If comedian Kapil Sharma of Comedy Nights says that peacocks are celibate and that peahens get pregnant by swallowing their tears, it can perhaps pass off as a good joke. But when a High Court judge like Justice Mahesh Sharma (recently retired), says such things, it’s certainly not the time to laugh because one can easily imagine the direction in which the country will head if people in high authority start relying on religious myths and dogmas rather than facts!
Science and religion are two different ways of looking at things and yet they are connected and relevant to each other. Although science opens our eyes to new facts and religion is a matter of beliefs and faith, religion without science is indeed blind because we cannot wholeheartedly believe in things that do not appeal to our God given sense of reason. Throughout the centuries, there have been raging conflicts between religion and science and every time truth has triumphed!
Galileo Galilei was the first man to convincingly tell us that it is the Earth that actually goes round the Sun, contradicting the then Church-held belief of a geocentric universe. For all this great pioneering work, Galileo was ridiculed, hounded, tried, found guilty of heresy, coerced to retract his theory and put under house arrest until his death in 1642. More recently, Charles Darwin`s (1809-1882) theory of Evolution was quickly condemned by the church. The Church has come a long way since then: Realising its mistake, the Vatican issued two stamps to honor Galileo as an expression of regret. Many Popes in the 20th Century acknowledged the great work of Galileo and in 1992 Pope John Paul II called him the father of Modern science. Very recently Pope Francis has endorsed the theory of Evolution as well as the Big Bang theory as real and cautioned against imagining God as a magician with a magic wand. It is this open minded approach of the church to course correction that has helped Christianity survive and thrive.
Galileo was a man of science as well as deep faith and his main complaint was that the Jesuit astronomers who opposed him refused to even look through his telescope. What happened in Rome of the 16th century appears to be happening in the India of today. Some people are refusing to see reason and continue making Don Quixotic and provocative statements with increasing frequency. It is perfectly alright for believers to use cow urine medicines to cure their indigestion and other ailments. It perfectly alright for people to consider the donkey as their father… The problem arises only when People in the corridors of power try to impose their ridiculous religious believes and restrictions on non believers as is happening today.
Hinduism is a great religion; a way of life admired the world over for its all-embracing principles of Ahimsa and tolerance. But India does not belong to any one religious group just as much as the world does not belong to Christians because of their might and sheer majority!
