DD Kosambi
In what follows, some social
aspects of religion are considered in so far as they serve to keep India
a backward country. The methods of cure suggested are by legislation, education
and improved social conditions, with a brief example or two to bring out the
basic idea in each case.
Reports by great religious
leaders of the past show that they regarded their own experiences and
revelations as the most exhilarating and profound happenings of a lifetime. But
the details show that exactly similar and often-identical experiences may be
had by the use of certain drugs, electrical stimulus of the brain, lesions of
the cerebral cortex and in dreams. The trouble begins when people impose their
views, on the basis of such experience, upon others.
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| Damodar Darmanand Kosambi |
The figure of speech about
alcoholism has been deliberately introduced. Not only wine but also mescaline
and other drugs have formed the core of ancient or primitive modern religion.
The potent soma of the sacred Vedas was a drink of this sort too. Hashish was a
reward for and stimulus to the murder of inconvenient opponents, as used by a
fanatical Muslim sect of the Middle Ages in Asia Minor .
The drug and its use gave rise to the word assassin. The sect itself changed
into the more innocuous one of the Aga Khan. Religions have recognized kinship
and rivalry between the spiritual and the spirituous. Thus Buddhism and Islam
banned wine. If such a ban can now be defended on grounds of social necessity
and prohibition be made part of a democratic constitution, why should other
hallucinogens not be treated on the same basis? And what more powerful
hallucinogen than religion?
There is one difference that
drugs can generally be relied upon to produce exaltation. Its purveyors are
taxed and subject to regulation, while the individual who uses them has to
observe public decorum and, is severely punished for breaking law and order.
Curative treatment is given to addicts. We have been very slow and hesitant in
dealing with the purveyors of religion on the same basis. Only the most
gruesome malpractices have been banned: sati (widow burning; defended as
‘voluntary’ by many pundits), hook swinging, and the most obscene features of
the holi festival are now forbidden. The last comes directly from prehistory;
even Asoka had trouble with the institution.
But we have stopped halfway.
Pilgrim taxes are levied by many places (Banaras )
whether the visitor is a pilgrim or not. Why not tax all income from any
religious source, including the ‘voluntary’ contributions from the pious? Why
are temples and mosques not taxed on the same basis as many buildings reserved
for the use of a special group? Marriage and divorce are now regulated to some
extent by civil procedure; monogamy has become a legislative measure,
regardless of religion. Why not secularize these social institutions completely
and compulsorily?
Some people, although willing to
admit that Indian religion has its harmful aspects, insist that education is
the sole remedy. It is not, of course, but there is every advantage in
educating people out of their superstition. That is one way of improving Indian
education and social conditions, provided education is understood in a sense
far wider than that of the schoolroom. The crudest of Indian superstitions is
faith in astrology. Millions still bathe at a solar eclipse, not as a hygienic
measure but to free the sun from a demon of darkness.
It is known, however, that there
is no longer a risk of perpetual darkness if the ritual bath be omitted. The
precise time and duration of the eclipse is predictable long in advance, not by
the Brahmin’s stock in trade but by Newtonian theories of the universe. It is
not enough to make this fact public, namely that the Indian almanacs
surreptitiously borrow their information about eclipses from foreign sources,
while retaining the tripe about planetary influences upon horoscopes.
The panchang almanacs sell by the
hundred thousands all over, the country, each area having one or more of its
own. Their very existence must be turned to good use by inserting useful
information: first aid hygiene, element of legal rights for the citizen,
possibilities of getting aid from sources other than the blood-sucking money
lenders in time of need and so on. Let the planets stay, and give their
positions by all means; but make the traditional almanac into a really useful
educational document.
Here the modern educator is
definitely at fault. He works through a bureaucratic mechanism originally
imposed by a foreign government and allowed to continue by inertia. His own education
has, more often not, consisted in learning foreign books by rote where his
grandfather might have recited Sanskrit texts with as little understanding.
Often, he can teach the latest scientific theories in school and maintain
outside the classroom that his ancestors three thousand years ago could fly
through the air by the power of yoga and see the atomic nucleus and viruses by
their inner sight. He never turns scientific methods upon the study of
superstition. Why did the superstition arise? Did the Indian almanac ever
perform any useful function at all? If not, how can one account for its rise
and spread?
The basic fact is that the whole
of Indian agriculture turns upon the monsoon. The annual rains begin at about
the same time every year in any given part of the country, but the land has to
be prepared for the sowing well before then. Similarly, the harvest has to be
taken in after the last normal rain has fallen. But the calendar is a very
advanced scientific concept in primitive life, determined mainly by long
observation of the positions of the sun, moon and planets. We know that these
heavenly bodies merely mark time: for primitive man, they made the weather as
the very word meteorology indicates. So, they also seemed to control man’s
destiny. These all-powerful stars would have to be propitiated according to the
priest’s instructions.
To counteract this, education is
the best method. Just as eclipses can be predicted, the onset and strength of
the monsoon can also be predicted. Not as accurately as astronomical phenomena,
but much better than the varsha-phala (‘yield of the rains’) given in every
Indian almanac. It is easier to send out storm warnings by radio and much
quicker too. With radios in every key village, the farmer could be advised - given
an efficient weather bureau - when to sow and to harvest. But this means
leaving the panchang almanac alone. If
we do this, superstition will survive much longer, and may be perverted to
strange uses by some interested people.
The best way is to have a
reasonably efficient long-range weather forecasting system. This is now well
within our reach with air-mass analysis and observation satellites. The
information must then be put into every almanac and the basis of calculation
carefully explained in simple language. The peasant will see for himself that
the stars have nothing to do with the weather or the monsoon and will be
willing to listen when other bits of really useful scientific information are
given. Even now he knows that fertility
rites are much less effective than the proper use of fertiliser. But we must
not throw away the magnificent chance of utilizing an old institution like the
almanac to cut down the very superstition it promotes.
The last section says in effect
that tout comprendre is by no means equivalent to tout pardonner. Let use try
the method on the most obscurantist of all Indian religious and social
institutions, caste. The evils of the
caste system are known, but no one asks himself why the system originated and
why it has held on in spite of so ·great a change in Indian life. Why should
the Brahmin’s pretensions be believed when he puts his sons to work in an
office, which uses only English, not Sanskrit, and is perhaps headed by a
beef-eating sahib?
The answer is quite obvious.
Caste was socially useful at one time, when production was at a much lower
level. It was the one way of keeping people together in co-operative effort
rather than have every man strike out for himself with the common ruin of all.
The village was the firm basis of caste, because land was generally held by a
kinship group. Tenure of land and membership of the group went together.
Whoever was outcast could no longer survive in the village. With feudal tenure,
caste was still powerful as a common bond against unlimited oppression. Whole
villages would desert en masse if the baron bore down too hard. Their
caste-fellows were bound to help these peasant strikers in distress. Further,
the village need for a potter, blacksmith, carpenter or barber was fulfilled by
artisan castes when the level of commodity production was low.
Today, factory production,
overcrowded cities, road and rail transport have changed all this. Caste
persists only because some people gain from it, namely, those who possess land,
hold the priesthood, and so on. Caste disabilities persist in spite of
legislation and-in many places-mass conversion as to Buddhism. The root cause
is the abysmally low economic status of the lowest castes and their total lack
of opportunity. Neither legislation, nor conversion, nor schoolroom education
can remove this. The sole possible cure is more efficient production and
distribution of the product in a manner equitable for all; most people call
this socialism. But equality on paper and the adult franchise will not be
enough, when politicians can use caste for vote catching and distribution of
patronage.
To take an allied but smaller
point: most economists see no future for India without birth control. The
national income and production are not rising at a faster rate than the
population, so that the net gain is virtually nil. But why do people want
children in a poor country? The usual answer is, ‘superstition’. A son is
essential so that the parents may go to heaven and be given the annual oblation
to keep them there.
Silly as this is, it contains an
ancient historical truth. Archaeology tells us that it was a tremendous and
extremely rare achievement in the older Stone Age for any human being to reach
the age of forty years. Food production instead of food gathering made it
possible for a substantial number of people to live longer. This only meant
that some people lived to an age where they could no longer fend for themselves
and had to be fed by others as in childhood. The offering to the manes (pinda)
is simply an extension of this practice, when the ancestors have entered upon
the long sleep of the grave.
If, now, birth control were by
some miracle enforced, it would mean that every person who reached a certain
age and physical condition would have no one to feed him in the present social
set up. Children are necessary precisely because Indian parents have no other
means of subsistence in old age. Insurance, savings, landed property, pensions
or other means of income would not suffice, at a guess, for as much as five per
cent of the population. So, the birth control expert is in fact asking people
to starve to death in old age so that some other people will be better off.
Most of us are not likely to
listen to the argument. Where food was very scarce, e.g., in Rajasthan until
the last century, a dreadful form of population control was affected by female
infanticide. Today, population control will be successful only if people are
convinced that there would be enough for them to live on in their old age even
if they have no children.
The real stupidity lies with the
‘planners’ who try to regulate the total numbers of the people by theory,
without assurance of a reasonable livelihood for the people in existence. The
expert who talks of epidemic and famine as natural checks upon the ‘population
explosion’ himself runs to consult the doctor the moment he has a fever; and
never goes without a full meal if he can help it. There are modern
superstitions in the guise of science, quite as deadly as those of religion.
The need is less for reform or
even the abolition of religious superstition than for basic changes, which can
only be described as revolutionary. Unfortunately it is possible to have a
revolution without its promised benefits, but never the benefits without a revolution.
This
essay is taken from Science, Society
& Peace (15 essays by Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi) published by The
Academy of Political and Social Studies, Pune
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