Saturday, 19 May 2012

India Untouched - A Documentary

[It is a widely held belief among the ruling, upper caste circles that the question of caste is no more an issue in India. We have chanced upon a documentary that unmasks this myth articulated by the very same people who practise casteism in a myriad of ways . This documentary is directed by Stalin, an activist film maker based in Ahmadabad. The text below is taken from Youtube where this documentary is uploaded]

"This Documentary is to those who claim that, "India has moved on, there is nothing called untouchability or cast-ism in India today". This is to show them the picture they failed to see till now, to remove the curtain of their eyes.

Those who claim that their should not be special rights for those belonging to backward castes..and they should be for poors.."This is how the 'Higher Castes' treat a Schedule Caste/Scheduled Tribe no matter what his financial state is". You talk about equality and a fight with equal stature..where is that equal stature now? If those rights are not fair, which are meant for them to lift them up from their low status, to give them a right to stand at 'equal' within a society, then is it fair that those so called "Savarnas..Higher Caste" are pushing them back in a deeper pit of backwardness, of social negligence, underdeveloped, poverty, and a state from where no one even gives a damn what will happen to that particular group of society...Is that Fair? Is it human?"

Thursday, 17 May 2012

Rationalism in Bengal: An Overview


Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (on CD-Rom, 11th ed. 2004) defines rationalism as “the practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.” This is not the only meaning of the word. In philosophy the same term suggests “the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge” (ibid.). But we are not concerned with such technical meanings here. It is the first meaning that is generally known today and that is how I am going to use the word in this paper.

Rationalism is not a property exclusively of the West. Every civilization, at one point of time or another, witnessed a struggle between faith and reason, instinctive or emotional response and knowledge. Even during the darkest period of the history of any people, the lamp of reason could not be totally extinguished. It is as much true of Europe during the Middle Ages as of India during the long stretch between the twelfth century and the nineteenth century. There were sceptics, agnostics and atheists even during the Vedic age. The Charvaka / Lokayatas had absorbed all such previous traits and finally produced a system of philosophy that was uncompromisingly rational and opposed to all dictums that were not founded on sense perception. Inference drawn from unverifiable premises and word or verbal testimony, even though coming from the works of Manu and others, according to Madhavacharya (Sayana)’s Sarva-darsana-samgraha, were unacceptable to them (249, 251).

The Charvaka / Lokayata, however, seems to have completely disappeared before the fourteenth century. Blind faith in the authorities, secular or religious, was the guiding principle of Indian social life, both of the Hindus and the Muslims, throughout the pre-modern period. Only in the nineteenth century reason made its presence strongly felt, particularly in Kolkata (then Calcutta in English), thanks to Rammohun Roy, H. L. V. Derozio and the Derozians (the Young Bengal), Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, Akshaykumar Datta and, last but not least, the Positivists.

Rammohun Roy in his First Conference between an Advocate for and an Opponent of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive (1818) upheld reason in the following way: “the Sastras, and the reasonings connected with them enable us to discriminate right and wrong. In those Sastras such female murder is altogether forbidden. And reason also declares, that to bind down a woman for her destruction, holding out to her the inducement of heavenly rewards, is a most sinful act” (English Works 3 : 95-96). The English translation of the Second Conference (1820) was dedicated to the Marchioness of Hastings, Countess of Loudoun, etc. with these words: “The following tract, being a translation of a Bengalee Essay, published some time ago [1819], as an appeal to reason in behalf of humanity…” (3 :101. Emphasis added). The Bangla original had no such dedication.

This is for the first time in the history of Bengal, perhaps of India, that reason was harnessed along with humanity in the service of social reform. Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, on the other hand, knew full well that the Bengali people would never agree to listen to reason; to them religious texts and local customs were the final arbiter (II : 21-22). Hence before launching the movement demanding the enactment of widow remarriage, he relied exclusively on the interpretation of the Smriti texts rather than appealing to reason. In an earlier tract on the evils of child marriage (II : 3-9) Vidyasagar, however, had based himself on reason rather than religious texts, presumably because all major Dharmasastras were in favour of early marriage, the earlier the better. So any pre-emptive move by way of harnessing Sastric adages was out of the question.

One sure way of judging the radical role of Vidyasagar in the field of education is to look at the reaction of John Murdoch, an arch bigot whom even Gandhi could not tolerate (104). This is how the Christian missionaries found fault with Vidyasagar who had based his school primer, Bodhodaya on Chambers’s The Rudiments of Knowledge. John Murdoch in his Education as a Missionary Agency in India (Madras, 1872) quoted a passage from Bodhodaya in translation:

The senses:–
The above five senses are the avenues of our knowledge, by which we can get all sorts of knowledge, and without which we should be ignorant of every thing. By the exercise of those senses we gain experience, and experience produces the power of judgment of what is right and wrong, of what is good and bad. Therefore the senses are very advantageous to us.
(extracted in Indramitra, Appendix 30, 720-21. All italics in the original)

On this materialist theory of knowledge Murdoch remarks in annoyance:

The above… seems to teach rank Materialism. (italics in the original)
It has been asserted that it is “misleading” to characterize such books as “Secularist.” The autour (sic, meaning Vidyasagar) is described as “the well known Hindu reformer.” But this is no proof to the contrary. His reforms are purely social. So far as the writer (sc. Murdoch) is aware, he has kept himself entirely aloof from the Brahmo Somaj (sic) movement. Robert Owen, the Secularist, was also a reformer in his way.
The writer described the above books, not simply as prepared by a Secularist, but as Secularist. He did so because the author deliberately stuck out the injunction to worship God; because his moral teaching has no reference to God’s will, but simply to what people around would think or do; because he omitted all passages [in The Rudiments of Knowledge published by Messrs. Chambers’] teaching the immortality of the Soul, the responsibility of man and the difference between him and the brutes that perish. If it is “misleading” to describe such books as “Secularist”, the writer confesses that he does not know the meaning of the term.

Murdoch concludes his condemnation of Vidyasagar as follows:

It is very lamentable that such books should have been prepared by the most distinguished writer in Bengali, formerly Principal of a Government College, and that they should be those which have by far the largest circulation throughout the country.
It is earnestly hoped that soon such books will be excluded from Mission Schools….”

Let us go back to Rammohun Roy. He made his debut in religious controversy in a tract written in Persian (1804) called Tuhfat-ul Muwahhidin (A Gift to then Monotheists). After going through the small book one feels that it could be named with equal justice A Gift to the Atheists. The aim of life, Rammohun declares, is to live in peace without doing harm to anybody. He speaks neither of liberation (mukti) nor of realizing God as the end of life. He does not believe in the virtue of prayer as a means of getting rid of troubles (durgati) or cure from diseases. He has no faith in any revealed text. Nor does he feel any need of a Paigambar to mediate between God and humans (Racbanavali 717-29). In short, by rejecting both Brahminical creeds and Islam, Rammohun tacitly rejects all established religions. Everything being eliminated, only two entities remain – God Himself and Rammohun Roy (or someone who is a theist but has no faith in any institutionalized, established religion). The position is akin to that of the European deists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although Rammohun himself in later days had no respect for deism (Sastri 2:284). Some Europeans, however, used to consider Rammohun as a deist (Pauthier 697).

Another small dialogue, Dialogue between a Missionary and Three Chinese Converts (English Works 4:77-79), is worth noting. The original Bangla version was written in the same year, 1823. Rammohun expanded some of the points in the English version (or the Bangla version was an abridgement of the English). The setting of the dialogue is as follows: A European Missionary, intending to examine his converts, said to them, “How many Gods are there, my brethren?” The first convert answered, “Three”, the second, “Two”, and the third, “None”. The Missionary was astonished. But the converts struck to their own grounds. The third convert, for example, replied: ‘Our minds are not like yours in the West, or you would not have asked me [why I say there is no God]. You told me again and again that there never was but one God, that Christ was the true God, and that a nation of merchants living at the head of Arabian gulf [the Bangla version specifically names the Jews], put him to death upon a tree [that is, crucified him], about eighteen hundred years ago.

Believing you, what other answer could I give than “None”?’ (4: 77-78) The Missionary lost his composure and declared that all the three would without doubt perish everlastingly. The first convert gently rebuked him, “Cong-foo-tse [Confucius], our revered master says, that bad temper always turns reason out of doors, and that when men begin to curse, the good Spirit of the universe abandoned their hearts” (4:78-79).1

Brajendranath Seal suggests that Rammohun read David Hume and John Locke. Yet it seems that Rammohun had learned more from the works of Persian and Arabic writers of the Middle Ages than from any modern Western thinker. Regarding the “formative influence” of Rammohun, Seal has mentioned “Islamic culture” first, “the culture of Baghdad and Bassora (Basra), filtered through an Indian Madrassa” (3). Several years after this Rammohun learnt Sanskrit and got to know the Jain and Buddhist traditions as well as the views of the North-Indian sants such as Kabir, Dadu, Nanak and the Ramayets. It was only during his sojourn in North Bengal, in the early years of the nineteenth century that Rammohun acquired the elements of English. At Rangpur he ‘cultivated the literature of empirical philosophy and scientific thought from Bacon to Locke and Newton, as well as the propaganda of free thinking and “Illumination” in Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Volney, Tom Paine and others…’ (6). As Seal writes: “He (sc. Rammohun) drank eagerly from the fountainhead of modern freedom and was inspired by the spirit of the Age of Illumination” (6). Yet, Seal asserts, these studies did not cause a sea-change in Rammohun’s outlook. They ‘only confirmed him in his rejection of miracle, dogma and ritual to which he had already been led by his own reflections on the religions and scriptures of his country as well as by the teachings of the Mutazilas, the Sufis, and the Uttara Mimamsa. In fact, he became sceptically minded as to the claims of all “Sastras” and all historical religions’ (6-7).

Even though Rammohun never lost faith in the existence of God and never condoned polytheism, his faith was grounded on logic; he would like to adduce reasons for his monotheistic conviction rather than declare that devotion was enough and arguments vitiate the mind. His polemics against the Christian missionaries on the one hand and the Hindu polytheists on the other, remain permanent sources of both entertainment and edification.

It needs to be re-emphasized, as D. Biswas has rightly done (59), that Rammohun’s rationalism was not derived from the West. When he wrote his first Persian tract in 1804 (or 1805), he did not know English or any Western language well enough to read the works of the European sceptics or the Enlightenment thinkers. His mindset apparently had already been made up before he learnt English. What Western education (learnt privately, not in any academic institution) taught him only reinforced his conviction in the power of reason.
If Rammohun Roy the monotheist found his worthy successor in his friend’s son (and also his son’s friend) Debendranath Tagore, Rammohun Roy the rationalist had his successor — and a very able one at that — in Akshaykumar Datta. Akshaykumar was a self-taught polymath. He began his career as an Adi Brahmo Samaj activist (he was one of the editors of the Tattvabodhini Patrika) but proceeded slowly but steadily first towards agnosticism and then to uncompromising atheism. His stand did not endear him to the Adi Brahmos. Debendranath felt that there was a gulf of difference between him and Akshaykumar. It was Akshaykumar who had convinced Debendranath that no sacred book can be apaurusheya, that is, not composed by any being, human or otherwise. Akshaykumar’s terse equation:

Labour = Crops
Labour + Prayer = Crops
∴  Prayer = 0 (qtd. A. Chakraborty 411) 2

created quite a sensation among the students in the then Kolkata. Besides writing two bulky volumes on the Indian devotional communities, he also produced a large number of primers on basic sciences such as astronomy, geography, geology, physics, etc. He coined new Bengali terms for modern science and many of his terminology are still current in Bangla. He was a Baconian through and through and considered the works of Bacon and Comte to be “our sastra”, as much as the works of ”Bhaskara and Aryabhata as well as Newton and Laplace” were (M. Roy 95). Akshaykumar had the greatest reverence for Rammohun and criticized the Brahmos who were antipathetic and antagonistic to science (2: 30-33). His study of the ancient Indian philosophical systems is a marvel of scholarship.3 His sole intention was to prove that most of the philosophical schools, such as Samkhya, Old Nyaya, Mimamsa and even Vedanta, not to speak of the Charvaka, were atheistic (2: 1, 23, 29, 54).

The impact of Western education is to be found in the next generation of youths who had H. L. V. Derozio (1809-31) as their teacher at Hindu College. Ramgopaul Ghose, his pupil and one of the august members of the so-called Young Bengal (Peary Chand Mittra even narrowed it down to Young Calcutta) declared the motto of his master in this way: “He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; he who does not is a slave” (qtd. in S. Sarkar 101). Words like these should be inscribed in every school and college in letters of radium. Then there was Madhub Chunder Mullick who wrote in the college magazine, “If there is anything that we hate from the bottom of our heart, it is Hinduism” (Sastri 2:290). Russic Krishna Mullick, while attending the court of law as a witness, refused to take oath by touching a copper vessel, Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum) leaf and holy water (as was customary), because, he said, “I do not believe in the sacredness of the Ganges” (Sastri 2:315).

Needless to say, Derozio and his worthy pupils drew inspiration from British thinkers like David Hume, not from any Oriental strand of rationalism as Rammohun had done. Derozio in his letter to H. H. Wilson declared: “Entrusted as I was for sometime with the education of youth, peculiarly circumstanced was it for me to have made them pert and ignorant dogmatists.... I therefore thought it my duty to acquaint several of the college students with the substance of Hume’s celebrated dialogue between Cleanthes and Philo [Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, posthumously and anonymously published in 1779] in which the most subtle and refined arguments against theism are adduced” (qtd. in Mittra, 26).

Yet Derozio was not trying to substitute one set of faith by another, that of atheism, both based on verbal testimony (aptabakya). It was not a case of brainwashing to be replaced by counter-brainwashing (what some ultra- rationalists in present-day Bengal have tried to do, with no perceptible result at all). In the same letter Derozio added that side by side with Hume he had also furnished his students with “Dr Reid’s and Dugald Stewart’s more acute replies to Hume, — replies which to this day continue unrefuted. This is the head and front of my offending” (Mittra 26). He further stated: “That I should be called a sceptic and an infidel is not surprising, as these names are always given to persons who think for themselves in religion…” (Mittra 29).

The seeds that Derozio had sown continued to bear fruits even after his death in 1831. “The stormy petrel of our renaissance” (as Susobhan Sarkar (104) has called him) had set a trend that was not to wither away with his death. His students were active in social and intellectual life. They read Tom Paine’s Age of Reason even by paying black-market price of Rs. 8 per copy. One publisher sold one hundred copies of this book at Rs. 5 each. The Englishman complained that the students of Hindu college were “all radicals, and the followers of Benthamite principles.” Their shortlived journal, The Enquirer and a bilingual periodical, Gyananaeshun, in which remarriage of Hindu widows had been strongly advocated before Vidyasagar did it, reflect the spirit of revolt as well as keen intellect.

After Derozio, David Hare became the president of the Academic Association. He was a philanthropist also known as an atheist. Then there was the Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge and the Epistolary Association for exchanging opinions among themselves. The contribution of Peary Chand Mittra and Radhanath Sickdar to Bangla prose is universally recognized. The former in particular is to be commended for introducing the low or plain style in his novel and sketches. In short, the Young Bengal were both path-breakers and path-makers at the same time.

I have already mentioned two distinct sources of rationalism in Bengal: the first, indigenous or Indian, the second, exogenous or foreign. Rammohun and Vidyasagar first learned their rationalism from indigenous sources, which can be traced back right from the sceptical and agnostic hymns in the Rigveda down to the medieval authors of astronomy, civil law and philosophy. Many scholars have mentioned such works and noticed the similarity between Rammohun and medieval Arab thinkers (D. Biswas 47-48, 56,72, 84 n141). Let me here digress a little and adduce several more instances of rationalism in practice in the ancient and medieval Indian tradition. These would, I hope, suffice to refute the misinformed postmodernist view that rationalism is a Western phenomenon that appeared only during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in Europe and came to India in the wake of British colonialism and was embraced by the babus (as Kabiraj (35-58) would have us believe).

Now to the examples. The Anusasana Parvan of the Mahabharata speaks of rationalists (hetukas) who claimed that there was no truth beyond what can be directly perceived (logically inferred) , but they admitted the possibility of doubt in respect of perception (and inference) as well (147.5). The same source also states that truth transcends formal logic (147.7). Three and only three instruments of cognition (pramanas) are mentioned, namely, direct perception, doctrines proposed by the scriptures, and the practice of the sishta-s (eminent people) (147. 9, cf. 147. 17-20). Inference is not accepted as a separate instrument presumably because all inferences need to be preceded by perception.

The Charaka Samhita states, “Everything falls into one or the other of the two categories – true and untrue. The method of investigation is fourfold: authoritative testimony, direct observation, inference and reason (yukti)” (1.11.17).

Bhaskaracharya (born 1036 Saka = 1114 CE) continues the same rational tradition by rejecting agama (scripture) and declaring: “In the astronomical department scripture is authoritative only when it is supported by demonstration” (qtd. in Muir 2:161 n183).

Jimutavahana of Bengal (between eleventh century and fourteenth century CE) in his digest on the law of inheritance categorically declares that those who know nothing but the authority of old teachers (acharyas) would not be able to appreciate his work, which is meant for those whose intelligence is guided by logical proofs (15.1; 232-33).

Similarly, Suryadeva Yajvana in his commentary on the Aryabhatiya, the seminal work of Aryabhata, rejects the innovation of one acharya called Prasastidhara, for, he says, “We rationalists (yauktikah) cannot approve of it” (qutd. in Aryabhatiya III: xlv). He further declares that when several works (Sastras) on astronomy disagree or vary, he has resorted to (astronomical) instruments for testing which view is right (Commentary on Laghumanasa of Munjala, 3. 6-7, quoted in ibid. xlvi).

Such open minds, though rare, were not altogether absent in India at any point of time. They had no need for modern European science or logic to arrive at their conclusions, irrespective of and indifferent to what the religious authorities might have prescribed. The appearance of Rammohun and Vidyasagar does not signify a total break in the tradition but a continuity of a barely noticeable (and hence largely ignored) trend. The intellectual ambience in nineteenth-century Bengal was of course a little more congenial for them than it had been for their predecessors.

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that rationalism came to Bengal, nay India, in a totally new garb with Derozio and the Derozians. They drew their inspiration from the Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers of Europe and burst vigorously upon the stagnant pool of Bengal. In spite of the serious reservations on the part of some of them, some others held Rammohun in great esteem (D. Biswas 416-96). It is therefore in the fitness of things that they would lend their support, not merely verbally but actually, to the widow remarriage agitation initiated by Vidyasagar.

One distinction, however, is to be made between the impacts of the two strands of rationalism: the first, represented by Rammohun and Vidyasagar, proved to be more powerful and long-lived than the second. The Young Bengal petered out after the 1850s without leaving any successors. The move for social reforms led by Rammohun and Vidyasagar was continued by both enlightened Hindus and Brahmos (first by Keshub Chandra Sen and his followers, and then by the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj). The social reformers were not rationalists in the absolute sense of the term. They did not preach or practise a totally secular attitude to life. But the positive aspect is that they dared to swim against the current and through words and deeds challenged the status quo ante, which the religious fanatics, conservatives and no-changers of both Hindu and Muslim communities persisted in upholding. The Young Bengal formed an elite group of their own, hopelessly alienated from the masses of the people. Our social reformers, on the contrary, succeeded in reaching the village as much as the town. Admittedly, their work was confined to the so-called upper castes of the Hindu society. In spite of this limitation, commoners of Bengal could take sides either for or against the proposed reforms. The campaign of Young Bengal simply went over the head of the generally educated people. Hence, somewhat frustrated to see the zero effect of their attempts, most of the Derozians ultimately turned dipsomaniacs, alcohol being the only refuge left. Aurobindo Ghose (later Sri Aurobindo) later• described them as follows: “They were giants and did everything gigantically. They read hugely, wrote hugely, thought hugely, and drunk hugely” (8). An unkind judgment, but how true! Compare with this his eulogy of Vidyasagar, Akshaykumar Datta and others (6-7), and the soundness of his observation will be crystal clear. Consider also how Michael Madhusudan Dutt portrayed the Young Bengal in his brilliant farce, Buro Saliker Ghare Ro (1860).

Another, exogenous source for rationalism is to be found in the introduction of positivism in Bengal. We need not go here into the details of its formation and its impact on the Bengali society. Suffice it to say that, unlike the youthful Derozians, the positivists in Bengal were a sober lot, seldom going against the customs of the Hindu society.4 Most of them were well-established lawyers, landlords and teachers. Interestingly enough, in a list of contributors to the Indian Positivist Society we find, besides the expected names of Jogendra Chandra Ghosh, Nagendra Nath Ghosh and Krishna Kamal Bhattacharya, the names of Janakinath Ghoshal, brother-in-law of Rabindranath Tagore and a moderate Congressman, Hemchandra Banerjee, presumably the well-known poet, and W. C. Bonnerjee, first president of the Indian National Congress. There is another name, Iswar Chunder Bannerjee, who contributed only once in 1887 (Forbes 113-14). Could this be our very own Iswarchandra Vidyasagar (or Eshwar Chundra Shurma, as he used to sign his letters)? Most probably he is. He was a friend of Dwarika Nath Mitra, a famous lawyer who learned French in order to read Auguste Comte in the original. Shibnath Sastri records how Vidyasagar used to discuss the doctrines of positivism with Mitra and once gave a thorough exposition of this philosophy to the great admiration of Mitra and other listeners (Sastri in Biman Basu (ed.) 22). There is still a copy of Comte’s The Catechism of Positivism in Vidyasagar’s much depleted private collection now housed in the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, Kolkata. It may also be noted that Akshaykumar Datta considered Bacon and Comte as the two suns in two regions [England and France] (2: 53).

Another name to be remembered in connection with positivism in Bengal is Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya. Before turning a devotee of Krishna in or around 1874, he had been, as Dwijendranath Tagore once branded him, “a pucca positivist” (Gupta 290). There are references to Comte, with approval, in Bankim’s early writings. Even in his later works Comte seems to cast his shadow. Benoy Kumar Sarkar once offered an equation:

“Dharmatattva” (“Krishnacharitra”) = Gita X Comte (48)

which is quite appropriate.

So great indeed was the influence of positivism on the English-educated Bengalis that Kenneth M. Macdonald, the Rev. professor, had to write against Girish Chandra Ghosh whose journal, The Bengalee, promoted the cause of Comte. Macdonald made use of Nabagopal Mitra’s National Magazine in his polemics against The Bengalee. He also delivered a speech, “Comte the Positivist” at Canning Institute, Howrah. The speech was translated into Bangla as Dhrubabadi Agast Komt and published from Calcutta in 1281 BS (1874 CE). The positivists all over the world, including those of Bengal, were called atheists, as Comte himself had set out “to examine, on rational principles,” the form of catechism for the exposition of his homespun “religion of humanity”.

I propose to end this brief survey by pointing out that although the positivists, like the Young Bengal, were no better than a small elite group, having little or no connection with the masses, they contributed a most spectacular character to Bangla literature – Jethamasai in Rabindranath’s enigmatic novel, Chaturanga (Four Sections).

Notes

1 The Bangla version, “Padri o Sishya Sambad” (Rachanabali 262-63), does not contain the name of Confucius; the last speech is allotted to all the three disciples.
2 The equation is reproduced somewhat differently in N. Biswas ( qtd. B. Bandyopadhyay 30), A. K. Bhattacharya (27) and D. Chattopadhyaya (112).
3 For a detailed analysis see R. Bhattacharya (2003) 158-71.
4 A comparison of Jogendranath Bhattacharyya’s Hindu Castes and Sects (1896) with Akshaykumar’s Bharatbarshiya Upasak Sampraday will reveal that Bhattacharyya was not prompted by any desire to study “the mental disease” of the people who founded the sects. Datta on the other hand clearly states that he considered these religious sects to be work of mental aberrations (2: 316; Lahiri 140-42).

Works Cited

Aryabhata. Aryabhatiya. Part 3. Ed. K. V. Sarma. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1976.
Sri Aurobindo. Bankim Chandra Chatterji. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1964 (first published in Indu Prakash, Bombay in 1894).
Bhattacharyya, A. K. “Akshay Dutt: Pioneer of Indian Rationalism”, The Rationalist Annual, 1962.
Chattopadhyay, Debiprasad and Mrinal Kanti Gangopadhyaya (eds.). Carvaka/Lokayata. Eds. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1990.
Chattopadhyay, Debiprasad. “Four Calcuttans in Defence of Scientific Temper”, Indian Journal of History of Science, 29: 1, 1994, pp. 11-19.
Forbes, Geraldine Hancock. Positivism in Bengal : A Case Study in the Transmission and Assimilation of an Ideology. Calcutta: Minerva Associates, 1975.
Gandhi, M. K. Christian Missions: Their Place in India. Ed. B. Kumarappa Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House,1957.
Jimutavahana. Dayabhaga. Calcutta, 1893.
Kaviraj, Sudipta. The Unhappy Consciousness. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Mahabharata, The. Critically edited by V. S. Sukthankar and others. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1933-66.
Mitra, Peary Chand. Biographical Sketch of David Hare. Calcutta: Basumati Sahitya Mandir, 1949 (first published 1877).
Muir, J. Original Sanskrit Texts, Vol. II. New Delhi: Oriental Publishers and Distributors, 1976 (first published 1871).
Pauthier, G. Review of Rammohun Roy’s Translation of Several Principal Books, etc. (1832) in Revue Encyclopédique. Tome LVI, December, 1832, 694-706.
Roy, Raja Rammohun. The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy. Eds. Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti Burman. Kolkata: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1995 (first published 1945-1952, in seven volumes).
Sarkar, Susobhan. On the Bengal Renaissance. Calcutta: Papyrus, 2002.
Urwin, Kenneth. A Century for Freedom: A Survey of the French “Philosophers”. London: Watts & Co, 1946.


Bengali Works
 (All published from Kolkata)

Bandyopadhyaya, Brajendranath. Akshayakumar Datta. (Sahitya Sadhak Charitamala 12). Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1348 BS (Bengali Sal / Year).
Basu, Biman (ed.). Prasanga Vidyasagar. Bangiya Saksharata Prasar Samiti, 1991.
Bhattacharya, Ramkrishna. Kamarer Ek Gha. Pavlov Institute, 2003.
–––. “Bankimchandrer Dharmachita: Asangatir Utse”, Charan Parva. 1:2, 1401 BS.
Biswas, Dilipkumar. Rammohan Samiksha. Saraswat Library, 1983.
Biswas, Nakurchandra. Akshayacharita. 1294 BS.
Chakraborty, Ajitkumar (ed.). Maharshi Debendranatha Thakur (1936). Satish Chandra Chakraborty (ed.). Debendranath Thakurer Atmajivani. Visvabharati, 1962.
Datta, Akshayakumar. Bharatavarshiya Upasak Sampradaya. Karuna Prakashani, 1394, BS.
Datta, Michael Madhusudhan. Rachanavali. Haraph Prakashani, 1973.
Gupta, Bipin Bihari. Puratan Prasanga. Vidyabharati, 1373 BS.
Indramitra. Karunasagar Vidyasagar. Ananda Publishers, 1992.
Lahiri, Ashishs. Akshayakumar Datta: Andhar Rate Ekala Pathik. Dey’s Publishing, 2007.
Ray, Mahendranath. Babu Akshaykaumar Datter Jivanvrittanta. 1292 BS.
Ray, Rammohun. Rammohan Rachanavali. Haraph Prakashani, 1973.
Sarkar, Binaykumar. Binay Sarkarer Baithake. Chakraborty, Chatterjee & Company, 1982.
Shastri, Shibnath. Ramtanu Lahiri o Tatkalin Bangasamaj in: Shibnath Rachanasamgraha. Vol 2. Saksharata Prakashan, 1976. 
Vidyasagar Iswarchandra. Rachanasamgraha. Vol. 2. Vidyasagar Smarak Jatiya Samiti, 1972.


This article was first published  in Psyche and Society (Kolkata), 10:1,  May 2012,43-51.

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya taught English at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata and was an Emeritus Fellow of University Grants Commission. He is now a Fellow of Pavlov Institute, Kolkata.


Politics through Food Habits


Ram Puniyani

In the middle of April 2012 Osmania University (OU) witnessed an unusual violence on the issue of eating beef. A section of dalit students’ were demanding that University Hostels should have beef on the menu. They also organized a beef festival in which a large number of students ate beef biryani. The festivity was not to last long as the ABVP, the student wing of RSS, created rampage, a student was knifed, a bus was torched and ruckus was created in the university. The Vice Chancellor of OU knelt to the aggressive cow protectors and said that beef will not be introduced in the menu.

Just a month ago the in the Kurmaguda area of Hyderabad a group of youth associated with Hindu communal group were arrested for throwing beef inside a Hanuman temple, who later spread the word that Muslims have defiled our temple and turned their guns against the hapless minority, torched few buses. A little while ago the ruling BJP government in Madhya Pradesh had introduced a bill prohibiting the consumption of beef in the state. Other BJP ruled states in one form or the other are introducing legislations, which prohibit the slaughter of cow.

The place where Muslims were butchered mercilessly under the Chief mastership of Modi the ‘care of cow’ has gone one step up and state has opened centers for cataract and dental surgery of the Mother Cow. The goal of the Hindu state of Gujarat under Modi is to open more such centers so that Mother cow does not have to travel more than three kilometers for accessing these services, this while innumerable victims of Gujarat carnage, are yet to recover from the trauma of the carnage, aided by the apathy of state.

So far most of these legislations and the accompanying propaganda have been directed primarily against Muslim minority, which is demonized as the butchers and eaters of ‘our holy cow’. The OU episode shows the other side of the agenda of cow politics. While there had been cases of murders of dalits on the pretext of skinning a dead cow (Jhajjar, Haryana) and VHP defending the act saying that cow is too holy to spare the dalits. Still primarily it is the Muslim community which has been the target of propaganda emanating from RSS- Combine stable.

With dalits, the other target of RSS combine, the issue is not just of identity. It is related to the livelihood and food habits of dalits-Adivasis. The cow as a symbol of RSS combine has been in the fore since the rise of communal politics during the British rule. As such the cow has been in the forefront of communal battles of upper castes in India earlier also. The Brahmanical reaction to rise of Buddhism was countered by putting forward the symbol of cow. Some Dalit scholars hold that cow was cleverly chosen and one of the reasons cow stole a march over the equally useful buffalo was its color. It is not a coincidence that the dark skinned people have faced the wrath of the elite in one form or the other.

A file photo of supporters eating beef biryani
at the beef festival in Osmania University -
Image Courtesy: Deccan Chronicle
The scholars of Vedic India Prof D.N.Jha, Dr. Pandurang Vaman Kane and champion of social justice Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, all have pointed out that cow was verily eaten during Vedic period. With the rise of agricultural society, and need for preserving cattle wealth; the religions-ideologies promoting non-violence in the form of Jainism and Buddhism came up and campaigned against senseless sacrifice of cow in Vedic yagnas (sacrificial ritual).  

The current communal politics has twin agenda. At surface it wants to subjugate the minorities and is using the emotive issues to create a mass hysteria against minorities. Lord Ram and Cow are the major tools of communal political mobilization. While the supporters of RSS combine generously donate for the welfare of cow, it is the dalits who practically take care of the grazing and other needs of Holy mother. Last some time a pressure is being built up culturally and politically that beef eating communities give up this integral part of their habit.

The food patterns are changing under intense propaganda still as of now the consumption of beef in India is higher than that of mutton and chicken put together. Its export is also a major business. The RSS combine on one side aims to subjugate the Minorities and on the other wants to maintain the status quo of social relationship of caste and gender. These are subtle and overt maneuvers implemented through political and cultural conduits. Attitude of communal politics to dalits has been a complex one. The anti dalit violence of 1980 against reservation, the anti OBC violence of 1986 against promotion of OBCs in jobs, and its strengthening of Kamandal politics (Rath Yatra and the Babri demolition) in response to Mandal were a part of this.

At another level the strategy is to co-opt dalits into Hindutva fold. From middle of decades of 1980s RSS has activated Samajik Samrasta Manch (Social Harmony Forum) which has been mobilizing dalits around that. The Gurus like Sri Sri Ravishanker have been saying that there should be harmony between upper and lower caste, while he keeps quiet about the prevalent social injustice in various forms. The aim of the communal politics is to maintain the status quo of caste and gender.

Through Samajik Samrasta Manch the message of undermining caste atrocities and social injustice is actively propagated. Supplementing this is the cultural assertion and imposition of elite norms on the whole society. Food habits are a part of culture and for large sections of dalits and Adiviasis beef had been an integral part of their food. Incidentally there is a vigorous campaign to promote vegetarianism and denigrate non vegetarian food practices.

While the large section of dalits is struggling for social and economic justice, a section of dalits is undergoing the process of sanskritization as well. It is in this light that the symbols of dalit assertion in the matters of food habits and cultural expressions are being attacked openly. The compromised state apparatus is not able to stand up to this onslaught of communal politics to preserve the social and democratic rights of dalits and other marginalized sections of society, be it the matters of their physical security, questions of equity and food habits. It is a blatant attempt to manipulate culture, to impose elite norms, through influencing the food habits, which are so much cultural in their nature.

It seems Mother Cow may be the major emotive weapon to be used for the politics deriving its legitimacy from Hindu religions’ identity. Interestingly it reveals the twin goals of this politics. At surface it is to reduce the minorities to a status of second class citizen and at deeper level to subjugate dalits at social, political and cultural level.

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Federation of Karnataka State Rationalist Associations: First State Conference

We reproduce below a communication received from Karnataka Rajya Vicharavadi Okkootta (Federation of Karnataka State Rationalist Associations):

Federation of Karnatka State Rationalist Associations (Karnataka Rajya Vicharavadi Okkootta) is organizing the 1st state level rationalist conference at SHRAVANABELOGOLA on 18th & 19th of May 2012.
As you are aware, a get-together of more than 100 rationalist and humanist activists and sympathizers was held on March 14, 2010 in Bangalore. It was decided at the meeting to form a Federation of rationalist and humanist groups active in various districts of Karnataka in order to coordinate the activities of these groups at the state level. Subsequently, during the last two years, our activists visited about 22 districts of the state and held meetings with various groups and individuals. Those districts which we could not cover, we got in touch with activists over telephone.
To keep up the momentum generated through these contacts, to consolidate the gains and to build up the organization further, it has been decided to organize the first state conference of the Federation at Shravanebelogola on 18th & 19th of May 2012. In order to make the conference a grand success, we request your participation.


VENUE:


MANJUNATHA KALYANA MANTAPA (Near Bus Stand)
SHRAVANABELOGOLA,
Hassan District

Delegate Fee: Rs: 200/- only
(Towards accommodation, on 18th night. lunch, tea, & dinner & breakfast &lunch on 18th &19th respectively)


Delegates can sent the delegate fee of Rs.200/- by ECS transfer to

Srinivas Natekar
SB A/c No. 007201016498
Corporation Bank, Shravanabelogola
IFSC Code: CORP0000072

For Programme Details, the delegates may contact any of the following persons

  1. B.V.V. Subbarao (Bangalore) - Mobile:  9886679088;   Land Line: 080 -41476288 
  2. Srinivas Natekar (Shravanabelogola)  -  Mobile: 9844614676;  Land Line: 08176-257875
  3. Dr.H.R.Swamy (Hassan) -   Mobile: 776004088
                                         Email: vicharavadi@gmail.com

Greetings:


I welcome the Karnataka conference and this is timely. We need to inculcate scientific attitude among students and youth which will take society in to future development. Today the reactionary forces gained upper hand and set the rational cloack backwards. The child abuse of inculcating religion to the kids from childhood onward should be stopped.

Innaiah Narisetti
USA
Wed, May 9, 2012 at 3:42 PM

***

Thanks for the invitation.

I am happy to know about the conference and I wish the conference all success.We are also celebrating the national conference at Hyderabad on 9th and 10th June 2012.I am forwarding the message to our friends.

With regards

Gumma Veeranna
President
A.P.Rationalist Association
Wed, May 9, 2012 at 3:59 PM
***

Sunday, 6 May 2012

India’s Blasphemy Law: Section 295A of IPC

Narendra Nayak

Section 295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs
[295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.— Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of [citizens of India], [by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise], insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to [three years], or with fine, or with both.]


This section of the IPC pertains to insulting religions and religious beliefs. Made by our colonial masters to divide and subjugate their vassals, like many other provisions of the archaic laws made by them, this section too has been carried over into our laws and is being used now mainly to persecute and hound people who may have points of view contrary to those of the powers that be. The rationalist movement and other progressive forces have been mostly at the receiving end of persecutions under this but the others have been no exception. The word 'persecution' has been deliberately used here as most of the cases booked under this section have resulted in acquittals of the accused and all they have had as punishment is the period of the 'due process of law' which can take several years to couple of decades to complete.

Sanal Edamaruku
The recent one in this issue is the attempt to prosecute a rationalist from Delhi, Sanal Edmaruku. He has been quite active on the TV channels denouncing superstitions and god men on them and has been a regular feature on many of them. The most recent controversy in which he has been involved is the one of a cement crucifix of Jesus Christ in Bandra, Mumbai dripping water from its feet. There were hot discussions of some TV channels about the veracity of this so called miracle and there were some hot exchange of words in between him and others leading to complaints against him under the above mentioned section 295A of the Indian Penal Code for deliberate and malicious acts leading to outrage religious feelings of any class here read as the Roman Catholic community. Again, the act does not pertain to the miracle of the dripping cross but other words used in the course of the discussions which have outraged the religious feelings of a group of people called as The Organisation of Concerned Catholics (OCC) and the Catholic Secular Forum (CSF) who had lodged complaints against Sanal at the Juhu and Andheri police stations. It was said that Sanal’s contentions that the so called 'miracle' was promoted by the church to fleece gullible people and the prefix used for the head of the Roman Catholic church by calling him Mr. Pope had angered these Catholics who chose to file this complaint. It was in the newspapers that the Mumbai have summoned Mr. Edamaruku for questioning on this complaint. A committee to defend him under the leadership of the eminent Supreme court lawyer Mr.N.D,.Pancholi has been formed and funds are being collected from all over the world for his defense.

Karantikar (left) with Telugu Revolutionary Folk Singer Gaddar
It is not the first time that this section is being used or that Sanal Edamaruku is the first one to be hauled up under this. A couple of years back Krantikar, State President of Andra Pradesh Rationalist Association and Executive Committee Member of Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations had been hauled up under the same sections and had been in prison for quite some time as he had refused to apply for bail. His crime - he had translated some write ups of Taslima Nasreen which had been published more than decade back and were available to the world at large on the web into Telugu and had published that in book form, which had again angered the local fundamentalist Muslims who were after his blood. The ruling congress party in the state had brought all these sections upon him to please their so called 'minority vote bank'! The way it was done it was pretty obvious that the case would be thrown out by the court but the 'persecution' part of it was more important for the govt.!

Just at the time of the Sanal case hitting the headlines a student of Hyderabad, Kartik had been arrested on the same grounds for reacting that there is no god to someone who had greeted him on Hanuman Jayanthi day. He had been arrested and was in police custody for having expressed his convictions and exercising his constitutional right! Again, the same law was used by a right wing student organisation to target a member of a rival organisation. The saffron gangs are experts in using this law to harass those who do not see eye to eye with them. In fact, they used it to file complaints against those who organised and participated in a 'beef festival' on the campus of Osmania University recently. Though one's dietary habits are one's personal business, one mans food can be another one's religious sentiment! So, people could file complaints under section 295A for eating beef (Hindu religious sentiments), Pork (Muslim religious sentiments), any non vegetarian food (Jain religious sentiments) and so on ad infinitum! It could be also argued that even the menus of hotels are publications which are deliberately and maliciously composed to hurt them and so on.

Like many of the archaic laws made by our colonial masters have been relegated to the dust bin in their country, this law too deserves the same fate. In fact it has been advised by them that we should do so! Yet, we choose to have these which are an affront to the very concept of human rights. If a person has the right to propagate one's religion we should also have the right to question the same. All the religions thrive by striking the fear of the unknown into the minds of people and by spreading superstitious beliefs and questioning any of them would be construed as hurting the religious sentiments and cases filed under section 295A! If those who do so are members of a movement like ours then it could be added that the intent was 'malicious and deliberate'!

I can recall some instances from the past when we have been threatened with this. About a decade ago, I had made a public statement about cows urine being the urine of animal like any other- for instance a dog! At that time a campaign was started by the peddlers of the concoctions containing cow’s urine that it was an attack on the religious sentiments and I should be booked under this section. A big debate went on for weeks and finally a legal luminary concluded it by saying that though I deserved to be punished under that it could not be done as I was born in a Hindu family! If I were to be born in a family professing some other religion then I could have been prosecuted! He also added that criticism and reform was a salient feature of Hinduism! So, the whole controversy died a natural death. We have been threatened with the same when we questioned faith healers of Christianity- the excuse was that they were just conducting prayer meetings! The same was threatened when we exposed one Aslam Baba who was supposedly conducting surgical operations with tailor’s scissors! A couple of years ago when we had tried to investigate Mary's flex prints shedding tears we had to struggle very hard to keep out any such allegations of 'hurting religious sentiments' !

Does this law have a role in our society? Well let us take a look at article 51 A H of the constitution of India which deals with the duties of the citizen it states that-51A. Fundamental duties It shall be the duty of every citizen of India (h)to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. With a constitution which states this and with a section of the IPC which is contrary it is the article of the constitution which should prevail.

Hulikkal Nataraj
This has been also stated in the Hulikal Nataraj vs Govt of Karnataka judgment of the Karnataka High court. In this case a case was filed against him for making a statement at a placed called Madikeri in Kodagu district of Karnataka. He had stated in a public lecture that the so called miracle at Sabarimala at the Aiyappa temple area was man made. It was about a flame called as Makara vilakku from a hill called as Ponnambala Medu which was opposite the temple. The locals who wanted to hound him and harass him had filed a complaint with the local police station and the station house officer had straightaway filed an FIR and a charge sheet and tried to arrest Nataraj who had gone to the High Court for quashing the case. After a couple of years the judgment came as an indictment of the whole system. In fact the judge called the Home secretary to the court and also withheld the increment of the Sub Inspector who had attempted to arrest Nataraj.


A couple of years back when we had tried to investigate the phenomenon of flex prints of Mary shedding ‘tears’ at the church in Aluva, Kerala there were attempts to convert that too as clash between various sections and to convert it into a outraging religious sentiments issue as in the case of Sanal mentioned above. But, we were very careful in our approach that nothing much could be done.

Such laws like section 295 A of the Indian Penal Code have no place in a civilized society and need to be consigned with many of such to the trash bins of history. Finally after mulling over the legal issues and the secular aspects of the law, a philosophical question needs to be addressed- why does an omnipotent deity need the services of a mundane law made by puny human beings to set right alleged infractions of divine laws made by a higher force? This is for the religious whose feelings are ‘offended’ to answer! 

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More