The overall euphoria over the success of
the Mangalyaan mission (Indian Mars Mission) and certain ignorant tweets and
comments jolted me out of my inertia. The objective of this piece is not to
criticize or educate Nikhil Wagle or others like him but to inform normal folks
who may find the line of thinking expressed in his tweets as a valid point.
Religio is what traditio is all about
Heathen in his Blindness, Balgangadhara
To establish that the above statement i.e.
its tradition and not religion that we Hindus follow in our daily lives, we
have to first understand the origin and meaning of the word religion. The world
religion comes from the Latin word religio
used by the Romans to describe practices, rituals, festivals, sacrifices
etc. that collectively became Roman customs and traditions over the centuries.
When we look at religion as tradition, that is a set of practices transmitted
over generations, then the term appears as a minor variant of our intuitive
nation of culture: to have a religion is to have culture. Whenever there are
people with a history, there tradition exists too. In other words they have religio too. This is how the pagans seem
to have seen the issue. “Thus religio is what traditio is all about,
religion falls together with tradition and continuing a tradition does not
require any reason other than itself” as
Prof. Balagangadhara succinctly summarizes in his magnum opus ‘The heathen in
his blindness’.
The primary test of truth in religious matters was
custom and tradition, the practices of the ancients…In philosophical matters
one might turn to intellectuals and philosophers, but in religious questions
one looked to the past, to the accepted practices handed down by tradition, and
to the guarantors of this traditions, the priests (Wilken)
The republic was an age of rationalism; certainly as
far as Roman nobility was concerned. But this tendency was never taken to its
logical conclusion, rejection of tradition religious practices…Such respect for
ancestral authority would assure the continuity of traditions rituals, just as
the childhood associations, family traditions and the peculiar nature of pagan
beliefs would be preserve traditional mental attitude. (Liebeschuetz)
It is wise and reasonable for us to preserve the
institutions of our forefathers by retaining their rites and ceremonies.
(Cicero)
Heathen in his Blindness, Balagangadhara
This non-exhaustive list reads like who’s
who in western classical philosophy and science (both Greek and Roman) they not
only performed religious rituals but also were priests of religious order. Socrates,
Plato, Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Plutarch, Athenogoras the Athenian, Celsus,
Cornelius Tacitus, Prophyry, were highly regarded philosophers, thinkers, scientists,
polymaths, yet openly participated and led religious ceremonies. Socrates the
father of western philosophy defended himself against charges of Atheism and
credited the Oracle at Delphi for his education. Socrates and his student Plato
proposed that the soul is immortal and believed in reincarnation. Cicero’s was
on the Roman council of Augury though he really did not lay much stress on
conducting ones life based on soothsaying. Plutarch was a priest at the Oracle
of Delphi yet he attacked some Roman traditio.
Thus these individuals were brilliant rational thinkers, philosophers and
atheist in some cases yet were also closely attached to their respective
temples and practiced to their religious traditions.
Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (On the nature of Gods) is a great classical work
on the origin of god that has not been bettered till date in western
philosophy. The work is a speculative dialogue on the existence of god. Many 18th
century intellectuals such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, Edward Gibbon etc. used
Cicero’s work, written some 2000 years earlier as the arsenal to attack
religion and come up with the idea of Secularism. Why the arguments in Cicero’s
work were decisive to the inheritors of the Graeco-Roman culture 2000 years
later to make them turn away from god and turn atheist? The content of the
Cicero’s work did not change but the cultural matrix in which it was understood
had changed. What the European intellectuals thought of religion was very
different from the idea of Roman religio.
18th century Europe operated within a Christian cultural matrix
and the intellectuals understood religion in the way Christian theology
describes it (God, Son of God, Creed, Scriptures and other assorted dogmas).
Thus the ancients could be perfectly rational, scientist, mathematicians, physicians,
philosophers or atheist even and yet be closely attached to their gods and tradition
without for a moment feeling any dissonance.
This Christian definition of religion has
been passed on to our intellectuals through colonisation and through continuation
of the colonial educational and cultural framework and thus they form
misinformed or even ignorant idea of religion, which is far removed from the
native thought. Religion holds a different meaning to the Hindus compared to
the Christian definition of religion. The idea of religion to the Hindus is a
collection of rituals and practices that have become a tradition over centuries
just as religion was traditio for the
Romans.
Drawing
from the above its easy to see how in ancient India, brilliant scientist like
Bhaskaracharya, Brahmagupta, Aryabhata, Varahamira, Susruta, Nagarjuna, Charaka
to name a few were not only rational and scientifically ‘tempered’ but also
closely attached to their gods and traditions which does not mean that their
work was less reliable or less worthy. Going back to the tweet by Nikhil Wagle,
a prominent Marathi journalist, does the achievement of the Indian space
scientist is less worthy just because they prayed to Shri Venkateshwara Balaji?
What is scientific temper, is it a badge or a certificate? If Indian space
scientist can send a spacecraft to Mars, is it not scientific temper enough
that they have to further embellish it with rejection of their ancient
traditions.
 |
| The Telegraph India |
 |
Via Keerthik Sasidharan and Anjali George on twitter
|
Ganesh
puja before all rituals, Sandyavandane, Yajnopaveetham, Tulsi Puja, Dipawali,
Holi, Dashera, Krishna Janmashtami, Ram Navmi, Surya Puja, Karva Chauth, Raksha
Bandhan, Ritual bath before entering temple, applying Haldi on wedding day
(Turmeric) and all other such rituals, practices have to be retained and
practiced as they have been transmitted over generations and they need no
further legitimization. It’s been the way of our ancestors and so it shall be
ours. If we lose these traditions then we lose our identity, we will lose our
soul.
The Octavius, Caecilius the Pagan
Its better as high priest of truth, to receive the teaching
of your ancestors, to cultivate the religion handed down to you, to adore the
gods whom you were first trained by your parents to fear… not to assert an
opinion concerning the deities, but to believe your forefather, who while the
age was untrained in the birth-times of the world itself, deserved to have gods
either propitious to them, or as their kings.
Heathen in his
Blindness, Balgangadhara
I dedicate this article to S. Nambi
Narayanan ISRO scientist and all the brilliant scientist at ISRO who have made
the Indian Mars mission, Mangalyaan a great success. Working against great odds
they have made all us Indians a very proud people.
Sources: Heathen
in his Blindness and How to speak for Indian traditions by Prof. Balagangadhara
of Ugent.
First published in Swarjaya Mag
First published in Swarjaya Mag
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