I can reject some aspects of their teachings, if they do not satisfy me. Does he have the same freedom to reject some aspects of the teaching of Jesus and still lay claim to salvation?
(e) I cherish the teachings of Shankaracharya regarding some aspects and that of Ramana Maharshi about some other points. That is, I can say that, regarding some or another aspect, I dislike their teachings or that they are wrong or that I prefer someone else's teachings. Does Alex Alexander cherish the teachings of Jesus in the same way?
Thus one could go on and on regarding these kinds of questions as well.
5. Such questions are legitimate because Alex Alexander's Church will have explicit standpoints (or they are derivable as implications) on such and similar issues. These are not questions about whether Alex Alexander feels the same kind of reverence whether in a Church or a temple; they are about what religious tolerance means with respect to the Church he belongs.
6. One could easily be against conversion by Islam and some brands of Christianities in India. The rivalry between the Christian sects could easily explain (much more satisfactorily) why some Christian Churches in India are won for anti-conversion legislations. That, however, does not make all of them into tolerant Christians, does it? We need far more proof (which could easily be given by answering questions like the above) to be convinced that tolerant Christianity is not a contradiction in terms.
7. It is easy to be insulted and take offence. It is another matter altogether to be intellectually honest. (This is not a personal attack on anyone, but a mere observation on human psychology.)
8. It is also advisable not to seek easy parallels between a Jesus-Bhakta and a Christian. Most of us heathens understand too little about the theory and practice of Christianity to do that.
1. My hypothesis about religion makes no references to whether or not some religion is belief-based or not. In fact, in my book, I show that beliefs, holy books, a founder or even God are not even necessary for religion (severally or in conjunction). These are empirical constraints imposed on religion by the kind of beings we are.
2. I merely say that the problems faced by Christianity in understanding the Roman religio parallels the difficulty the former faced when it came to India (the second time around). If there is a parallel to be drawn between the religio of the Romans and Indian culture, it can be done at the level of our notion of sampradaya. In other words, I am not using the notion of religio to understand Indian culture.
3. Words like "inclusivism", "exclusivism" etc. are not a part of my terminology. They are not only imprecise but also misleading. They have been used mostly as meta-descriptions of the stance that Christian theologies took with respect to other religions. (To use these loaded notions, even when negatively qualified, to describe the Indian traditions is totally misleading and entirely wrong.) They are also useless to describe (in any accurate manner) the Christian religion because each of the above notions expresses a specific solution to the Christological dilemma. My discussion of Christianity as a religion is pitched at another level of abstraction than these notions permit.
4. With some preliminaries out of the way, to your questions. Because 'belief-based' religion is not my characterization, your first question can have two interpretations.
(a) Can history-centrism cause some religion or the other to be belief-based? The notion of "history-centrism", as you formulate it in your article in Sulekha, is too vague to allow a serious answer. In so far as this refers to a "Grand narrative", and this narrative is either an oral or a written account, it is a candidate for the status of 'belief'. Consequently, your question takes the following form: Does "believing in" the truth of some or another historical event cause a religion to base itself on "beliefs"? (The contrast term to "belief" will have to be attitude or action or event.) As Christians do, you might want to distinguish between "believing in" (a propositional attitude) and a set of "beliefs" (which are a set of propositions). In that case, the Christian stance is superior to your formulation: they say that believing in God is primary with respect to the belief that "God exists" or that "Christ has come" or any such thing.
(b) Empirically speaking, has history-centrism caused some or another religion to be belief-based? An answer to this interpretation of your question depends on how you write history and whether one sees historical consciousness as a prerequisite for believing that some proposition is true. Frankly, I cannot quite see how such an epistemological claim (the latter part of the above sentence is an epistemological claim) can be argued.
5. Regarding your second question. I do not see either the religio of the Romans or the Indian traditions as alternatives to the religions that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are. These religions saw the former as alternatives and this stance made no sense either to the Romans or to the Indians. I do not believe that this question makes sense unless one accepts the framework of these religions themselves.
6. Speaking for myself, I do not think that there is a deadlock between me and Alex Alexander. It expresses something that is, at one level, far more trivial than that; at another level, it expresses something far more than a mere deadlock.
In more than one way, the nature and quality of the last twenty or so posts are illustrative of the kinds of problems that the intelligentsia in India have confronted but have hitherto been unable to solve. What I am now going to write will be unpleasant, but it makes no difference since I seem already to have stepped on several toes.
1. The first striking thing about the discussions is their presumption of knowledge at several levels. Yet, they display abysmal ignorance.
(a) Christianity has not just had a two thousand years’ history. It has also had two thousand years of doctrinal development. In the latter, every notion that has been employed here has been continuously discussed, refined, contested and so on. Their meanings, as they apply to Christianity’s self-description, has seeped into and determined what they mean in the English language. Not only words like ‘Christ’, ‘Church’, ‘Worship’, ‘idol’, ‘God’ ‘revelation’ and so on but also issues like ‘Who is a Christian’? (Quid sit Christianum esse?) The discussions hardly exhibit any knowledge of either the richness or complexity of these matters; yet, they express the firm conviction that what is there to be known is also known. In matters of knowledge, this combination is deadly.
(b) For more than two hundred years, domains such as the history of sciences, philosophy of sciences have been conducting debates into the nature of scientific knowledge. For all the role the findings from these domains play in these discussions, they might as well be non-existent. One seems to know what a ‘scientific theory’ is, what ‘scientific laws’ are, what an explanandum is and what its relation to explanans is. Kannan’s #423 is an illustration: it is nonsense to speak of Christianity's intolerance without implying the intolerance of Christians. And it is said that such a claim should “provid(e) predictability about Christians.” Does it mean that the claim about the tolerance of Christianity should provide predictability not only about all those who called themselves as Christians in the past, all those who call themselves Christians in the present, but also all those who might call themselves as Christians in the future? Can any claim ever do this? How might any claim be capable of doing that? So one of the tests of the theory's validity may be to work backwards from specimens of Christian individuals we find in daily life and ask ourselves if we find them "recognizably Christian" and also "tolerant." Quite apart from the fact that no claim is ever be tested this way, how does this fare as an answer to the demand about predictability? What could one say about either the past or the future Christians by taking “specimens of Christian individuals we find in daily life”? And how on earth to answer the question, without a theory about Christianity, whether they are recognizably Christian?
Can any claim (on its own) ever predict anything? What is ‘predictability’? What relation, if any, is there between this notion and that of explanation? Of course, if there were an understanding of these issues, they would not have been brought forward as objections or criticisms. Yet, the presumption of knowledge makes one “…rush in where angels fear to tread”.
(c) It is this deadly combination that makes one (i) set up straw men by the dozens and (ii) knock them down. How can there be no revelation in India, when we speak of ‘Sruti’? asks one. “So any side-stepping about not wanting to discuss individuals except as "instances" of the Church they belong to is taking cover from controversy”, says the other. One knows what ‘revelation’ is; the other suggests “there is no science without human disposition”. Balu says that Hinduism and Buddhism are not religions since they do not have one sacred text, revealation (sic), creed, central ecclesiastical organization etc., says one. Yet the same Balu, hardly a few posts earlier, had said this: In fact, in my book, I show that beliefs, holy books, a founder or even God are not even necessary for religion (severally or in conjunction). These are empirical constraints imposed on religion by the kind of beings we are. Of course, one hypothesis is that Balu is inconsistent; the other hypothesis is that one does not understand what one reads. Pick your choice.
(d) In my reply to Hogan, I was not being what I am asking for, says Kannan. To this objection, I had already replied that because Hogan’s text was rhetorical, the reply had to be rhetorical too. Quite obviously, my point was missed because Kannan now comes with the theme of ‘reason’ and ‘emotions’. The idea that scientific theories should not use rhetorical strategies is something that no intellectual who knows anything about the relevant domains accepts. In a time when cognitive science, historians of science are studying the role that analogies, metaphors, and other linguistic tropes play in the process of scientific discovery (leave alone the propaganda of science), Kannan’s suggestions belong to yesteryears.
2. The second striking thing is the ascription of professional competence to oneself when one does not have that. Each is in a position to say what ‘the Caste System’ is, what ‘ethics’ is, what ‘corruption’ is, what ‘religion’ is, what ‘Hinduism’ is… Why does one need to build new social science, when ‘every Hindu specimen’ is an authority on these subjects? I suppose one can also be a physicist, biologist and chemist on these grounds as well: after all, is one not subject to gravitational forces, chemical reactions in the body, and suffers pain as well?
Please do not misconstrue what I write. It is no demand that everyone on this board should have knowledge or shut up. The point is different: you cannot learn, if you do not realise the depth of your ignorance.
3. The third striking thing is the moralizing. We should respect human beings; we ought not to forget that "It is the man, not the method that solves the problem." (No matter what Poincare might have meant, or what the discussion was about!) And so forth. That the very same ‘normativity’ transforms our culture (and most non-western cultures) into an immoral culture (a topic of my previous article) is, of course, not even remembered.
The last posts are indications of what I mean. There are no discussions but only the preaching of sermons.
As far as I am concerned, these are some of the things that one would do well to reflect upon. Criticisms of Balu will not help one here. It requires, as I have said before, both seriousness with respect to knowledge-production and intellectual honesty. Without these, notions like the Indian Renaissance are figments of a dream, which begins to assume the dimensions of a nightmare.
Pradip Gangopadhyay #441
Dear Pradip,
Thank you very much for the expression of sympathy. I really appreciated it. To your questions.
1. The first thing is that my book is about the western culture and a specific religion, which brought the former forth. It is only indirectly about India because I interrogate the way India was looked at by the western culture. I proffer some hypotheses about India there by consciously remaining within the western framework.
2. You are right in saying that I deny that 'religions' called 'Hinduism', 'Buddhism', 'Jainism' exist in India. Indeed, I show why the western culture had to necessarily create (for itself) such 'religions'. This is one half of a story.
3. There is also another half to the story, which requires another book. We can raise it in the form of a question: Even if such entities do not exist in India, even if western culture had to create them, were they totally hallucinating when they thought they saw 'religions' in India and elsewhere in Asia? That is, did they simply suck a fancy story out of their thumb or did they see something in India?
4. This question is about the nature of Indian traditions. Here the explanatory task is double: (a) we need to say what there is in India, if Hinduism, etc. do not exist; (b) we need to show how what does exist in India appeared to the European eyes the way it did. That is, we have to explain at a much deeper level, how and why they took fragments from different phenomena and built Hinduism, Buddhism, etc, out of them.
5. These will be tackled in the second half of the story because it will be about India, the way the first half of the story is about the West. That book is being slowly composed in my mind, even as I try to re-describe the Indian traditions using the 21st century vocabulary. It is in this book that I tackle the kind of questions you raise. (You are right, in one sense, to suggest that a theory of religion should also answer this question; in another sense, of course, a theory of religion does not have to answer what an object is if it is not religion.) Here, using the vocabulary available to us today, I will be reformulating such notions as chittashuddhi, avidya, Gyaannodaya and so on. I will show that Indian traditions do cohere but not as a whole in the senses of the 'whole' that we have in the western languages today. I am excited by the results of my preliminary work and these results are also strengthening the adhyaatmic desire and tendencies in me as well. In other words, Pradip, I want to take a rain-check on some of the issues you raise about the Indian traditions for the time being.
6. About World views. I do not construct a theory of world views, but am forced to analyse the notion of world view because it is beginning to function as a category that is broader (and more inclusive) than the notion 'religion'. At the same time, it allows me to show what is interesting about the issue of the universality of religion and develop my impossibility arguments.
7. About the possibility of explaining in a non-technical language. I find it not only possible but also necessary and urgent because of the nature of the task that confronts all of us. I am trying to learn to write in a simple prose, communicate as clearly as possible, break the technicalities down, ignore the nuances, etc. It is not easy, but I want to learn and be able to say what I want to in a jargon-free prose. Many of my fellow-academics find this is a massive waste of time; I do not. I do think that the nature of Indian Renaissance requires it. However, what I cannot do is start explaining everything: it is not only impossible but also a total waste. If someone wants to find out whether or not his conception of science is defensible, he should simply read a good introductory book in the history of philosophy of science. But if instead of doing that if that individual comes out with an incoherent conception of science and tries to insist that is what 'science' is, and intervenes in these discussions on that basis, I do tend to loose patience.
You see, Pradip, I am not looking either for recognition or fame or even followers on the Net. I want to set intelligent people thinking in a different way than they are used to. I am not satisfied in saying that on an e-chat board, serious discussion is not possible. Even on such a forum as Sulekha, I want to raise the level of debate and discussion. Perhaps, all I want is to be free some day to pursue my adhyaatmic interests in a state of mind that says: I have done everything I could to the best of my ability.