W’end Links: On Soma, Secular Assault and Believing Everything

Start this weekend with a light-hearted take on how to get rid of weekend blues, written by a good friend and an ex-colleague.

Next, read Rana Dasgupta’s brilliant take on “Delhi culture” (Hat Tip: Sanjay)

Move on to R Vaidyanathan – writing about the secular assault on the sacred in the context of Kanchi Shankaracharya’s arrest a few years ago..

And finally, read a fascinating study into why we tend to believe everything we read.

Excerpts from all the links below, as always.

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*** Excerpts from Soma could fire us out of the slump by Joydeep Nayak ***

The absolutely brilliant business of being a learned devout Hindu is nobody in the world has the authority to excommunicate you.

You can go to a pub, order your favourite poison, listen to the ear–splitting AC/DC, chant your ever pleasant Maha Mrutunjay Mantra while driving and publish a doggerel on Hinduism in the morning newspaper.

Maybe, I forgot to add the sacred thread caressing the belly–button, the Ek Mukhi Rudraksha almost throttling the oesophagus and Lord Hanuman sitting atop the dashboard on the Toyota Altis.

That makes for the perfect Hindu of Advaita philosophy.

Hinduism is the world’s best religion because it is created by the anonymous, written by the anonymous, for the anonymous. Anonymous writings are the most powerful in the world, nobody can claim any copyright or patent the ideas.

…For the uninitiated the fount of Hinduism trickles down 4,000 years to the sacred text called the Rig Veda. This is the start of the codified battle for the spiritual renaissance of the millions of Hindus, spread all across the globe and massed up to a billion just below the Great Himalayas.

Pub-crawling Hindus, be they computer nerds or congenital nincompoops, should carry the eternal book of Rig Veda. This has 1,028 hymns. Simple. But the best part of the book is there are 114 hymns regarding the drink called soma.

Soma is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘to press’. Recent scholarship suggests that soma had hallucinatory and psychedelic qualities. Perfect, for an evening out with friends of either sex. The Vedas wax eloquent about this intoxicating drink which is also offered as a sacred oblation to the gods. Variously collected and collated soma makes you happy, satisfied and wonderfully imaginative.

…Rig Veda some may claim is too dated. Since the gauntlet has been thrown we have to reinforce our arguments. There is nobody in this universe to argue the case better than the greatest exponent of Hindu philosophy, the great master himself, Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Over to the Lord, may he have mercy on the ignoramuses. Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter Nine explains:

‘There are men who know the three Vedas, who drink

the Soma ,who are pure from Sin. They worship and

pray for heaven. They reach indeed the heaven of

Indra, the King of the Gods, and there they enjoy

Royal pleasures.’

Gita as usual is very succinct. Here we are discussing an extraordinary scholar. The scholar who has mastered the three Vedas. He is no ordinary mortal, he is a man of great intellectual strength. He is a man of great erudition and profound knowledge. He is no common riff-raff or Johnny-come-lately. This man of immense scholarship, knowledge and wisdom partakes soma. So soma had great significance even for this man of great learning. After the immense hard work of reading the Vedas, interpreting it for the ordinary human beings he used to enjoy his soma. Three Cheers for this great soul of 500 BC, Three Cheers for Rig Veda and Three Cheers for Bhagavad Gita.

…This gem of a stanza ensconced in the redoubtable Gita enhances the broad nature of Hinduism. It proves irrevocably that Hinduism allows the pub-goer and the pub–destroyer equal opportunity to Nirvana. Three Cheers to soma.

*** End of Excerpts ***

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*** Excerpts from Capital Gains by Rana Dasgupta ***

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…Delhi is a segregated city; an impenetrable, wary city – a city with a fondness for barbed wire, armed guards and guest lists. Though its population now knocks up against 20 million, India’s capital remains curiously faithful to the spirit of the British administrative enclave with which it began: Delhiites admire social rank, name-dropping and exclusive clubs, and they snub strangers who turn up without a proper introduction. ..Delhi’s millionaires are squeamish about public places, and they don’t like to go out unless there are sufficient valets and guards to make them feel at home, and prices exorbitant enough to keep undesirables out.

But in this segregated city, everyone comes together on the roads. The subway network is still incomplete, there are few local trains (unlike Mumbai), and you can’t take a helicopter to work (unlike São Paulo) – the draconian security regulations prevent that. So the Delhi roads accommodate every kind of citizen and offer a unique exhibition of the city’s social relations.

On the eve of ‘liberalization’ in 1991 – when the then finance minister, Manmohan Singh, opened the economy up to global money flows, so bringing an end to four decades of centralized planning – there were three varieties of car on sale in India. The Hindustan Ambassador and Premier Padmini had both been around for thirty years and it took seven years to acquire one – production was limited to a few thousand a year and ownership restricted, in practice, to bureaucrats and senior businessmen. The compact Maruti 800, by contrast, was a recent arrival that had been conceived as a ‘people’s car’: with a quota of 150,000 a year it had brought the possibility of private car travel within reach, for the first time, of the middle classes.

Nearly twenty years on, those three originals have all but vanished in the flurry of new brands that liberalization ushered in (though the stately Ambassador remains the preferred conveyance for Delhi’s politicians and senior bureaucrats). ..India’s car consumption is ten times what it was in 1991, and rising rapidly, and the effect in the cities is deadlock. The stricken carriageways are never adequate for the car mania, no matter how many new lanes and flyovers are built – and in Delhi, most cars are stationary much of the time.

…With so many cars jammed up against each other, each as hobbled as the next, road travel could threaten to undermine the steep gradients of Delhi’s social hierarchies. But here the recent car profusion steps in to solve the very problem it creates. The contemporary array of brands and models supplies a useful code of social status to offset the anonymity of driving, and the vertiginous altitude of Delhi’s class system comes through admirably, even on the horizontal roads. Car brands regulate the relationships between drivers: impatient Mercedes flash Marutis to let them through the throng, and Marutis move aside. BMW limousines are so well insulated that passengers don’t even hear the incessant horn with which chauffeurs disperse everything in their path. Canary-yellow Hummers lumber over the concrete barriers from the heaving jam into the empty bus lanes and accelerate illegally past the masses – and traffic police look away, for what cop is going to risk his life to challenge the entitlement of rich kids? Yes, the privileges of brand rank are enforced by violence if need be: a Hyundai driver gets out of his car to kick in the doors of a Maruti that kept him dawdling behind, while young men in a Mercedes chase after a Tata driver who dared abuse them out of the window, running him down and slapping him as if he were an insubordinate kid.

Read in full here.

*** End of Excerpts***

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*** Excerpts from Secular assault on the Sacred by R Vaidyanathan ***

There was a small news item dated 4 August 2009 in some newspapers, stating that the prosecution witnesses in the case pertaining to the Kanchi seer are turning hostile and the case itself might be revealed to be a foisted one. The time period for which a sacred institution has been humiliated and the assault the state conducted on an age old tradition needs introspection by us all.

The day I read a news item that Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Sarasvati entered a Harijan slum, I commented to a friend, ‘he has written his own arrest warrant.’ My friend did not understand. Many of us are totally ignorant about the functioning of the Secular State in a country like India, a point we shall return to later.

There was a debate on his arrest on the NDTV show “We the people,” anchored by Ms. Burka Dutt on 5 December 2004. It was pathetic to see the audience pleading that the Swamiji be treated like Pappu Yadav or Taslimuddin, that law is the same for every one. One “rationalist” suggested the seer be permanently parked inside Vellore Jail as a devotee said the seer’s presence would purify the jail.

This attack on this sacred institution must be understood in the broader context of the threat to Hindu civilization from the so-called neutral secular state.

Is this attack a stray case? Indications are that it is not. There is a demand that the Pejawar Mutt at Udupi be taken over and the Sri Krishna Temple be administered by the government.

The demand is due to the claim that the memory of Kanaka Dasa, a sixteenth century poet and devotee of Sri Krishna, belonging to the Kuruba community, has been insulted by the Matham. Again it is pertinent to note that the Pejawar Swami mingled with Harijans and is a major campaigner for social harmony and removal of untouchability. He is active in the fields of education and in the forefront of the movement to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya.

When the Mulavar becomes Reformer, fear grips the State

In our tradition, there are two types of Mathams. One is what we can loosely call the Mulavar or similar to the God in the garbha griha, and the other is Utsavar or similar to the God who is taken in procession around the temple. The Utsavar is well dressed and the presentable face of Hindu sampradayas. The second category of Seers will know English, will know how to handle the press, how to give television interviews; sometimes they are also globe-trotters.

They represent the “brand image” of the Santana Dharma, if one may use the term. In a sense, they are secular and would most often talk of the “oneness” of all religions, without knowing the implications. Some, due to their secular dealings, get into problems with the State either in India or abroad, as in the case of Rajneesh. One can categorise Ammachi, Sri Sri, Rajneesh and Mahesh Yogi in this category.

The former category is the Mathams like that of Sankara or Madhava, which till recently were completely unconcerned about this-worldly issues and focused only on the Dharma. Mathams like in Sringeri or Kanchi or Udupi derive their strength from a long lineage and the original founders like Adi Sankara or Madhavacharya.

The secular state was tolerant of these sacred symbols as long as these were separate from the laukika issues. This is because these mathams derived their legitimacy from their position and not to any secular support. Once some Mathams began to get into social reform or education or health care, the secular state was upset because the actions of these seers carries phenomenal conviction among the poorer strata and de-legitimizes the hegemony of politicians and bureaucrats over poverty or caste-oriented issues. In the case of the secular-Utsava seers, the state is not unduly concerned as they are mostly individuals with charisma but do not have a hoary tradition and thousands of years of legitimacy.

…This is the backdrop in which the Kanchi Seer tried to solve secular problems using his sacred institution. When he tried to reach out to Harijans, exploring the possibility of a dignified life for them, the political class was disturbed. The secular state was worried since the accepted model in the political discourse for “liberation” of Harjans is either conversion to other religions or a possible overthrow of the caste system.

Swami Jayendra Sarasvati’s model postulates the possibility of their being within the system, but treated with dignity and equality. The SC politicians and secular state satraps whose staple diet is conversion or the destruction of the caste system found it difficult to accept his actions.

Interestingly, some of the orthodox in the Matham system also opposed his approach, believing that being exclusively in the garbha griha or Mulavar position preserves legitimacy. Any deviation to work for this-worldly salvation of people was looked upon with disdain and considered apostate. In a curious coincidence, the orthodoxy attacked the Matham for the same reasons for which the secular political forces were upset! It was, in political parlance, an alliance of the left extreme with the extreme right, to neutralize the middle.

…Witness the violence against the arrest of suspects in a criminal /ISI related case (2004) at Hyderabad, where even the Chief Minister had to observe why the arrests were made in a holy month of Ramzan. But the Kanchi Acharya could be arrested on Diwali day! Remember the global hue and cry when the UP police searched the religious school at Nadwa, and how the Prime Minister intervened and expressed regrets?

Obviously, the State can be secular or neutral only with respect to Indian religions, which are non-intimidating, and not with respect to the desert faiths. That is why we encounter such absurd observations like, there has not been any large-scale violence against the arrest of the Kanchi seer so this does not hurt the public.

*** End of Excerpts ***

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*** Excerpts from Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read by Jeremy Dean ***

You shouldn’t believe everything you read, yet according to a classic psychology study at first we can’t help it.

What is the mind’s default position: are we naturally critical or naturally gullible? As a species do we have a tendency to behave like Agent Mulder from the X-Files who always wanted to believe in mythical monsters and alien abductions? Or are we like his partner Agent Scully who was the critical scientist, generating alternative explanations, trying to understand and evaluate the strange occurrences they encountered rationally?

Do we believe what the TV, the newspapers, blogs even, tell us at first blush or are we naturally critical? Can we ignore the claims of adverts, do we lap up what politicians tell us, do we believe our lover’s promises?

It’s not just that some people do and some people don’t; in fact all our minds are built with the same first instinct, the same first reaction to new information. But what is it: do we believe first or do we first understand, so that belief (or disbelief) comes later?

…This (the experiments) meant that only when given time to think about it did people behave as though the false statements were actually false. On the other hand, without time for reflection, people simply believed what they read.

…Believing is not a two-stage process involving first understanding then believing. Instead understanding is believing, a fraction of a second after reading it, you believe it until some other critical faculty kicks in to change your mind. We really do want to believe, just like Agent Mulder.

*** End of Excerpts ***

Have a safe and relaxing weekend.

Past weekend readings (sample):

Intelligence, Cash Transfers and Poverty Levels

W’end Links: Aurobindo, Free Markets, Hindu School and Blogging