destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!fornax!mahajan
From: mahajan@cs.sfu.ca (Sanjeev Mahajan)
Subject: Relevance and Irrelevance of various Indian philosophies
Organization: CSS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 15:37:04 GMT


 long time ago when I was in Canada, I wrote the following article
for a magazine published by Federation of Tamils in North America.
Now with the miracle of telnet and hi tech., i have access to the
net (which is rather painful). This article may also be timely, given
the alarming rate of rise of Fascism and religious obscurantism
in India.
(btw, i thought i had quit the net permanently, however every once
in a while, i get some absolutely strange mails which show, that if
not my fame, my notoreity lives, and which comples me to be back
erratically on the net)
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     The Relevance/Irrelevance of Ancient Indian Philosophies to Present
     Day India

No country or nation can survive without a collective memory, if subconscious,
of its heritage and history. This is even more true in the case of India
which is a panorama of different cultures, religions etcetera. Yet it is
also necessary for the people of a nation to critically analyze both its
cultural and philosophical heritage lest it run the risk of falling
into the mire of stagnation and decay.

In India, and generally in any country that was colonized, there is
tremendous resistance to such critical analysis. The reason for this
behavior is readily understood if one looks at the colonial History
of India. The Imperialists did everything to make Indians look like
barbaric savages who needed to be taught lessons in enlightenment
and civilization. The colonists understood very well, that in order
to enslave a nation, one does not need to use excessive force (although
they did not hesitate to inflict immense brutality on Indian people
whenever the situation got out of hand). Instead they used a lot more
sophisticated and hence a lot more sinister weapon to control the Indian
people. They were able to convince the Indian people that their culture
and civilization (if they had any) was inferior to that of the vastly
superior white race, and that the British were in India for its own
good. To counter this very destructive propaganda of the British,
some nationalist Indians exhorted the Indian people to take pride in
their heritage, and wrote books extolling the virtues of the ancient Indian
society, overlooking and even condoning certain dark and and not
totally palatable aspects of our culture. It can certainly be argued that
such simplistic and one-sided perspective of Indian History and heritage
helped Indians psychologically to fight the Imperial enemy. However
whatever its use may have been in the past, such uncritical glorification
of our past has only contributed towards a deleterious and alarming
complacence in the present day India.

As the scope of a critical analysis of something as complex as Indian culture
and heritage is bewilderingly wide, I will focus my attention on the Indian
philosophy and the various ideological forces which have shaped
ancient and present Indian thought. I will discuss various Indian
philosophical schools such as the Vedaanta, and Saankhya
and the ideological positions of their proponents which
led them to propound their particular world-views. I will also discuss
heterodox schools, most prominently among them, the Lokaayata school.
Most of the material in this essays derives from my readings of excellent
scholarly works of Debiprasaad Chattopaadhyaaya (such as `Science and Society i
n
ancient India', `Lokaayata', `Indian Philosophy: an Introduction'), Raahula
Sankrtaayana, and B.B. Kosambi.
The battle of ideas in Indian thought can be summarized by a perennial
rivalry between Materialism and Idealism, between rationalism and
irrationalism, between scientific enquiry and obscurantism. With
the development of a rigid hierarchical structure called the `varnaashrama
-dharma', the battle was gradually won by the reactionary forces
represented by the idealists and the spiritualists. Vedaanta, being
the extreme form of idealism, became the most dominant of Indian
philosophies, so much so that whenever someone talks about Indian
philosophy, they generally have the Vedaanta in mind. Vedaanta is simply
the philosophy of the denial of material reality. Material world,
as described by the Vedaanta, is merely `mithyaa' (a grand falsehood)
and `that a wise person achieves enlightenment when they realize that
the only reality is the brahman which is undescribable'. Whatever be
the philosophical import of the Vedaanta, it is clear that a philosophy that
condemns the material reality and hence scientific enquiry cannot
engender an environment conducive to progress of science.

An immediate question then presents itself. Why, if it
was deleterious to scientific progress, did the Vedaanta become one of
the most dominant philosophies in India? A satisfactory answer to
this question requires a thorough study of social and economic factors
of the times when the philosophies such as the Vedaanta were taking
shape. For now, we will only observe that, by the end of the later
Vedic period or the Upanishadic period, the tyranny of the hierarchical
varnaashrama-dharma, with the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas at the top,
Vaishyas in the middle and the shoodras at the bottom, had already taken
hold on the Indian mind. Manual labor being relegated to the shoodras,
the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas became what in modern terminology would
be called the leisure classes. It then became necessary for such
dominant and powerful classes to not only rationalize, but to glorify their
parasitic and leisurely existence. Naturally such glorification could
only come about by condemning manual labor as inferior (the smritis
clearly lay down a code wherein it is not legal for a Brahmin or a Kshatriya
to do manual labor to earn a living). This could be easily achieved
if one could conjure up a grandiose philosophy which would deny the existence
of the material world, or at the very least dismiss it as an illusion
and attribute its existence to the `bhrama' on the part of an unenlightened
observer. Vedaanta is a philosophy that served this purpose adequately
and beautifully. There are several other reasons why Vedaantic thought
would have appealed to the status quo, however in this essay I will
not dwell on them.

The origins of the Saankhya philosophy are less certain. This much
is certain however, that it must have been one of the most ancient and
influential of Indian philosophies. Unfortunately very little is
known about the early Saankhya. Thankfully however, the painstaking research
of Debiprasaad Chattopaadhyaaya and other historians gives us some
clues which show that the early Saankhya must have been decidedly materialistic
.
The early Saankhya posits the existence of subtle or `sookshma' matter
(called `prakrti' in Saankhya terms) which is constantly in a state
of changing and evolving. It is fascinating to observe, that Indian
philosophers, at such an early stage of human History, came up with
such sophisticated explanations of natural phenomena. There are reasons
to believe, as B.B. Kosambi points out, that these theories were
inspired by the achievements and observations of the Indian physicians.
This is not surprising as a philosophical enquiry which is not based
on scientific observation is condemned to grandiose but empty philosophical
speculations. The later Saankhya, having succumbed to the dominant idealism
of the times, also posited the existence of conscious `purusha' or the
disembodied soul. However, as the concept of the purusha is a latter
and a rather clumsy graft, the role of the purusha in the Saankhya is
not at all clear, and it can be convincingly argued that the Saankhya
theory would do well without such a concept and that such a graft
only renders the Saankhya theory a bundle of contradictions.
Among various Indian philosophical schools, Lokaayata is the only
school that rejects outright any spiritualistic obscurantism such
as the law of karma and takes an uncompromising and unswerving stand
on scientific enquiry. The Chaarvaaks, as the philosophers of this
school were commonly known (interestingly, `chaarvaak' is derived
from the root `char' which means `to graze', it is therefore clear
that such a word must have been used as an insult or a nickname for
such `rabble-rousers'), rejected any notion of the other world,
and held that the only reality was the material reality. This must
have been a very bold and progressive position to take in an India
where rituals reigned supreme, where one performed the most grandiose
and egregious of yajnas to please some fickle deities, where the
common populace was brainwashed into believing that their lot was
poor because of the bad deeds of their previous birth. Unfortunately
not much is known about these courageous chaarvaaks, as none
of the Lokaayatika works survives. There is also enough evidence
to show that their works were burnt, and they themselves were burnt
at stake.

In conclusion, I would like to add that it is time that we Indians,
rather than being wide-eyed about our ancient Indian heritage, looked
at it with a critical eye. We should retain those aspects of Indian
philosophical thought, which are conducive to progress and should
have no compunction in giving up those aspects which only lead to
stagnation and decay. It is true that idealism and spiritualism are
have been dominant philosophies in Indian thought, but we would do well
to remember that formidable challenges to these obscurantist philosophies
were posed by very able and talented people in all periods of Indian
History. Perhaps we should take inspiration from them, and fight any
kind of reactionary obscurantism.