From: bhatnagr@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Raj Bhatnagar)
Subject: Re: Dr. Jayaraman's article
Organization: University of Cincinnati
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 07:09:53 GMT

In article <1jl8faINN2ma@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu> 
chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:

>posting was a passionate argument for how *all* religious fanaticism,
>whether of the Vedic Math variety, or of the Koranic science variety,
>is inimical to science.

Dr. Jayaraman's article makes yet another attempts to paint the
Hindutva movement in the color of religious fanaticism.

Hindutva is the ideology of India being a "nation-based-state." The
Indian nation - the cultural entity - being defined as rooted in the 
culture and civilization that evolved in India. This idea of nation
based state is in strong conflict with the ideological state as
propagated by Islam. 

This is the root of the conflict. Pakistan, kashmir, Bangladesh,
personal laws, RJB-BM are all merely the symptoms of this central 
conflict.

Leftists friends are choosing to close their eyes to this aspect
and are treating it as merely a colflict of faith1-with-faith2 or
that of faiths-with-science.  

I know why they are seeing it as faith-vs-faith or faith-vs-science
dispute only. Because they know how to attack faith in faith-vs-science
argumwents. These friends are at a total loss of ideas when it comes to
the conflcits of nationalisms rooted in conflicting set of axioms. I
guess Marx had never had to addressed that issue in his works.

Had this been a real faith-vs-faith or faith vs science conflict
we would have been hearing arguments on the lines of monotheism vs
polytheism, vedic Math vs. Modern math etc. but that is not the case.
To those who may not know, it may help to know that the addition of
vedic maths in schools was not replacing the modern math but was
added in the beginning to show that our own Indian heritage includes
some initial work and advancements in the fields of maths etc.  This
is only to consolidate an identity Indian-with-pride and not to replace
the modern maths. But the leftist friends would like to stretch it to`
the extreme but after stretching it to the ridiculous extreme it becomes
easy for them to attack and ridicule it.

The diagnosis of the current situation, as made by the leftist friends,
is faulty. And as long as they keep on harping on the faith being one
of the parties in the conflict none of their solutions will work.
I would like them to examine this conflict from the perspective of a
conflict between rival ideas of nationalism and apply their Marxist
or whatever philosophy to it and then come to a solution. And that will
be worh examining.


This behaviour of the leftists reminds me of the story of the man who
was looking for a lost ring under a lamp post. When asked where he had
dropped it, he replied that it was about 10 yards away. WHen asked why
he was looking here he replied that he can see under the post but can't
see clearly where the ring was actually dropped. Similarly, the leftists
are looking for the solutions for the conflicts for which they have 
rote learnt the solutions but are scared to venture into the domain
of the conflicts of nationalsisms.


No sane person, especially with Hindu faiths, will try to replace
his/her faith for science. Author's attacks on Kar-sevak archeologists
etc are merely those - attacks. An artifact examined a day afterit was
excavated does not rule out on technical grounds its significance. To
insist on that rigor would itself amount to faith in the established
set of procedures instead of rationalism.

I can respond to a lot ofother veiled attacks on created straw-men drawn
from the apparant environ of Hindutva and willdo it some other time.


---raj