a disease which has deprived him of all normal activities and left him dependent on others when he was all of twenty-one years of age and was told that he would not survive for more than ten years. He defied the gloomy prediction however, and despite his severe physical limitation, contributed immensely to the world of science.
His scientific views are interesting and a challenge to those who believe in blind faith and the importance of religion in modern life. Is religion necessary? Can modernity take care of religion and faith?
Recently, I was in Varanasi for a week on a professional assignment and had an opportunity to witness very closely, several rituals and prayers associated with life and thereafter. There is no explanation why someone should sprinkle water on one’s head before taking a bath in the Ganges. Very few understand the meaning of the Sanskrit slokas uttered in the temples, very few know the real meaning of the endless rituals performed inside and outside temples, yet people go through all the processes without questioning it.
If you are a rationalist in this kind of surrounding, you feel suffocated. You feel that people are mentally chained; that they are slaves to rituals and prayers that in no way improve their existence.
We are in the process of liberating our economy from the old system of license permit raj and are now an open economy, but at the level of religion and rituals, our rigidity continues. We don’t want to move away from the command structure to a new liberal and modern scientific thought process. We just don’t want to question established religious practices. We are making progress in the field of science and technology, and as we get closer to material symbols of modernity like cars and mobile phones, religion and rituals are getting more and more pronounced. Tuesdays and Thursdays see a phenomenal number of people visiting Sai Baba and Hanuman temples.
In the Third Century B.C., Gautam Buddha led a reform movement against the Brahamanical rituals and traditions, and Buddhism emerged as an alternative rational thought to established religious practices. The revolt liberated people from blind religiosity and irrational rituality. In Twenty-First Century India, there is no questioning, no attempt to reform or rebel against established religious practices that have made people slaves.
Followers of Marx and John Stuart Mill, socialists and liberals, have one tenet in common –‘religion belongs to the infancy of the species; the more modern a society becomes, the less room there is for religious belief and practice.’ What is happening, however, is contrary to what the rationalists think and believe.
In the book God Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge outline the manner in which the secular believers are on the wrong side of history. The authors don’t take the examples of some part of Europe where modernity is at odds with religiosity, they don’t take the European Enlightenment thinkers seriously who see the coexistence of modernity and religiosity in the United States as “an unexplained lag in a universal trend towards secularisation.”
The book argues that in major parts of the world, modernisation and an increase in religiosity go hand in hand. It gives the example of prosperous and highly educated Chinese, among them scientists and academics, coming together in contemporary Shanghai to read and discuss the Christian Bible.
“If there is any trend that can be discerned in the parts of the world that are most rapidly modernising, it is that secular belief systems are in decline and the old faiths are being reborn,” the book says.
Can we explain increasing religiosity in India this way? Is reinforced religiosity taking the sheen off of modernity and secularism in India?
Our political leadership encourages this tendency by open display of their religious affiliation and leanings. Religion has become not merely an assertion of faith but a mark of identity in opposition to certain religious beliefs. So Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity are fighting to mark their space without there being any attempt to reform the rigidities contained in the different faiths. Public icons don’t set progressive trends. Their irrationality acts as an encouragement for their followers to imitate them.
Media also plays a great role in propagating this tendency of irrationality. Instead of acting as the conscience keeper of society, the electronic media – through the programmes based on obscurantism, tends to reinforce the fears of the masses, which as a result see religious rituals as a way out of the crises in life.
In India we now see a tendency of religion being turned into a business venture and not a spiritual project. Faith entrepreneurs are actively creating and serving their customer base. In Varanasi, if there are temples for different gods, there are also godmen who sell faith and beliefs to people who look for direction in life. The city looks like a Special Economic Zone (“SEZ”) of faith. There are vested interests to preserve this SEZ without analysing or realising the implications of such blind irrationality in the growth of society and individual.
We see such zones in each and every part of the country. These SEZs have failed to alleviate the sufferings of the masses. The poor need resources; they need opportunities and moral support to come up in life. It is as if established religions and their proponents are conspiring against the masses to trap them in self-doubt and not let them grow beyond a point.
Modernity and religiosity cannot go together. Modernity means not only material advancement but also mental refinement. Religious rituals do not allow the mind to develop and act as a deterrent to the growth of modern society. Stephen Hawking has proved that the world is running not due to god but despite god.
Sanjay Kumar is a New Delhi-based journalist, who covers national and international politics and trends. The view expressed in the article is his personal.