This article is not about the political realm; we may talk about it at some other time. This is about the even more explosive subject of religion and religious ideology. First, a word of caution about ‘freedom’; we all know but frequently forget that freedom is not absolute and that freedom can and is often abused. Abuse of freedom comprises knowingly doing or saying what hurts another, physically, economically or mentally, without a proportional epistemic gain of advance of knowledge and understanding. We are not advocating abuse of any kind of freedom, political or religious. We do not support uninformed opinions or axiomatic truths in either of these realms. Simultaneously, we hold that opinion duly supported by facts and reason should not be suppressed as dissent; that destroys the organic nature of both polity and religion and makes them synthetic.

A lot, said to be based on science, is aired to discredit religion; the test should be simple; if it is illogical based on today’s knowledge, it should be considered an open question that needs to be actively deliberated. The debate between science and religion has been eternal; even in 2013, Dawkins was arguing that “Science works. Planes fly. Cars drive. Computers compute. If you base medicine on science, you cure people.” Peter Medawar countered with unanswered questions, “What is the purpose of life? …To what use should scientific knowledge be put?” Both of these opinions were well-informed and reasoned and both were right. Simultaneously, both were partial truths; the former excluded what science has so far failed to understand, including the critical issues of what is coming into existence and what is extinction, the latter ignored so much that science has already answered. The duty is cast on adherents of a religion to keep it within the bounds of facts and reasoning and keep it away from blind faith, which is a close cousin of witchcraft. Blind faith is the black art practiced by the lazy, unenlightened priest who does not think diligently and analytically. He distorts his supplicants’ religiosity by remaining a mere preacher instead of equipping himself for the role of a preceptor.

Much before Dawkins and Medawar, H. G. Wells and four-decades-his-junior George Orwell were engaging in the same debate, Wells believed in the omnipotence of science and wrote about the self-destruction of mankind that could only be averted by forgetting about religion and putting all eggs in the science-basket. This was an era when Hitler was sending living humans to be asphyxiated in cyanide-filled gas chambers ostensibly because they professed a particular religion but perhaps even more so because the once-poor-painter was too jealous of the Jews’ success in trade, business and science and their devotion to their faith, which was backsliding in the Christian world. Orwell pointed out that the huge German scientific community had mounted very little resistance to Hitler and most of the scientists contributed to research to produce machines of war for him. He reasoned that Hitler’s eugenics was strengthened by many scientists swallowing the “monstrosity of ‘racial science.’”

Caught between these two extremes, somewhere a golden mean waits to have its voice heard. Science validly says “Doubt till it is proved” but then goes on to the extreme of believing in certainty once the proof is at hand. Religion relies on the old dictum, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” and there can be no quarrel with it. But then it goes on to say “believe even when there is no evidence,” that being mostly the cause of friction between different religions. One aspect of the golden mean now seems to be accepted by science; we do not really know what reality is and hence doubt has to be perpetual, not stopping with the proof at hand. In India, doubt has been fundamental to religious discourse during which every answer raises a fresh question. Religious scholars like Shankara, themselves visualised the question called shankaaa, framed an answer or samaadhaan and in turn, questioned that answer again; this became an endless quest in search of the eternally-elusive truth.

Those who conflate religion and science sometimes ignore a fundamental difference between the two; study and practice of science is optional; that of religion is not. Even atheists’ discourse is based on their denial of the existence of an entity called God. For forming an informed opinion, they have to study about Him, though many atheists deny the truth of this statement. Not many research papers are published on theism and not many reputed journals will accept these, while published research on atheism is in plenty, leaving a less-than-level playing field in such debates. Arguments like that of Stephen Roberts generally leave believers without an argument, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

That brings us to the dilemma of having multiple faiths, with each one of them calling itself and its god as true with most of them labelling the rest as false. All religions claim to be monistic at their roots with the Rigveda going a step ahead, denying not only the ‘existence’ of God but even its ‘non-existence’. A hymn, Naasadiya Sukta, begins with “When neither existence nor non-existence was there” and ends with the answer to the question about what was here before God was here and gives the stunning answer, “Does He know or perhaps even He does not know.” This questioning of the almost universally-believed omnipotence of God has been recited for thousands of years without giving offence to any Indian and without shaking the faith of Hindus in the Vedas being eternal. Could that be the benchmark for religious freedom and discourse bounded only by the limits of abuse of freedom? In spite of the hymn appearing to be agnostic, it continues to be recited as a prayer because in essence, doubting and questioning have been part of the Indian discourse. It appears to be an exposition of a principle with which Schrodinger revolutionised physics; the observer creates the observed. The universe, including God himself, was beyond observation before God as observer was there; so how could He know about it?

Monism, though touted by most of the faiths, is followed more in breach. Properties have been ascribed to what was essentially without properties. Every property evolves into a deity and hence an object of worship. Many of the learned men of science and religion know this but keep their counsel to themselves. Ancient Indian sage-king Bhartihari had said, “The knowledgeable are full of envy, the powerful are full of arrogance; others are buried under ignorance, let wise thoughts remain unexpressed.” These two words, envy of other faiths and arrogance about one’s faith, are fatal to the freedom of religious discourse.

There has never been any human society without religion; there has been none without religious strife; some have had less strife and some, more. India, where differences did arise between Hindu sects, reconciled the differences, because scholars knew the differences to be only on belief which was based on properties, not on God without properties, the Nirguna. The incarnation born in the north was of a dark complexion with his major exploits in the south, the one worshipped more in the south is of a fair complexion with his abode on the permanently frozen Kailash in the far north. Such outcome can come only from discourse not tainted with abuse of freedom. Let us remain free to deliberate about religion eternally; let us do it without abusing that freedom.  / DAILY WORLD /

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)