SACW | 20 Dec. 2003

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at mnet.fr
Fri Dec 19 20:36:35 CST 2003


South Asia Citizens Wire  |  20 December,  2003
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Karachi-to-Delhi Friendship March proposed  - June-October 2004
[2] Pakistan Supreme Court allows free-will marriages
[3] Invitation to the Release of the Final Report 
of the International Initiative for Justice in 
Gujarat (New Delhi, 24 December)
[4] Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science' [Part 1] (Meera Nanda)
[5] India - Karnataka:    A call to People by 
Forum of Anti-Communal, Secular and Progressive 
People
[6] India: Exuding hatred [in Karnataka] (Parvathi Menon)

--------------

[1]

South Asia Citizens Web | December 20, 2003
URL: www.sacw.net/peace/karachiDelhiMarch2004.html

o o o

Date: 15 December 2003
Press Release

Karachi-to-Delhi Friendship March
June-October 2004

Karachi: A four-month long Friendship March from 
Karachi to Delhi has been proposed by 
Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and 
Democracy to mobilize public opinion for peace 
and friendship between India and Pakistan. The 
idea of Friendship March has been initiated by 
Dr. Sandeep Pandey, National Convener, National 
Alliance of People's Movement, India.

Dr. Pandey, renowned social activist from India, 
holds a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from 
the University of California, Berkeley and has 
been working as a full time social activist for 
the last 10 years. He has been actively involved 
in anti-communalism movement in Ayodhya, and 
nuclear disarmament, anti-globalization and 
anti-corruption campaigns being run in India. Dr. 
Pandey had initiated and led an 88-day peace 
march from Pokhran to Saranath in 1999 to 
campaign for nuclear disarmament. In 2002, Dr. 
Pandey led a 26-day peace march from Chitrakoot 
to Ayodhya for communal harmony.

The proposed 1700 kilometer long Friendship March 
will begin on June 11, 2004 and will reach Lahore 
on 4 September, 2004, the day of the 10th 
anniversary of the formation of Pakistan-India 
People's Forum. After crossing over the border at 
Wagah, the Friendship March will end in New Delhi 
at Rajghat on 2nd October 2004. A joint 
convention of Pakistan and India chapters of the 
Forum will be held at the conclusion of the march 
in New Delhi.

The marchers will walk 15 to 20 km on an average 
per day, stopping over at night in scheduled 
villages, towns and cities enroute, interacting 
with thousands of common people in both the 
countries, seeking their endorsement for 
accelerating the peace process.

Dr. Sandeep Pandey,
National Convener, National Alliance of People's Movement, India

Karamat Ali
Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), Karachi

[ See Related News Reports from the Pakistani Press in English and Urdu ]
URLs:
www.sacw.net/peace/KarachiDelmarchDawn16Dec03.gif
www.sacw.net/peace/karachiDelhimarchUrdureport.gif

_____


[2]

The Daily Times
December 20, 2003 

Supreme Court allows free-will marriages

* Says wali's consent not necessary
* Admission by couple sufficient proof
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Muslim girls can marry without their 
wali's (guardian's) consent and an admission by 
the couple is sufficient proof of marriage, 
according to Friday's decision by a full bench of 
the Supreme Court (SC).
"The consent of the wali is not required and an 
adult and sane Muslim female can enter into a 
valid nikah of her own free will," states the 
apex court's 26-page judgment. After reaching 
puberty, a Muslim girl is competent to marry of 
her own free will. As such, her father's custody 
can be denied after the marriage, says the 
judgement.
The SC decision upholds an earlier judgement of 
the Federal Shariat Court that states free will 
marriages are valid. The bench ruled that the 
high courts and all subordinate courts were bound 
to follow the judgment of the Federal Shariat 
Court under Article 203GG of the Constitution.
The Federal Shariat Court has consistently taken 
the view that an adult and sane Muslim girl can 
contract her own marriage and the consent of her 
wali or other guardian is not required for the 
marriage to be valid.
The bench also disposed of two appeals concerning 
free-will marriages, a criminal appeal filed by 
Hafiz Abdul Waheed Ropri against Asma Jehangir 
and a civil appeal filed by Muhammad Iqbal 
against his alleged wife Shabina Zafar.
In the first, Hafiz Abdul Waheed's daughter Saima 
Waheed married Arshed Ahmed of her free will on 
February 26, 1996. Her father challenged the 
validity of the marriage in the High Court. One 
bench of the High Court declared the marriage 
valid, but another bench gave a contrary decision.
Ms Jehangir, who protected Saima and gave her a 
place to live, represented Saima in the case 
concerning her free-will marriage. Mr Waheed 
filed a habeas corpus petition against Ms 
Jehangir in the Supreme Court.
The Apex Court disposed of the criminal appeal 
against Ms Jehangir by declaring Saima's marriage 
valid. Saima is now living with her spouse and 
two children in Norway.
In the second appeal, the bench also set aside 
the High Court's judgement in Muhammad Iqbal's 
civil appeal. The High Court had ordered the 
police to challan Muhammad Iqbal and his alleged 
wife Shabina Zafar under the Hudood Ordinance on 
a zina charge. A detailed judgement of the full 
bench has settled the legal, moral and religious 
question of marriages involving runaway girls 
because the Federal Shariat Court's 1981 decision 
will govern all such cases.
The Supreme Court full bench was comprised of 
Justice Mian Muhammad Ajmal, Justice Sardar 
Muhammad Raza Khan and Justice Karamat Nazir 
Bhandari.

_____


[3]

Invitation to the Release of the Final Report of 
the International Initiative for Justice in 
Gujarat (IIJG)

THREATENED EXISTENCE - A Feminist Analysis Of The Genocide In Gujarat

Wednesday, 24 December, 2003. 3.30 pm. Indian 
Women's Press Corps, 5 Windsor Place, Near Hotel 
Meridien, New Delhi.

The IIJG came into being to develop a feminist 
critique of justice and democratic governance in 
the context of the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat 
last year. The final report of the Initiative, 
Threatened Existence will be released in New 
Delhi by an eminent panel comprising :

Leila Seth, first woman judge of the Delhi High 
Court, and the first woman Chief Justice of a 
state High Court (Himachal Pradesh) – who will 
speak on the urgent need for the equal and just 
application of the rule of law on all citizens of 
the country.

Shabana Azmi, well known actor and former MP, who 
will speak on increased communalism in our times.

Urvashi Butalia, feminist activist and publisher, 
who will focus on the specific impact of 
increased communalism on women.

The gathering will also be addressed by two 
panellists of the IIJG, Farah Naqvi and Uma 
Chakravarti.

Threatened Existence is a comprehensive document 
based on hundreds of testimonies, eyewitness 
accounts and other relevant information. It makes 
the following major points:

- Twenty two months after the massacres of 
February/March 2002, the violence continues 'in 
different and frightening forms with long-term 
consequences on the lives of all members of the 
Muslim community particularly women'

- Sexual violence is central to the Hindutva 
project in Gujarat, and the use of rape and 
sexual assault, occurred with the knowledge of 
highly placed State actors.

- The ongoing persecution of the Muslim community 
constitutes Crimes against Humanity under 
International Law.

PLEASE DO JOIN US FOR THE RELEASE EVENT.

For as the report states in the conclusion, "This 
report can operate as a reflection on the 
inadequacy of existing processes - both legal and 
otherwise - to provide justice and redress to 
victims
 we need to understand the genocidal 
nature of the Hindutva project so as to emphasize 
the critical responsibility of intervention that 
lies with both, civil society and the State."

The panelists of the IIJG were feminist jurists, 
activists, lawyers, writers and academics from 
all over the world: Anissa Helie 
(Algeria/France), Gabriela Mischkowski (Germany), 
Nira Yuval-Davis (UK), Rhonda Copelon (USA), 
Sunila Abeysekara (Sri Lanka), Farah Naqvi 
(India), Meera Velayudan (India), Uma Chakravarti 
(India) and Vahida Nainar (India).

The International Initiative for Justice in 
Gujarat and was set up by: Citizen's Initiative 
(Ahmedabad), People's Union for Civil Liberties 
(PUCL)-Shanti Abhiyan (Baroda), Communalism 
Combat, Aawaaz-e-Niswaan, Forum Against 
Oppression of Women (FAOW) and Stree Sangam 
(Bombay), Saheli, Jagori, Sama, and Nirantar 
(Delhi), and Organised Lesbian Alliance for 
Visibility and Action (OLAVA, Pune).

Aman Ekta Manch


_____


[4]

Frontline, Volume 20 - Issue 26, December 20, 2003 - January 02, 2004

ESSAY
Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science' [Part 1]

MEERA NANDA

The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the 
logos of science must be of great concern not 
just to the scientific community, but also to the 
religious people, for it is a distortion of both 
science and spirituality.

The Vedas as books of science

IN 1996, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of the 
United Kingdom (U.K.) produced a slick looking 
book, with many well-produced pictures of 
colourfully dressed men and women performing 
Hindu ceremonies, accompanied with warm, fuzzy 
and completely sanitised description of the 
faith. The book, Explaining Hindu Dharma: A Guide 
for Teachers, offers "teaching suggestions for 
introducing Hindu ideas and topics in the 
classroom" at the middle to high school level in 
the British schools system. The authors and 
editors are all card-carrying members of the VHP. 
The book is now in its second edition and, going 
by the glowing reviews on the back-cover, it 
seems to have established itself as a much-used 
educational resource in the British school system.

What "teaching suggestions" does this Guide 
offer? It advises British teachers to introduce 
Hindu dharma as "just another name" for "eternal 
laws of nature" first discovered by Vedic seers, 
and subsequently confirmed by modern physics and 
biological sciences. After giving a false but 
incredibly smug account of mathematics, physics, 
astronomy, medicine and evolutionary theory 
contained in the Vedic texts, the Guide instructs 
the teachers to present the Vedic scriptures as 
"not just old religious books, but as books which 
contain many true scientific facts... these 
ancient scriptures of the Hindus can be treated 
as scientific texts" (emphasis added). All that 
modern science teaches us about the workings of 
nature can be found in the Vedas, and all that 
the Vedas teach about the nature of matter, god, 
and human beings is affirmed by modern science. 
There is no conflict, there are no 
contradictions. Modern science and the Vedas are 
simply "different names for the same truth".

This is the image of Hinduism that the VHP and 
other Hindutva propagandists want to project 
around the world. The British case is not an 
isolated example. Similar initiatives to portray 
Vedic-Aryan India as the "cradle" of world 
civilisation and science have been launched in 
Canada and the United States as well. Many of 
these initiatives are beneficiaries of the 
generous and politically correct policies of 
multicultural education in these countries. Under 
the worthy cause of presenting the "community's" 
own views about its culture, many Western 
governments are inadvertently funding Hindutva's 
propaganda.


KAMAL NARANG

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Human 
Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi 
at the inauguration of the Indian Science 
Congress in New Delhi in 2001. The obsession for 
finding all kinds of science in all kinds of 
obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the 
official education policy of the BJP ever since 
it came to power nearly half a decade ago.

But what concerns us in this article is not the 
long-distance Hindutva (or "Yankee Hindutva", as 
some call it), dangerous though it is. This essay 
is more about the left wing-counterpart of Yankee 
Hindutva: a set of postmodernist ideas, mostly 
(but not entirely) exported from the West, which 
unintentionally ends up supporting Hindutva's 
propaganda regarding Vedic science. Over the last 
couple of decades, a set of very fashionable, 
supposedly "radical" critiques of modern science 
have dominated the Western universities. These 
critical theories of science go under the label 
of "postmodernism" or "social constructivism". 
These theories see modern science as an 
essentially Western, masculine and imperialistic 
way of acquiring knowledge. Intellectuals of 
Indian origin, many of them living and working in 
the West, have played a lead role in development 
of postmodernist critiques of modern science as a 
source of colonial "violence" against non-Western 
ways of knowing.

In this two-part essay, I will examine how this 
postmodernist left has provided philosophical 
arguments for Hindutva's claim that Vedas are 
"just another name" for modern science. As we 
will see, postmodernist attacks on objective and 
universal knowledge have played straight into 
Hindu nationalist slogan of all perspectives 
being equally true - within their own context and 
at their own level. The result is the loud - but 
false - claims of finding a tradition of 
empirical science in the spiritual teachings of 
the Vedas and Vedanta. Such scientisation of the 
Vedas does nothing to actually promote an 
empirical and rational tradition in India, while 
it does an incalculable harm to the spiritual 
message of Hinduism's sacred books. The mixing up 
of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of 
science must be of great concern not just to the 
scientific community, but also to the religious 
people, for it is a distortion of both science 
and spirituality.

In order to understand how postmodern critiques 
of science converge with Hindutva's celebration 
of Vedas-as-science, let us follow the logic 
behind VHP's Guide for Teachers.

This Guide claims that the ancient Hindu 
scriptures contain "many true scientific facts" 
and therefore "can be treated as scientific 
texts". Let us see what these "true scientific 
facts" are. The prime exhibit is the "scientific 
affirmation" of the theory of guna (Sanskrit for 
qualities or attributes). Following the essential 
Vedantic idea that matter and spirit are not 
separate and distinct entities, but rather the 
spiritual principle constitutes the very fabric 
of the material world, the theory of gunas 
teaches that matter exhibits spiritual/moral 
qualities. There are three such qualities or 
gunas which are shared by all matter, living or 
non-living: the quality or guna of purity and 
calmness seeking higher knowledge (sattvic), the 
quality or guna of impurity, darkness, ignorance 
and inactivity (tamsic) and the quality or guna 
of activity, curiosity, worldly gain (rajasic). 
Modern atomic physics, the VHP's Guide claims, 
has confirmed the presence of these qualities in 
nature. The evidence? Physics shows that there 
are three atomic particles bearing positive, 
negative and neutral charges, which correspond to 
the three gunas! From this "scientific proof" of 
the existence of essentially spiritual/moral 
gunas in atoms, the Guide goes on to triumphantly 
deduce the "scientific" confirmation of the 
truths of all those Vedic sciences which use the 
concept of gunas (for example, Ayurveda). Having 
"demonstrated" the scientific credentials of 
Hinduism, the Guide boldly advises British school 
teachers to instruct their students that there is 
"no conflict" between the eternal laws of dharma 
and the laws discovered by modern science.

PARTH SANYAL

In Kolkata, astrologers demonstrating against the 
West Bengal government's decision not to 
introduce astrology as a subject in the State's 
universities. A file picture.


One of the most ludicrous mantras of Hindutva 
propaganda is that there is "no conflict" between 
modern science and Hinduism. In reality, 
everything we know about the workings of nature 
through the methods of modern science radically 
disconfirms the presence of any morally 
significant gunas, or shakti, or any other form 
of consciousness in nature, as taught by the 
Vedic cosmology which treats nature as a 
manifestation of divine consciousness. Far from 
there being "no conflict" between science and 
Hinduism, a scientific understanding of nature 
completely and radically negates the "eternal 
laws" of Hindu dharma which teach an identity 
between spirit and matter. That is precisely why 
the Hindutva apologists are so keen to tame 
modern science by reducing it to "simply another 
name for the One Truth" - the "one truth" of 
Absolute Consciousness contained in Hinduism's 
own classical texts.

If Hindu propagandists can go this far in U.K., 
imagine their power in India, where they control 
the Central government and its agencies for 
media, education and research. This obsession for 
finding all kinds of science in all kinds of 
obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the 
official educational policy of the Bharatiya 
Janata Party ever since it came to power nearly 
half a decade ago.

Indeed the BJP government can teach a thing or 
two to the creation scientists in the U.S. 
Creationists, old and new, are trying to smuggle 
in Christian dogma into secular schools in the 
U.S. by redefining science in a way that allows 
God to be brought in as a cause of natural 
phenomena. This "theistic science" is meant to 
serve as the thin-edge of the wedge that will pry 
open the secular establishment. Unlike the 
creationists who have to contend with the courts 
and the legislatures in the U.S., the Indian 
government itself wields the wedge of Vedic 
science intended to dismantle the (admittedly 
half-hearted) secularist education policies. By 
teaching Vedic Hinduism as "science", the Indian 
state and elites can portray India as "secular" 
and "modern", a model of sobriety and 
responsibility in contrast with those 
obscurantist Islamic fundamentalists across the 
border who insist on keeping science out of their 
madrassas. How useful is this appellation of 
"science", for it dresses up so much religious 
indoctrination as "secular education".

Under the kindly patronage of the state, 
Hindutva's wedge strategy is working wonders. 
Astrology is flourishing as an academic subject 
in public and private colleges and universities, 
and is being put to use in predicting future 
earthquakes and other natural disasters. Such 
"sciences" as Vastu Shastra and Vedic mathematics 
are attracting governmental grants for research 
and education. While the Ministry of Defence is 
sponsoring research and development of weapons 
and devices with magical powers mentioned in the 
ancient epics, the Health Ministry is investing 
in research, development and sale of cow urine, 
sold as a cure for all ailments from the Acquired 
Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to tuberculosis 
(TB). Faith-healing and priest-craft are other 
"sciences" receiving public and private funding. 
In the rest of the culture, miracles and 
superstitions of all kinds have the blessings of 
influential public figures, including elected 
Members of Parliament.

THERE are two kinds of claims that feed the 
notion that the "Vedas are books of science". The 
first kind declared the entire Vedic corpus as 
converging with modern science, while the second 
concentrates on defending such esoteric practices 
as astrology, vastu, Ayurveda, transcendental 
meditation and so on as scientific within the 
Vedic paradigm. The first stream seeks to 
establish likeness, connections and convergences 
between radically opposed ideas (guna theory and 
atomic particles, for example). This stream does 
not relativise science: it simply grabs whatever 
theory of physics or biology may be popular with 
Western scientists at any given time, and claims 
that Hindu ideas are "like that", or "mean the 
same" and "therefore" are perfectly modern and 
rational. The second stream is far more radical, 
as it defends this "method" of drawing likenesses 
and correspondences between unlike entities as 
perfectly rational and "scientific" within the 
non-dualistic Vedic worldview. The second stream, 
in other words, relativises scientific method to 
dominant religious worldviews: it holds that the 
Hindu style of thinking by analogies and 
correspondences "directly revealed to the mind's 
eye" is as scientific within the "holistic" 
worldview of Vedic Hinduism, as the analytical 
and experimental methodology of modern science is 
to the "reductionist" worldview of Semitic 
religions. The relativist defence of eclecticism 
as a legitimate scientific method not only 
provides a cover for the first stream, it also 
provides a generic defence of such emerging 
"alternative sciences" as "Vedic physics" and 
"Vedic creationism", as well as defending such 
pseudo-sciences as Vedic astrology, palmistry, TM 
(transcendental meditation) and new-age Ayurveda 
(Deepak Chopra style).

In what follows, I will examine how postmodernist 
and social constructivist critiques of science 
have lent support to both streams of 
Vedas-as-science literature.

But first, I must clarify what I mean by postmodernism.

Postmodernism is a mood, a disposition. The chief 
characteristic of the postmodernist disposition 
is that it is opposed to the Enlightenment, which 
is taken to be the core of modernism. Of course, 
there is no simple characterisation of the 
Enlightenment any more than there is of 
postmodernism. A rough and ready portrayal might 
go like this: Enlightenment is a general attitude 
fostered in the 17th and 18th centuries on the 
heels of the Scientific Revolution; it aims to 
replace superstition and authority of traditions 
and established religions with critical reason 
represented, above all, by the growth of modern 
science. The Enlightenment project was based upon 
a hope that improvement in secular scientific 
knowledge will lead to an improvement of the 
human condition, not just materially but also 
ethically and culturally. While the Enlightenment 
spirit flourished primarily in Europe and North 
America, intellectual movements in India, China, 
Japan, Latin America, Egypt and other parts of 
West Asia were also influenced by it. However, 
the combined weight of colonialism and cultural 
nationalism thwarted the Enlightenment spirit in 
non-Western societies.

Postmodernists are disillusioned with this 
triumphalist view of science dispelling ignorance 
and making the world a better place. Their 
despair leads them to question the possibility of 
progress toward some universal truth that 
everyone, everywhere must accept. Against the 
Enlightenment's faith in such universal 
"meta-narratives" advancing to truth, 
postmodernists prefer local traditions which are 
not entirely led by rational and instrumental 
criteria but make room for the sacred, the 
non-instrumental and even the irrational. Social 
constructivist theories of science nicely 
complement postmodernists' angst against science. 
There are many schools of social constructivism, 
including the "strong programme" of the Edinburgh 
(Scotland) school, and the "actor network" 
programme associated with a school in Paris, 
France. The many convoluted and abstruse 
arguments of these programmes do not concern us 
here. Basically, these programmes assert that 
modern science, which we take to be moving closer 
to objective truth about nature, is actually just 
one culture-bound way to look at nature: no 
better or worse than all other sciences of other 
cultures. Not just the agenda, but the content of 
all knowledge is socially constructed: the 
supposed "facts" of modern science are "Western" 
constructions, reflecting dominant interests and 
cultural biases of Western societies.

Following this logic, Indian critics of science, 
especially those led by the neo-Gandhians such as 
Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva, have argued for 
developing local science which is grounded in the 
civilisational ethos of India. Other well-known 
public intellectuals, including such stalwarts as 
Rajni Kothari, Veena Das, Claude Alvares and Shiv 
Vishwanathan, have thrown their considerable 
weight behind this civilisational view of 
knowledge. This perspective also has numerous 
sympathisers among "patriotic science" and the 
environmentalist and feminist movements. A 
defence of local knowledges against 
rationalisation and secularisation also underlies 
the fashionable theories of post-colonialism and 
subaltern studies, which have found a worldwide 
following through the writings of Partha 
Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Dipesh 
Chakrabarty and others. All these intellectuals 
and movements mentioned here have their roots in 
movements for social justice, environmental 
protection and women's rights - all traditional 
left-wing causes.

Social constructivist and postmodernist attacks 
on science have proven to be a blessing for all 
religious zealots, in all major faiths, as they 
no longer feel compelled to revise their 
metaphysics in the light of progress in our 
understanding of nature in relevant fields. But 
Hinduism displays a special resonance with the 
relativistic and holistic thought that finds 
favour among postmodernists. In the rest of this 
two-part paper, I will examine the general 
overlap between Hindu apologetics and 
postmodernist view of hybridity (part I) and 
alternative sciences (part II).

Postmodern "hybridity" and Hindu eclecticism

THE contemporary Hindu propagandists are 
inheritors of the 19th century neo-Hindu 
nationalists who started the tradition of 
dressing up the spirit-centered metaphysics of 
orthodox Hinduism in modern scientific clothes. 
The neo-Hindu intellectuals, in turn, were 
(consciously or unconsciously) displaying the 
well-known penchant of generations of Sanskrit 
pundits for drawing resemblances and 
correspondences between religious rituals, forces 
of nature and human destiny.

Postmodernist theories of knowledge have 
rehabilitated this "method" of drawing 
equivalences between different and contradictory 
worldviews and allowing them to "hybridise" 
across traditions. The postmodernist consensus is 
that since truth about the real world as-it-is 
cannot be known, all knowledge systems are 
equivalent to each other in being social 
constructions. Because they are all equally 
arbitrary, and none any more objective than 
other, they can be mixed and matched in order to 
serve the needs of human beings to live well in 
their own cultural universes. From the postmodern 
perspective, the VHP justification of the guna 
theory in terms of atomic physics is not anything 
to worry about: it is merely an example of 
"hybridity" between two different culturally 
constructed ways of seeing, a fusion between East 
and West, tradition and modernity. Indeed, by 
postmodernist standards, it is not this hybridity 
that we should worry about, but rather we should 
oppose the "positivist" and "modernist" hubris 
that demands that non-Western cultures should 
give up, or alter, elements of their inherited 
cosmologies in the light of the growth of 
knowledge in natural sciences. Let us see how 
this view of hybridity meshes in with the 
Hindutva construction of Vedic science.

It is a well-known fact that Hinduism uses its 
eclectic mantra - "Truth is one, the wise call it 
by different names" - as an instrument for 
self-aggrandisement. Abrahamic religions go about 
converting the Other through persuasion and 
through the use of physical force. Hinduism, in 
contrast, absorbs the alien Other by proclaiming 
its doctrines to be only "different names for the 
One Truth" contained in Hinduism's own Perennial 
Wisdom. The teachings of the outsider, the 
dissenter or the innovator are simply declared to 
be merely nominally different, a minor and 
inferior variation of the Absolute and Universal 
Truth known to Vedic Hindus from time immemorial. 
Christianity and Islam at least acknowledge the 
radical otherness and difference of other faiths, 
even as they attempt to convert them, even at the 
cost of great violence and mayhem. Hinduism 
refuses to grant other faiths their 
distinctiveness and difference, even as it 
proclaims its great "tolerance". Hinduism's 
"tolerance" is a mere disguise for its 
narcissistic obsession with its own greatness.

Whereas classical Hinduism limited this 
passive-aggressive form of conquest to matters of 
religious doctrine, neo-Hindu intellectuals have 
extended this mode of conquest to secular 
knowledge of modern science as well. The 
tradition of claiming modern science as "just 
another name" for the spiritual truths of the 
Vedas started with the Bengal Renaissance. The 
contemporary Hindutva follows in the footsteps of 
this tradition.

The Vedic science movement began in 1893 when 
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) addressed the World 
Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In that 
famous address, he sought to present Hinduism not 
just as a fulfilment of all other religions, but 
also as a fulfilment of all of science. 
Vivekananda claimed that only the spiritual 
monism of Advaita Vedanta could fulfil the 
ultimate goal of natural science, which he saw as 
the search for the ultimate source of the energy 
that creates and sustains the world.

Vivekananda was followed by another Bengali 
nationalist-turned-spiritualist, Sri Aurobindo 
(1872-1950). Aurobindo proposed a divine theory 
of evolution that treats evolution as the 
adventures of the World-Spirit finding its own 
fulfilment through progressively higher levels of 
consciousness, from matter to man to the 
yet-to-come harmonious "supermind" of a 
socialistic collective. Newer theories of Vedic 
creationism, which propose to replace Darwinian 
evolution with "devolution" from the original 
one-ness with Brahman, are now being proposed 
with utmost seriousness by the Hare Krishnas who, 
for all their scandals and idiosyncrasies, remain 
faithful to the spirit of Vaishnava Hinduism.

Vivekananda and Aurobindo lit the spark that has 
continued to fire the nationalist imagination, 
right to the present time. The Neo-Hindu 
literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, 
especially the writings of Dayanand Saraswati, S. 
Radhakrishnan and the many followers of 
Vivekananda, is replete with celebration of 
Hinduism as a "scientific" religion. Even 
secularists like Jawaharlal Nehru remained 
captive of this idea that the original teachings 
of Vedic Hinduism were consonant with modern 
science, but only corrupted later by the gradual 
deposits of superstition. Countless gurus and 
swamis began to teach that the Vedas are simply 
"another name for science" and that all of 
science only affirms what the Vedas have taught. 
This scientistic version of Hinduism has found 
its way to the West through the numerous ashrams 
and yoga retreats set up, most prominently, by 
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his many clones.

ALL these numerous celebrations of "Vedas as 
science" follow a similar intellectual strategy 
of finding analogies and equivalences. All invoke 
extremely speculative theories from modern 
cosmology, quantum mechanics, vitalistic theories 
of biology and parapsychology, and other fringe 
sciences. They read back these sciences into 
Sanskrit texts chosen at will, and their meaning 
decided by the whim of the interpreter, and claim 
that the entities and processes mentioned in 
Sanskrit texts are "like", "the same thing as", 
or "another word for" the ideas expressed in 
modern cosmology, quantum physics or biology. 
Thus there is a bit of a Brahman here and a bit 
of quantum mechanics there, the two treated as 
interchangeable; there are references to 
"energy", a scientific term with a definite 
mathematical formulation in physics, which gets 
to mean "consciousness"; references to Newton's 
laws of action and reaction are made to stand for 
the laws of karma and reincarnation; completely 
discredited "evidence" from parapsychology and 
"secret life of plants" are upheld as proofs of 
the presence of different degrees of soul in all 
matter; "evolution" is taught as the 
self-manifestation of Brahman and so on. The 
terms are scientific, but the content is 
religious. There is no regard for consistency 
either of scientific concepts, or of religious 
ideas. Both wholes are broken apart, random 
connections and correspondences are established 
and with great smugness, the two modes of knowing 
are declared to be equivalent, and even 
inter-changeable. The only driving force, the 
only idea that gives this whole mish-mash any 
coherence, is the great anxiety to preserve and 
protect Hinduism from a rational critique and 
demystification. Vedic science is motivated by 
cultural chauvinism, pure and simple.

What does all this have to do with postmodernism, 
one may legitimately ask. Neo-Hinduism, after 
all, has a history dating back at least two 
centuries, and the analogical logic on which 
claims of Vedic science are based goes back to 
times immemorial.

Neo-Hinduism did not start with postmodernism, 
obviously. And neither does Hindutva share the 
postmodernist urgency to "overcome" and "go 
beyond" the modernist fascination with progress 
and development. Far from it. Neo-Hinduism and 
Hindutva are reactionary modernist movements, 
intent on harnessing a mindless and even 
dangerous technological modernisation for the 
advancement of a traditionalist, deeply 
anti-secular and illiberal social agenda. 
Nevertheless, they share a postmodernist 
philosophy of science that celebrates the kind of 
contradictory mish-mash of science, spirituality, 
mysticism and pure superstition that that passes 
as "Vedic science".

For those modernists who share the 
Enlightenment's hope for overcoming ignorance and 
superstition, the value of modern science lies in 
its objectivity and universality. Modernists see 
modern science as having developed a critical 
tradition that insists upon subjecting our 
hypotheses about nature to the strictest, most 
demanding empirical tests and rigorously 
rejecting those hypotheses whose predictions fail 
to be verified. For the modernist, the success of 
science in explaining the workings of nature mean 
that sciences in other cultures have a rational 
obligation to revise their standards of what kind 
of evidence is admissible as science, what kind 
of logic is reasonable, and how to distinguish 
justified knowledge from mere beliefs. For the 
modernists, furthermore, modern science has 
provided a way to explain the workings of nature 
without any need to bring in supernatural and 
untestable causes such as a creator God, or an 
immanent Spirit.

For a postmodernist, however, this modernist 
faith in science is only a sign of Eurocentrism 
and cultural imperialism. For a postmodernist, 
other cultures are under no rational obligation 
to revise their cosmologies, or adopt new 
procedures for ascertaining facts to bring them 
in accord with modern science. Far from producing 
a uniquely objective and universally valid 
account of nature, the "facts" of modern science 
are only one among many other ways of 
constructing other "facts" about nature, which 
are equally valid for other cultures. 
Nature-in-itself cannot be known without imposing 
classifications and meaning on it which are 
derived from cultural metaphors and models. All 
ways of seeing nature are at par because all are 
equally culture-bound. Modern science has no 
special claims to truth and to our convictions, 
for it is as much of a cultural construct of the 
West as other sciences are of their own cultures.

This view of science is derived from a variety of 
American and European philosophies of science, 
associated mostly with such well-known 
philosophers as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, W.O 
Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. 
This view of science has been gaining popularity 
among Indian scholars of science since the 
infamous "scientific temper" debates in early 
1980s when Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva and their 
sympathisers came out in defence of local 
knowledges and traditions, including astrology, 
goddess worship as cure for small-pox, taboos 
against menstruation and (later on) even sati. 
Over the next two decades, it became a general 
practice in Indian scholarly writing to treat 
modern science as just one way to adjudicate 
belief, no different from any other tradition of 
sorting out truth from mere group belief. 
Rationalism became a dirty word and Enlightenment 
became a stand-in for "epistemic violence" of 
colonialism.

According to those who subscribe to this 
relativist philosophy, the cross-cultural 
encounter between modern science and traditional 
sciences is not a confrontation between more and 
less objective knowledge, respectively. Rather it 
is a confrontation between two different cultural 
ways of seeing the world, neither of which can 
claim to represent reality-in-itself. Indeed, 
many radical feminists and post-colonial critics 
go even further: they see modern science as 
having lost its way and turned into a power of 
oppression and exploitation. They want 
non-Western people not just to resist science but 
to reform it by confronting it with their 
holistic traditional sciences.

What happens when traditional cultures do need to 
adopt at least some elements of modern knowledge? 
In such cases, postmodernists recommend exactly 
the kind of "hybridity" as we have seen in the 
case of Vedic sciences in which, for example, 
sub-atomic particles are interpreted as referring 
to gunas, or where quantum energy is interpreted 
to be the "same as" shakti, or where karma is 
interpreted to be a determinant of biology in a 
"similar manner" as the genetic code and so on. 
On the postmodern account, there is nothing 
irrational or unscientific about this "method" of 
drawing equivalences and correspondences between 
entirely unlike entities and ideas, even when 
there may be serious contradictions between the 
two. On this account, all science is based upon 
metaphors and analogies that reinforce dominant 
cultures and social power, and all "facts" of 
nature are really interpretations of nature 
through the lens of dominant culture. It is 
perfectly rational, on this account, for Hindu 
nationalists to want to reinterpret the "facts" 
of modern science by drawing analogies with the 
dominant cultural models supplied by Hinduism. 
Because no system of knowledge can claim to know 
reality as it really is, because our best 
confirmed science is ultimately a cultural 
construct, all cultures are free to pick and 
choose and mix various "facts", as long as they 
do not disrupt their own time-honoured worldviews.

This view of reinterpretation of "Western" 
science to fit into the tradition-sanctioned, 
local knowledges of "the people" has been 
advocated by theories of "critical 
traditionalism" propounded by Ashis Nandy and 
Bhiku Parekh in India and by the numerous 
admirers of Homi Bhabha's obscure writings on 
"hybridity" abroad. In the West, this view has 
found great favour among feminists, notably 
Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway, and among 
anthropologists of science including Bruno 
Latour, David Hess and their followers.

To conclude, one finds a convergence between the 
fashionable left's position with the religious 
right's position on the science question. The 
extreme scepticism of postmodern intellectuals 
toward modern science has landed them in a 
position where they cannot, if they are to remain 
true to their beliefs, criticise Hindutva's 
eclectic take-over of modern science for the 
glory of the Vedic tradition.

Meera Nanda is the author of Prophets Facing 
Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and 
Hindu Nationalism (Rutgers University Press, 
2003). An Indian edition of the book will be 
published by Permanent Black in early 2004.

____


[5]


>  From: "bababudangiri souharda vedike"
>  <souhardagiri2002 at rediffmail.com>
>  Subject: a call from bababudangirir souharda vedike
>
>          BABABUDANGIRI  SOUHARDA VEDIKE
>
>FORUM OF ANTI-COMMUNAL, SECULAR AND PROGRESSIVE
PEOPLE
>
>                    A call to People
>
>  The hills of Bababudangiri in Chikmagalur District
>  stand as a
>  time-honoured symbol for communal tolerance and
>  syncretic tradition in
>  Karnataka.  People of different faiths, from
>  different parts of India,
>  have been worshipping in the caves for centuries
>  with mutual respect and
>  tolerance.  However, for the last few years the
>  Sangh Parivar is creating tension in the area by
>  threatening to capture the cave shrine from the
>  'clutches' of Muslims and convert it into a full
>  fledged Hindu place of worship. This is nothing but
>  a well-planned attempt to reject people's secular
>  practices and impose in its place, its own Hindutva
>  (read,Brahmanical)  brand of hegemony.  Their
>  leaders like Togadia and Ananth Kumar have openly
>  declared that they would convert Bababudangiri into
>  another Ayodhya and Karnataka into another Gujarat.
>  It is evident that the Sangh Parivar wants to use
>  Bababudangiri as a platform to create communal
>  divide.
>
>  The progressive and secular forces have been
>  resisting this blatant
>  usurpation of a people's culture and religious
>  practice by the Sangh
>  Parivar for its political agenda. Our demand to ban
>  their activities stems from the following key
>  points:
>
>  (*) The traditional practice of worshipping Baba or
>  Datta is done by the
>  Mujavar, appointed by the Shaw Quadri and whatever
>  practices that existed prior to 1975 should
>  continue. This has been clearly specified in the
>  Court orders issued so far. Even the Parliamentary
>  Act of 1991 clearly states that the rituals in
>  religious places as practised before 1947 should be
>  maintained.
>
>  (*) The devotees of Baba-Datta are all low
>  caste/class Hindus and Muslims.  The nature of
>  religious faith that is practised there is neither
>  strictly Hindu or Islamic, but something that is
>  above and beyond both and any narrow religious
>  sectarianism. This "third tradition"  is a living
>  example of secularism in actual practice. Thus they
>  are always, already liberated from being easily
>  compartmentalised.  And the Sangh Parivar's idea of
>  'liberating' the cave shrine is absurd, gravely
>  mischievous and fraught with dangerous political
>  consequences. Bababudangiri is only a tiny segment
>  in their onward march for many more such
>  'liberations'.
>
>  (*) Hence our demand to ban these newly invented
>  religious practices and
>  oppose the communal agenda of the Sangh parivar. We
>  are not against Datta Jayanti per se, but against
>  practicing this on bababudandiri hills. It should
>  also be noted that Datta Jayanthi as it is practiced
>  by some people everywhere is quite different from
>  Datta Pooja as it is practiced on the hills.  The
>  two Dattas are poles apart: one is the puranical and
>  Brahmincal Dattatreya; the other belongs to the
>  Natha and Avadhutha tradition of 'Dattha Pantha'
>  which is basically a low caste/class Hindu religious
>  practice. If the datta devotees want to worship as
>  per pre-1975 practice, they are always welcome to do
>  so.
>
>  The Sangh Parivar is  trying  to  'invent'  new
>  practices,  which  are  not sanctioned by tradition.
>  It wants a Hindu  Archak  to  be  appointed,  Datta
>  idol installed and a Highbrow religious  practice
>  of  performing  Homa  and Yagna  to be practiced.
>  This is against tradition, against  people's  belief
>  system, against all Court Judgements and above all
>  against  the  principles of democracy and
>  fundamental tenets of the Constitution of India.
>
>  We expected the State  to  honour  Court  Judgements
>   and  its  own  Cabinet decision and put an end to
>  this communal canard. We expected that  at  least
>  the Shobha Yatra and the fiery speeches in
>  Chikmagalur,  which  has  nothing to do with the
>  Shrine on the hills would be banned this time.
>  Instead,  not only did the state directly
>  participate in  the  illegal  rituals,  it  also
>  connived with Sangh parivar and  took  those  who
>  were  demanding  communal peace and rule of law into
>  custody. The activists of the  Vedike  and  other
>  progressive people were jailed for two  days  in
>  Chikmagalur  on  7  and  8 December.
>
>  In order to protest this soft communalism of the
>  ruling Congress  Government and the highly venomous
>  communal campaign  of  the  Sangh  Parivar,  and  in
>  order to spread the message of peace and harmony,
>  we  are  holding  a  huge public rally and
>  convention at Chikkamagaluru  on  December  28.
>  This  also happens to be the birth centenary of
>  KUVEMPU, one of our  greatest  writers. We want to
>  appeal to the people to shun communalism and  carry
>  forward  the message of universal brother hood that
>  was so dear to KUVEMPU. It will  also be a cultural
>  event that pledges to build "Karnataka for Communal
>  Harmony".
>
>  We appeal to all those who believe in communal
>  harmony, peace and  tolerance to join us in
>  spreading the message of amity and oppose the Sangh
>  Parivar's move to communalise Karnataka. As you are
>  aware, this is an event  that  has very little
>  sponsors. We need to raise money for everything from
>  people.  So do contribute liberally to the cause.
>
>  Please send your to contribution to Mr. Sarja
>  Shankar Haralimath,
>  C/o  K.L. Ashok, Dharani Shiva Nilaya, II Cross,
>  Bapuji Nagar, Sshimoga.  (Payable  at Shimoga)
>
>  For further details, please contact:
>  K.L. Ashok: 94482-56216.
>  Dr Vasu: 94481-55604.
>  Dr Rajendra Chenni: 94481-48958.
>
>  For and on behalf of  Bababudangiri Communal Amity
>  Forum
Bangalore Unit

____


[6]

Frontline
Volume 20 - Issue 26, December 20, 2003 - January 02, 2004

THE STATES
Exuding hatred

PARVATHI MENON

HATE speech that targets minority groups and 
individuals who associate themselves with secular 
movements dominates public addresses by leaders 
of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad 
(VHP). Incitement to acts of violence, character 
assassination, abuse, threats, filthy humour, and 
the twisting of facts are par for the course. At 
the public meeting that followed the Shobha Yatra 
in Chikmagalur, vitriolic attacks against leaders 
of the Souharda Vedike were made by all speakers.


VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders at a public meeting 
during the Datta Jayanthi celebrations in 
Chikmagalur.


"The so-called intellectuals have opposed the 
Ayodhya movement, opposed our Kashmir policy, and 
they do not have any nationalist sentiments," 
said K. Sunil Kumar, State convener of the 
Bajrang Dal. "We do not say that Muslims should 
not worship at the shrine. We do not wear caps 
and ask to pray in their places of worship. Our 
struggle is to allow Hindus to do puja in the 
shrine."

C.T. Ravi, general secretary of the State unit of 
the Yuva Morcha, said that the forbears of the 
"intellectuals" who are opposing the Datta 
Jayanthi were also opposed to the freedom 
movement, and quoted Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash 
Chandra Bose who reportedly said the same thing. 
He expressed his sorrow that the Jnanpith Award 
was given to an "a-Jnani" (the reference being to 
Girish Karnad, the recipient of the Bharatiya 
Jnanpith Award in 1999). "If they don't see sense 
they should be sent to the mental asylum," he 
said. He threatened the government and the 
secular forces that they would have only 
themselves to blame if they are worsted in a 
`Kurukshetra'. "We will not be held responsible 
for the consequences," he warned.

The ire of Pramod Mutalik, South India convener 
for the Bajrang Dal, was directed against Girish 
Karnad and Gowri Lankesh. " `Sharief' Karnad and 
`Gori' Lankesh," he thundered, as he wagged a 
finger at his supposed enemies, "go back to 
Pakistan. No, but since Pakistan belongs to us, 
you can go to Iran or Iraq" (`Gori' means a 
Muslim tomb in Kannada). Calling Karnad and other 
secularists "ardha-mardha (cross-breed) Muslims", 
he threw several challenges at them. "Come and 
face me if you can! Beware this won't work!" The 
police should not have stopped Karnad from 
protesting in Chikmagalur, he said. "People will 
throw chappals at you (Karnad). They would have 
stripped you and sent you back in the form of 
Gomateshwara" (referring to the famous naked 
statue of Gomateshwara near Halebid). He said 
that the secularists were always telling Hindus 
to have vasectomy operations to stop having 
children while Muslims were allowed to breed 
freely ("I am of course a bachelor," he added 
piously.) "Progeny of Babar, don't try to raise 
your heads. We will deal with whoever opposes 
us," he warned. Finally Mutalik called for an 
economic boycott of Muslims until the Ram temple 
was constructed in Ayodhya, and their demands on 
the Bababudangiri shrine were conceded. At a 
press conference in Bangalore, D.H. 
Shankaramurthy (BJP), Leader of the Opposition in 
the Legislative Council, called for the 
withdrawal of the Jnanpith Award conferred on 
Girish Karnad, as "anti-nationalists" did not 
deserve it. The Souharda Vedike, of which Karnad 
is an active member, is supported by the Peoples 
War, he alleged, which makes Karnad an 
anti-nationalist and undeserving of the award.

"It is a free country and they are perfectly 
entitled to say what they want," Karnad told 
Frontline. "For my part, I would only say that we 
must keep the pressure up. What is extraordinary 
is the partisanship of the authorities as all 
this has been done under the aegis of various 
district administrations. This is exactly like 
what happened in Ayodhya. All we are saying is 
that the Supreme Court decisions must be applied. 
This is still the crux of our position."


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
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bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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