Pedestals that are pits

One of the early morning religious discourses on television recently had this gentleman narrating as part of some larger story about womanly virtues, a story of a raja who had to make an important appointment in the country. 

Of the contenders for the post, he chose a certain young man, but his wife, a shrewd woman, saw another young man and detecting in his responses and actions the fire and intelligence required for the task, advises the king to entrust it to that second young man. A trial proves the queen right and the young man is selected, but of the queen, it was said by wise men of the age that she was not a ‘pativrataa.’

And the reason? Her transgression was that she had contradicted her husband, and challenged and refuted his judgement. A wife who went contrary to her husband’s words, it seems, was not a ‘pativrata’, even if her husband were wrong and she, right, and her action and words were for the betterment of others, including her husband.  Although it was her ‘dharma’ as queen to act for the welfare of her people, she had flouted the dharma of a pativrata wife!

To define a ‘pativrata’ as one who did not look at a second male was bad enough and tied women down to their homes and hearths even if these were unloving or even downright oppressive. No such impossible standards were set for men. They were not bound by any 'one woman' rules.

But to interpret the word ‘pativrata’ as a woman who toed the husband’s line in all matters, right and wrong, seems to me to be a bit too much. It seems to me to be society’s spiteful revenge on women who threatened male position by the clarity of their vision, their intelligence, and their intellectual integrity.

Instead of placing women on illusory pedestals that are no more than gilded pits covered by thin ice, and painting haloes around women who play by these ridiculous rules, it is time we gave up these silly standards and definitions and accepted that women are no inferior to men in matters of the mind and intellect. Let us accept and realize that by suppressing women over millennia and denying their rights to everything from their own sexuality to world knowledge we have not only denied half the population of basic rights, but denied society itself the opportunity to rise to its fullest potential. 

Approaching truth

A young friend recently declared on Facebook that she was an atheist. Wonderful, I thought. Why don’t more of us speak our minds? Even those of us who follow every ritual copybook style mostly do so without conviction. Many a time, it is out of deference to the elders in the family that we keep up the traditions, not out of any sense of belief. And difficult it is to sustain beliefs in a world where knowledge is growing faster than anything else and challenging every existing notion.

Let us take for example, the Hindu way of observing the eclipse.  The whole debate of the need to observe ritual cleansing springs to my mind. The ritual head bath at weird hours of the night – what purpose does it serve? The injunction not to eat anything not only for the entire period of the eclipse but for hours prior to it – what purpose does it serve? If no other community in the world practice these except Hindus, and that too, primarily Brahmins, then does that make everyone else a fool? Or are we the fools?

Last eclipse frustrated as I was I began looking up internet sites to find out if there were any scientific basis for all the eclipse rituals. There were many websites, naturally, with rather quaint and sometimes, obscurantist explanations. The usual story about Rahu eating up the moon was there.

But this interestingly caught my eye:

http://www.swaminarayan.org/faq/eclips.htm

Here is this religious cult justifying an ancient ritual practice by calling it scientific. This is not a new attitude. Most of us must have heard this refrain some time or the other – that our ancient religious practices were built on sound scientific principles. To me, this meant an admission by religion that it needed to be authenticated by science in order to remain in circulation.

It is more than a tacit admission that more people had lost faith in faith and found science to be a more reliable fallback.

Today, at least among the educated classes, there are more doubters than believers. My young friend had gone a step further and rejected faith completely. She found no use for it. In actual numbers, the number of believers must still outstrip those of the doubters and non-believers by more than a mile. But in the small subset of educated thinking people, the pattern no longer holds true.

This brings me to the whole idea of different approaches to religion.

There are the believers and the non-believers and there are those in between, the doubting thomases.

The believers are the pious and the devout who conform because they have not thought of an alternative.

The agnostics, the doubting thomases, may or may not follow religious practices, but they are no longer entirely convinced. They don’t believe entirely but they have not given up either.

And then there are the non-believers – those who have rejected religion entirely.

And there are shades in between.

There are the followers: the zealots, who assiduously maintain traditions. For them, religion is largely a matter of identity and uncompromising acceptance.

And there are the seekers. These are people who seek an answer to those universal questions. What is life? How did it start? Where did the universe come from? Will it continue indefinitely? Where do we go after we die? What is death?

A lot of the seekers are atheists or non-believers – many distinguished scientists belong to this category - Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens...the list is long, the names distinguished. Dawkins and Hitchens indeed have declared war on religion. A massive attack.

Stephen Hawking’s approach is different, so was Carl Sagan’s.Watch this video for Hawking’s and Sagan’s views on God and everything else: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/god-universe-everything-else/

Look out specially for their attitudes to religion. Note the difference: the deep sympathetic humaneness of Sagan’s approach and the uncompromising and detached intellectual integrity that Hawking brings to the table. It is interesting to see those subtle differences in personality, temperaments, approaches and attitudes.

Now let me come to the interesting part: all seekers may not be atheists.  Seekers of the truth come in many colours – scientists are one of them, poets, saints and philosophers, artists are others. The approach to Truth may be many. Saint and poet-seekers may draw their inspiration from religion and so might artists and sculptors. The scientific approach has the advantage of being an evidence-based inquiry, making the truths they unravel more easily comprehensible to more people. The approach through art and poetry and philosophy may lead their votaries to a fleeting subjective epiphanic experience, but in order for others to understand it, it will have to be personally felt or experienced by them. The non-scientific approach to seeking is therefore a very fulfilling experience for creators but is not so easily comprehensible to others.

Coming to the next logical point: are all atheists seekers then? No, I think. Many turn Marxists almost as a natural corollary. But I’m also sure many of those who have rejected religion have not found a well spring of personal philosophy to fill the vacuum. To them, atheism itself becomes a religion – a sort of a religion based on what they don’t believe in. It becomes a stand, even a stance, something frozen and frigid based on a conclusion that that there is no God.

A conclusion that is not yet justified. Scientists even today honestly admit to not having answers to many questions. They are only confident that whatever happened, it was not God-caused. But their hypothesis is not yet put to the test. Till such time as we have answers to all life’s big questions from science, it is presumptuous to reach any conclusion. 

The only valid approach then is the approach of the seeker. To freeze into an attitude is intellectual hara-kiri. Even as science delves deeper and deeper in its search for the essential core, we the doubters, non-believers and even the believers must need develop the objectivity and ability to question, seek, probe beyond the surface and seek the truth as presented by science and in the hallowed pages of our scriptures. To be able to read the two together, reconcile the differences and extricate it from the grist that has accumulated down the centuries.