Religions must adapt to the times: Karan Singh

Religions must adapt to the times: Karan Singh
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
PANJIM, FEB 10
To be vital, any philosophy has to maintain a relevance to the present it operates in, said Chairman of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and noted Hindu scholar Karan Singh. He said that going back to the past cannot be an option, and as astro-physicist Stephen Hawking said, the “arrow of time” moves in only one direction. Dr Singh was delivering the concluding lecture of the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas 2011, on the ‘Relevance of Vedanta in the present time’, at Kala Academy, Panjim, today.
Introduced by artist Dr Subodh Kerkar as “the contemporary Vivekananda”, Dr Singh unfolded a concise and simple but lucid and masterful vision of six cardinal concepts that comprise the essential philosophy of Vedanta, which he defined as a body of philosophy encompassing the four Vedas and their interpretation in the 12 principal Upanishads.
Profusely quoting from Sanskrit ‘shlokas’ throughout the lecture, he pointed out that one of the important differences between Indian religious texts and those of the ‘Abrahamic’ religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam was that the latter were based on didactic wisdom or the ‘revealed word of God’, while dialogue was the basis of the former. This vital difference, he said, makes Indian religions more open to reinterpretation from age to age.
The first concept, he said, was the all-pervasiveness of the Divine, called ‘Brahman’, an eternal, unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality that pervades all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe. A spark of this universal Divine, he said, is inherent in human beings – the only species capable of self-realisation – and is called ‘Atman’ or universal spirit, which is the essence of one’s true self and forms the second concept.
The third concept, he said, is ‘Yoga’, which is the union of ‘Atman’ with ‘Brahman’, to achieve ultimate realisation. ‘Yoga’ itself has four aspects, ‘Gyan Yoga’ or the way of the mind through study and dialogue; Bhakti Yoga’ or the way of the heart through devotion (for which a ‘form’ or idol is required); ‘Karma Yoga’ or the way of work done as an offering to the Divine; and ‘Raj Yoga’ or the royal road to enlightenment by awakening the ‘Kundalini’ through ‘asanas’. What nowadays is taught as yoga, he explained, was Hatha Yoga, which is only a small aspect of Raj Yoga.
The fourth concept, Dr Singh said, was ‘Vasudha eva Kutumbakam’, or the entire world as one family. For the realisation of this concept, he said, eradication of poverty, suffering, exploitation and wars worldwide was an essential pre-condition. He posited the divergent interpretations of Arthur Koestler – who prophecied that the human race is programmed for self-destruction – and Sri Aurobindo, who argued that we after physical evolution, humankind is programmed for spiritual evolution.
The fifth concept the said, was ‘Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudha Vadanti’, literally, ‘truth is one; but sages proclaim it differently’. Dr Singh, however, interpreted it to mean that no religion has a monopoly on the truth. He said Vedanta accepts that there is a multiplicity of paths to the Divine. He said it was ironic that each religion looked upon itself as compassionate, but strife on account of religious differences had caused so much bloodshed. He said that Vedanta does not endorse a clash of civilisations but rather a confluence.
The sixth and final Vedantic cardinal concept, he said, was ‘Bahujan hitaya, bahujan sukhaya’, literally and figuratively ‘the welfare of the many and the happiness of the many’. Dr Singh interpreted this as an exhortation to repay one’s debt to society, and likened it to the ‘Fundamental Duties’ enumerated in the Constitution of India, which he said he had helped to draft.
Several members of the audience expressed concern about the role of religion in communal violence. De Singh replied that in his opinion, there is a value-based broad way to interpret religion, and a narrow fundamentalist way. “Religion is not fanaticism,” he said, even though some may want to make it that way. He pointed out that the Mughal prince Dara Shukoh, the eldest son of the Emperor Shah Jehan, had translated the entire Upanishads into Persian and Urdu, and had he ascended the throne instead of his brother Augranzeb, the entire history of India may have been different.
To a question about untouchability in Hinduism, he said that there are no references to it in the ‘Shruti’ or the Vedanta, but it is all-pervading in the ‘Smriti’ or later texts. Untouchability, he said, was “completely unacceptable”.
To questions about ‘Akhand Bharat’ and re-unification of the Indian sub-continent, he said it was “neither feasible nor desirable”, but that with greater cooperation, the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation (SAARC) could become more like the European Union, and make existing borders irrelevant.
To a question about the atheist traditions within Hinduism, he said that the so-called ‘Charvaka’ school of thinking was not mainstream, but that followers of that philosophy could be Hindus despite being atheists, as it was a very wide and tolerant religion.