The leading Hindutva ideas-men go around calling themselves "intellectual Kshatriyas". But Kshatriyas were only supposed to defend dharma as a way of life. Why, then, are our Kshatriyas so bent upon defending dharma as science? Why must they insist upon declaring astrology, and the entire Vedic tradition, 'scientific'?
But first, get over whatever mental blocks you may have against this oxymoron called 'Vedic science,' which pairs the archaic, mystical and unfalsifiable worldview of the Vedas with science.
Instead, get used to the doublespeak of 'Vedic science'. Be prepared for a flood of books, TV-shows and even new computer programs extolling the virtues of Hindu sciences. After all, big money is behind it: tax-payers' rupees and large grants from private foundations are pouring into "research centres" dedicated to showing the scientificity of Hindu scriptures.
Everything Vedic-from yagnas to the gods of all things, to reincarnation, karma and parapsychology-will make a claim for the status of 'science'. And everything scientific-from the knowledge of quantum physics to the laws of molecular biology and ecology-will be declared to be already there in the Vedas. Modern science will be treated as a western corruption of the non-dualist Vedic sciences which can synthesise science with god, facts with values.
We are heading toward a schizophrenic national culture in which the technological products of modern science will be eagerly embraced, but the secular culture which science was supposed to help create will be strenuously denied. Symptoms of such schizophrenia are already evident: The nuclear bomb tests in 1998 were justified and packaged in dharmic terms. Hindu ideologues celebrated the bomb by invoking gods and goddesses symbolising shakti and vigyan.
This is how the secularist dream ends: with nuclear bombs in the silos, and the Vedas in the schools; with satellites in space, and horoscopes in our lives down here on earth. This secularist nightmare is Hindutva's dream-come-true. From Bankim Chandra to Vivekananda to today's Sangh parivar, the neo-Hindus have dreamt of uniting the industry and technology of the west with the dharma of India. They have dreamt of a "Hindu modernity" in which technology serves to glorify India's "natural" spirituality.
If it is given the cultural authority as a superior way of knowing, modern science has the potential to demystify the hallowed truths of Hinduism itself, to say nothing of the countless miracles and superstitions that are a part of everyday life of average Indians. It is thus imperative for Hindutva that science remains limited to technological gizmos, and does not spill over into the larger culture.
Hindutva is in the process of creating a myth of "Vedic science" which can co-opt and absorb modern science into Hindu traditions by declaring these traditions to be scientific. Hindutva ideologues argue that just as modern "western science" is scientific from a Judeo-Christian perspective, Hindu traditions of astrology, yagnas, ayurveda, Vastu Shastra, Hindu ecology, Hindu meteorology, etc., are scientific from a Hindu perspective. 'Vedic science' is declared to be ahead of modern science, as it treats all entities in an integrated whole-never mind that many of its "entities" (atman, the gunas, "hot" and "cold" substances) and "subtle forces" (of mantras, meditation, planets, karma) can't even be defined with any precision, let alone measured and tested empirically with appropriate controls. But "mere" definitions, measurements and controlled tests are declared to be western. Hindu sciences use "their own" methodology of meditation and direct realisation.
So now we know why the saffron Kshatriyas are so keen on defending the Vedic lore as science. This is their way of taming what threatens Hinduism the most, i.e. modern science. Hinduism has always protected itself from the new and the alien by turning it into an inferior aspect of itself, quietly metabolising it until it is absorbed into the existing belief structure. Turning modern science into just a part of Hindu wisdom is merely a continuation of this classic Hindu tradition of self-defence and self-perpetuation.
But there remains a philosophical problem. How to convince the sceptics that the Vedas are as scientific-and indeed, even more "objective" and even more "advanced"-than modern science? Our Kshatriyas need some arguments to back up their bold assertions. These arguments have been obligingly supplied by the secular, academic critics of modern science and the Enlightenment. The leading trend in sociology of science in the last couple of decades has been to deny that modern science is a distinctive body of knowledge, which has succeeded in attaining higher standards of objectivity and reliability than other, pre-modern, magical-religious ways of understanding nature.
Abusing the ideas of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, two well-known scholars of science, radical critics have claimed that non-western, traditional ways of knowing are as scientific in their social context as modern science is in the western context. These ideas have found great favour among prominent left-oriented critics of the west in India associated with a host of populist "alternative science" and "alternative development" movements, with Gandhian, environmentalist, and even some Marxist elements.
All these groups believe that the problems of modernisation in India stem from the very nature of modern scientific ways of thinking about nature and human beings. They see the content of science-and not just its application-to be western or Orientalist, and believe that real decolonisation will only come with development of indigenous sciences.
Take for example the argument for scientificity of astrology. It is the neo-Gandhian Ashis Nandy and his followers who have long argued that astrology can't be condemned as a superstition. On the strength of the argument that all "ethno-sciences" are equal, and that modern science has no greater claim to objectivity, Nandy has argued that modern science is the myth of the imperialist west, and astrology is the myth of the weak, who are the victims of the west. If that is granted, Nandy argues, the weak should have the right to challenge the "myth" of science.
One finds a similar argument in the Hindutva literature. They criticise scientists for being closed-minded and westernised for not allowing Hindu science a chance to challenge the western idea of science, and for writing off astrology without studying it!
The more sophisticated Hindutva advocates, including US-based/returned scientists like Subhash Kak, David Frawley and N.S. Rajaram, argue that the conceptual categories and methods of science must be organically connected to the rest of the culture of a society. On this account, different cultures will have different idea of what is reasonable and true: thus, the supernatural is declared to be real and true for Hindu science. This idea that standards and methods of rationality differ with different cultures is borrowed from the postmodernist critiques of science.
Secular intellectuals and progressive social movements have for too long decried it as a ploy of westernised elites. At a time when modern science needed to establish its cultural authority so that it could set new norms for public discourse and provide a more rational worldview, it remained besieged from all sides. Ever since the scientific temper debate in early 80s, which marked the beginning of the end of the Nehruvian consensus over secularism and modernity, there have been few voices that have actively challenged the many signs of unreason and arbitrary authority in our society.
(Meera Nanda is a fellow of the
American Council of Learned Societies at Columbia University, New York.)