Debating Saffronisation, Science, and Astrology

- Dr. Ramesh N. Rao

The epithet of "saffronisation" hurled incessantly in the past few months, by what Prof. Rakesh Sinha has termed the "Red-Green Brigade", is yet another reminder, if reminders are needed, that not only is the Indian education system still ensnared in the old Macaulayite, pre-Independence pattern, and the imported values of Europe, but also that the "architects" of this anti-Indian system are loathe to acknowledge the crimes against knowledge acquisition they have committed in the past fifty years of an independent India. The media barrage, the orchestrated public protests, the visits to US universities and cities by the leaders of the Red-Green brigade are indicative of the fact that these are well-entrenched forces who have no qualms in lying, besmirching, quoting of context, and belittling their own cultural past.

Why are they doing this? There is no doubt that it is part of their war strategy to reassert their proprietorship of the intellectual and political space they have squatted on for the past fifty years.

As part of their strategy, many of the usual suspects have been visiting US universities these past three years to accuse the BJP-led government of trying to re-write Indian history, and to saffronise education. Visits to the US are, by those who claim to be secular and modern, sponsored mostly by a caucus of anti-Hindu groups. For example, late in September 2001 there was to be a group of the Left-Secular combine descending on Chicago. For what purpose? On August 17, 2001, one Dr. Rahul Deepankar convened a symposium under the auspices of New Republic India International at Chicago. K.N. Panikkar delivered the keynote address. Prof. Panikkar, if you don’t know, is currently the vice-chancellor of the Sree Shankaracharya Sanskrit University, in Kaladi, Kerala. He does not know Sanskrit, has written regularly for the CPI (M) party mouthpiece, and has been one of the "stalwarts" at Jawaharlal Nehru University who for more than three decades blocked the teaching of Sanskrit in that university. The Marxist led government of Kerala thought it fit to needle the Central Govt by foisting on the Shankaracharya University an avowed Marxist who hates Sanskrit! Welcome to Indian higher education.

Dr. Deepankar described how "an atmosphere of fear and intimidation" had been created in India, which had demoralized "Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Dalit masses". He declared that all these groups and "Hindu liberals" would follow Dalits in demanding and achieving "equality and dignity for all citizens".

Dr. Deepankar then announced the September 30 meeting. The chief participants would be former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, Kuldip Nayyar, and the Rev. Robert Thompson, Chairperson of the Parliament of the World Religions. But then there were the events of September 11, and the frequent fliers who have made their life goal to thwart Hindu resurgence, had to cool their heels at home, and shout hoarse from Delhi rooftops, which they did on November 6. According to a newspaper report, the "eminent" and not so eminent historians blamed the government and the NCERT for toeing the RSS-take on Indian history. This, they said, would lead to "communalisation of young minds". They accused the NCERT of erasing Muslim rule and role as well as Dravidian importance in Indian history: "Muslims have no place in Indian history. But the RSS brigade is also anti-Dravidian. Is it promoting national integration? So it is not a question of history alone but that of the country’s future," the historian-politician and thesis director of plagiarized works (read Arun Shourie on the matter of one of Habib’s students presenting an eminent but deceased historian’s work as his own), Prof. Irfan Habib warned.

The historians, in their joint statement, said: "The scant regard for historical evidence and rational argumentation would communalise young minds and thereby contribute to an undermining of the secular foundations of our polity." And at the day-long seminar on "Communalism and History," these historians lined up to voice their apprehensions about the contents of the NCERT history syllabus. Let us see if their accusations and allegations have any merit.

Not Neo-Colonialism As Much As Anti-Hinduism

Indians may have achieved political independence, but they are yet to attain cultural independence, and the uproar in parliament in Delhi on August 16, 2001 over the alleged saffronisation of education was merely one of the side-shows orchestrated and organised by those inimical to Hindu heritage, culture, and ways of life. The British began dismantling traditional Indian schools and learning in 1858 with a view to manufacture clerks to take care of British business, and a citizenry that would become intellectual and spiritual wards of the West. The Nehruvian-Stalinists (to use the apt label coined by Rajiv Sreenivasan, Rediff columnist) have been seeing to it that the British agenda is continued, so hateful are they of "Brahminism" (a label they have used to demonise Hinduism, which itself is an "amorphous" term that, unlike Christianity or Islam or Judaism, does not refer to a brand of "monotheistic religion" but instead is a more encompassing, pluralistic, open philosophy and way of life).

It is indeed tragic that the first prime minister of India supported and encouraged the project of dismantling and destruction of Hindu culture that the British started. "Modernisation and secularisation" was Nehru’s mantra, selectively uttered and used, by his academic and political henchmen to attack Hinduism and to protect the "minorities". The word "communal" was used to label Muslim separatists before independence. Those Muslims wanted a separate country for themselves. But after independence, things changed, and terminologies changed overnight. Indeed, in the Indian version of the Brave New World and "new-speak," left became right, and right became wrong. Non-Marxist, Hindu Indians became communal. Muslims became secular and progressive. Hindus were labeled chauvinistic and fundamentalist, and among those labeled Hindu chauvinist and radicals were Aurobindo, Tilak, and Gokhale!

Against the vision of these Hindu nationalists (in the very positive sense of the term), the wheelers and dealers in post-colonial India foisted upon the hapless Indian public their version of Macaulay-ism. They abused power to distort the nationalist version of Indian history and made it a political issue. With the support of Nehru, the leftists took over and established their hegemony over academic institutions like the ICHR, ICSSR, and NCERT. A combination of these Left/Marxist "intellectuals" and their Muslim collaborators made sure that what was produced by the "mainstream" historians, political scientists, sociologists, and cultural analysts was, in many cases, ugly revisionism masquerading as scholarship.

"Nationalist" History

Ancient history is more or less the interpretation of the available evidence, which also includes oral narration of the past. A majority of Hindus are quite sensitive toward their past, and have accepted it as a part of their history, which according to European interpretation is a myth. Distortion of Indian history, particularly the "Aryan Invasion Theory" still touted in various forms, has all along been an issue of debate between intellectuals supporting the cultural supremacy of ancient India and supporters of its European/colonial version. Ignoring any debate on the issue, Nehru, at the instance of the left and Muslim scholars, imposed the European version of Indian history on Indian students.

It is in this context that the BJP-led coalition has initiated moves to cleanse the management of academic institutions and free them from the blinkers and blindfolds forced upon them by the "secularists". And it is this long and much needed change in the Indian academic system that is being resisted in a concerted and hostile way by those who are inimical to anything Hindu and the heritage of Hinduism.

The move to consider introduction of either Vedic astrology or mathematics in the university curriculum and to promote Sanskrit has been so twisted by "secularist" propaganda that even "Gandhians" like H. Narasimhaiah, the former Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University, have written uninformed and scathing commentaries in the unabashedly anti-BJP newspapers like Deccan Herald chastising the government.

India is perhaps the only country in the world, where a section of the educated population considers any talk on the positive side of the cultural heritage of the country as anti-modern and unscientific. Contrary to the general impression of Hindus that India had made large contributions to world culture, the leftists and their fellow travellers criticise it as communal. What is both tragic and darkly humorous is the extent to which the left historians are willing to go to, even in these times when the Soviet Union is dismantled, and the Russians have embraced open, democratic dispensation, to muzzle freedom of speech and expression, and more importantly the telling of truths. At the November 6^th meeting in Delhi, one of the "Stalinist stalwarts" (historian Bipan Chandra) said this: "There is nothing communal about Vedic Astrology and Vedic Mathematics. But these have communal elements which may manifest themselves later. Religion is a private affair and shouldn’t be brought out in public life". See if you can figure out what the "eminence" is trying to say. This is the kind of convoluted obfuscation, jaded and vicious, that has been peddled by these people for the past fifty years.

Even the introduction of Sanskrit, the singing of the Vande Mataram, and introducing the great Indian epics in schools and colleges has been dubbed "saffronization". When in New Delhi this past June, I was interviewed on CNBC on the occasion of the release of my books, I pointed out that Sanskrit has not been taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University while a number of foreign languages, including Persian, is offered to the students there. One of my interlocutors, Prof. Chenoy, who teaches international relations at JNU, cleverly said, "But we require every student of ancient Indian history to learn Sanskrit". What he did not mention was that while the students are required to learn Sanskrit, it is not taught at JNU!

If Left and "secular" academics have for over thirty years thwarted the teaching of Sanskrit at JNU, it is by far the most powerful indicator of the "hatred" of Hinduism. It has been said that contrary to western and Semitic value systems that foster "individual-centric capitalism and society-centric communism," the Hindu value system enables the sustenance of "an integral vision with a view to harmonise the material and spiritual interest of the individual to that of the society". But intellectuals, among them the first Indian Minister of Education, Prof. Nurul Hasan, handpicked by Nehru, began the project of erasing and ignoring information about India’s Hindu past. It was done so well, that we now have a whole generation of Indians who are coached in "politically correct" babble about how all religions speak for truth, oneness, and coexistence, and that the only things that the Muslim marauders did was to loot temples because of their wealth, and that whatever violence was perpetrated by Islamic conquerors was comparable to whatever Hindu kings did or practised: in short, a selective whitewashing of the past so that black became white, and what was white had to besmirched just so that we would not spend any time looking at what was underneath the whitewashed nonsense.

Instead of preserving our ancient heritage, which is the treasure house of spiritual wisdom, what we have is the hoarse cry of "saffronisation" aimed at ridding India of its Hindu heritage. Since the majority of the educated Indian elite was made to think and behave like their colonial masters, it has now become their habit to oppose any attempt to indigenise the country’s educational system. That this "elite" hobnobs with the worst of religious fanatics and fundamentalists, whether of Muslim or Christian persuasion, is further indication of the seriousness of their attempts at stomping down a new Hindu resurgence.

In an article in The Hindustan Times (August 29, 2001), the director of NCERT, J.S. Rajput says that the rhetoric alleging "motives" behind what is "the first ever, honest attempt to modernize Indian education by upholding not only the deepest but forgotten values of Indian civilization, but also the sage advice of the founding fathers of our nation" is fabricated and marketed by "biased individuals (who) have attempted to read between the lines of the document."

What Prof. Rajput has pointed to in the NCERT document is rarely if ever mentioned in the editorials, the commentaries, and in the interviews that newspapers and magazines publish about the project of "saffronisation". Let me provide some more excerpts from his essay: "A perusal of this document would bear out NCERT’s concern over several ills plaguing the country’s education system. It addresses the problem of curriculum load on students, which makes them victims of a pernicious private tuition system and a faulty evaluation system which drives scores of our children to suicide every year…. The phenomenon of rubbishing the contents of a syllabus where none has yet been developed is quite unique. Their arguable clairvoyance does betray an ill-concealed rage at the sight of newcomers, all professionals, usurping what they perceived their right over the past 40 years: the right of dictating what is to be taught to our children, and implicitly, dragging the country’s education system to the dumps…. The NCERT is a professional advisory body and it is for the third time that it has brought out a curriculum framework. Even in the past, states exercised their right to scrutinise the NCERT framework and the textbooks. Nearly 97% of school texts fall in this category. The NCERT encourages development of expertise at the state level, participates in their curriculum development and textbook writing exercises…. Even if the NCERT tries, it cannot force its will on the states, because education is on the concurrent list."

Writing about the most "controversial" of recommendations, he says, "The areas selected for criticism are social studies, Vedic mathematics, values and religion. There is a comprehensive reference spread over three pages in the framework document, but Vedic mathematics merits only one sentence: ‘The students may be encouraged to enhance their computational skills by the use of Vedic mathematics.’ Everything else has been ignored except this statement, which, to our blinkered intellectuals, would result in the ‘Talibanisation of education’."

Regarding value-based education, and the opposition to it, Prof. Rajput says that the campaign against it is strategic in that Marxism is atheistic. Religion was blackballed in schools for 50 years. Government appointed committees —including one headed by President Radhakrishnan— had criticised this unilateral Marxist edict. Finally, a parliamentary sub-committee, headed by Congress leader S.B. Chavan, came out with a report in January 1999 which said: "Truth (satya), righteous conduct (dharma), peace (shanti), love (prema) and non-violence (ahimsa) are the core universal values which can be identified as the foundation stone on which the value-based education programme can be built up. These five are universal values and respectively represent the five domains of human personality —intellectual, physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual. They are also correspondingly co-related to the five major objectives of education —knowledge, skill, balance, vision and identity." The NCERT, to allay fears of those swayed by propaganda, clarifies: "What is required today is not religious education but education about religions, their basics, their inherent values. These need to be inculcated at appropriate stages. Students have to be given the awareness that the essence of religion is common, only the practices differ."

Is the finger pointing against Marxists a ploy in Prof. Rajput’s? No. Look at the list of people who participated in the three-day seminar (August 4-6) organised by the Leftist propaganda outfit SAHMAT (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust). The topic of the seminar was "The Challenges to Indian Education From the Onslaught of Saffronisation". And the people who were expressing their "concern" over "saffronisation" were none other than Profs. Irfan Habib, K.N. Panikkar, and Satish Chandra, all dyed in the wool Marxists who have been at the forefront of demonising and delegitimising all things Hindu.

As N.S. Rajaram says, "So what these scholars are calling saffronisation is nothing but correcting colonial distortions and fabrications. This is part of the decolonisation process. Even this is only part of the story, for Indian history lies concealed under two layers of colonization —the first Islamic and the second European-Christian. India defeated both politically, but not yet spiritually. Symbols of slavery remain, especially in education. These so-called secularist scholars are the remaining agents of slavery created by Macaulayite education and Islamic imperialism before it."

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Is the Tide Turning?

There is no doubt that the Marxist-Muslim-Christian-Dalit combine in India, and their collaborators and sponsors in Western academe and media have been successful to a large extent in painting the BJP, the RSS, and Hindus in general into a corner. However, there are also indications that the tide is slowly turning. For example, Kerala Chief Minister A. K. Antony said recently that he was opposed to the Marxist habit of giving labels, like the term "saffronisation". Anthony said that saffron is a sacred symbol in Hinduism and that "kavi" is the colour of clothes worn by all Hindu sannyasis. People going to Sabarimala, including Marxists, also wear kavi, he remarked.

Indian-Americans, some of whom are beginning to take part in these debates in earnest, are becoming aware of the scholarship of people who have been marginalized by the Marxist coterie. Such scholars include K. S. Lal, who was hounded by Marxists like R.S. Sharma and others because Lal dared to write a political history of India under the Khilji’s, which showed Muslim rule as tyrannical. The Marxist position has been that one can only teach the economic aspects of history of the Muslim period, and confuse and obfuscate all human and cultural aspects. It worked for a while. But now this particular obfuscation game is beginning to be recognised for what it is.

K.S. Lal’s books appeared regularly on suggested reading lists for college and university courses in medieval Indian history. However, his books were removed from bibliographies after the Babri Masjid incident. That one act sharpened the divide in the already divided Indian academic community. Scholarly credentials were suddenly called into question and one’s past work that was lauded for decades got retroactively tainted as Hindu chauvinism. This is what happened to Prof. B.B. Lal too. He was tossed across the ideological abyss into the "RSS camp" along with the few other scholars who dared mention that Indic traditions provided a value system and cultural bedrock to sustain India.

Science and Vedic Astrology

The purpose of modern science is to "unravel" the mysteries of nature, and of engineering and technology to create new things after studying nature. These enterprises have the component of control and reproducibility, repetition of experiments, and reliability of information gained. What can one repeat in astrology, and what can one control? Can we repeat yesterday, today, this moment? In predicting the future, there is an assumption that it is already there. But then by knowing it in advance, can we change it? If we can, then it was not really there. May be, it was just our false perception or the wrong interpretation of that future possibility/ probability/ putative quality. Shiva, it is said, cursed astrology by saying, "pancha bhavati" and "pancha na bhavat" because it seemed Ganesha, with his astrological expertise, had started monitoring Shiva’s actions. The curse, it is said, produced a 50/50 probability!

But is "science" what is described as above? Let us try and list all the sciences. We think of physics, chemistry, and biology as belonging to the sciences. But are psychology, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics sciences? Or what about geology and meteorology? How about medicine or engineering? Are these sciences? Is astronomy a science separate from physics? Is mathematics a science?

The words "science" and "art" have a long history. At various times the words "philosophy", "art", and science were regarded as synonymous. At one time physics, biology, philosophy, and literature were all regarded as arts, and surely this explains, at least in the West, why a B.A. degree can be obtained at some colleges in scientific fields.

Also, until the twentieth century, those active in scientific fields were often interested and active in philosophy. In the West, those who are primarily regarded as philosophers –Aristotle, Descartes, Berkeley, and Kant– took great interest in and contributed to the sciences. The reverse is also true: those who are remembered as scientists –Newton, Galileo, Mach, Huxley and others– were greatly interested in and sought answers to philosophical problems. But, as philosophy and the sciences have become specialised in the West, fewer students understand the value of seeking such interconnecting perspectives. (Read, among others, F. E. Mosedale, "Philosophy and Science: The Wide Range of Interaction" for more on these matters).

It is important to remember these interconnections: one, findings in science can be relevant outside science for the resolution of traditional philosophical problems, and/or can raise new philosophical questions; two, the methods, modes and inquiries, as well as the status of the various sciences can be the object of philosophical inquiry; and three, philosophical issues can arise for the scientists, which until resolved may impede scientific inquiry.

Where I teach, we require students to take courses that fulfil the scientific modes of inquiry (physical and life sciences), the social science mode of inquiry, the aesthetic modes of inquiry (literature and fine arts), the communication mode of inquiry, the mathematical mode of inquiry, the history mode of inquiry, and the philosophical mode of inquiry. Many of us have realised that this "intellectual house of cards" is the result of the carving of academic turf. The divisions are to some extent arbitrary, and surely they are not at all watertight.

The way some traditionally conceive of science, both in India and elsewhere, is to restrict it to the study of inanimate matter/forces (physics and chemistry). It does not even fully include the life sciences (biology). Some have argued that there is no problem in defining what science is and what the scientific method is. "Social sciences", to them is a euphemism, used by academics to elevate themselves, with the same inferiority complex that prompts traditional knowledge systems to project themselves as sciences.

Speaking on these matters, the HRD Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, a physicist of no mean standing, wondered if we should consider "scientism as science, whether science is free inquiry, or whether it should be limited to the traditional methods of inquiry" (interview in India Today). He believes that academics should engage in a serious debate about what is science and what is not science. While he makes a good point, I believe the debate cannot be begun well by first proposing that astrology be introduced in Indian higher education as a science. Politically speaking, it was "disaster on arrival". Astrology has numerous aspects, and they could all be taught without labelling it "science" and therefore attracting the hostility of people inimical to Indian traditions. Moreover, one does not know if the HRD ministry or the UGC had really considered seriously whether the teaching of astrology "systematically" in universities would enhance the quality of our understanding of astrology, or lead to the effective practice of it, or whether it would merely lead to certifying mediocrities: suffering the same fate as other disciplines taught in modern Indian universities!

Ramesh N. Rao, November 10, 2001

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