Recent Blogs in web-site “Nirmukta” by Dr. Prabhakar Kamath of US should create ripples of skepticism in the minds of the educated youth. Therefore it should be the endeavour of all Rationalists to augment these ripples into waves of thoughts to raise the level of consciousness of the youth, as it is next to impossible to chip away the calcified layers of obscurantism from the brains of Hindu elite & masses. As I am not a scholar on any scriptures I can only recount my experiences and random thoughts on Hinduism.
We have heard a million times the sciptural Quote “Tamaso Ma Jyothirgamaya “(Lead us from darkness to light), from all types of people. But the “Priest Craft” of Hinduism has succeeded brilliantly to keep the whole society in darkness, through centuries of indoctrination. During last 5-6 decades they have succeeded to make Article 51 (h), 41(A)…. null and void. State failed constitution of India, to make every citizen develop spirit of inquiry and scientific temper, and society failed the Rational teaching of their Holy-Book. We are witnessing in recent decades, that the society is plunged in a frenzy of religiosity with new viruses like vaastu etc attacking their brains. Dr. Kamath, a practicing psychiatrist in US has clinically analysed the Hindu-psyche and diagnosed it as “Obsessive-Compulsive- Disorder”(OCD). We require thousands of Dr Kamaths to treat the whole society. Meera Nanda a scholar from US has narrated in detail in her book God Market about how the God-Market is run by “State– Temple_– Corporate — Complex”. which is exactly the same as ” Kshatriya–Brahmin– Bania– Nexus. ”
As for me the seeds of skepticism germinated within me during my high school days after reading the novels by a rationalist Dr. Shivarama Karanth. After observing the behaviour of ‘Vipras’ who are wearing holy-thread, I discarded my own at a later age. Then I felt free from the fetters of obscurantism. Many years later, a strange incident snapped my faith in Temples and Deities. During evening walk I used to step into a temple and mechanically take a couple of rounds and accept the spoonful of water (thirtha) from the priest. One day an outside party had paid for a special pooja for his prosperity of course. The completion of pooja coincided with my taking the rounds and as usual I stretched my hand for’ thirtha’. The priest too mechanically was about to pour out the spoonful water, but then realised that I did not belong to that party. He suddenly withdrew, because I should not take a share of the pooja meant for that party. I too turned back, came out of the temple and never to enter a temple again.
Same night I was deeply thinking about the mean mindedness of the priest over just a spoonful of water and my own stupidity of taking rounds inside the temple. A flash of intuition brought to my mind the behaviour of MOTHS. They were a nuisance after nightfall, going round and round the lights and fall dead in hundreds in the morning. When other lights are switched on half of them rush towards those lights. In some places if a pail of water is kept below, they rush towards the reflection of the light and get drowned. No one knew the reason for this behavior then, until Richard Dawkins gave the answer in his Book-‘God-Delusion’. He explains that night-lights on view till recently were moon and stars. They are at optical infinity, of rays from them are parallel insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in straight line, and they use this compass, with reversed sign for returning home after foray. Their nervous system has adopted to steer a course such that light rays hit the eye at an angle of 30 degrees. As the artificial lights are not at optical infinity, the moths steering at that angle steer in a spiral trajectory in to the candle flame or lamps. Hindus too exhibit the same behavior of going in circles around deities. f a rich man kills millions of birds to produce export quality broilers, become fabulously rich and builds a replica of a famous Temple of the south people rush to that temple just like moths rushing to the reflection of the light
Buddhism gave an orientation to Indian society to establish a caste-less, egalitarian and altruistically co-operative society. The eight-fold path is for the whole humanity to be totally secular without the concepts of God or soul. Buddha preached all his life to erect two pillars of prajna and karunya (prajna is awareness which means information, scientific temper and karunya is compassion). These two pillars were demolished by Vaidic Purohits and erected, in their place, their pillars of Chatur Varna and Karma-Kanda. These two pillars of evil have enslaved shudras for generations after generations after generations. This made the rulers’ job easy and provided a life of ease and comfort for higher castes.
Chatur-Varna created hundreds of closed systems (Castes) which went on losing energy (2nd law of thermodynamics), as they were deprived of their social and economic legitimacy. Over such a long period of 3000 years social-entropy increased to cause perpetual and abysmal poverty, as we are witnessing now. To support this system Shankaraacharya set up four Mutts not to propagate his Adwaita but as watch towers, to nip in the bud, any attempt to revive Buddhism.
Besides the high rate of increase of social and economic-entropy of lower castes, mental-entropy of higher castes also increased because of this pernicious caste system. Each caste (closed system) became stereotyped due to lack of interaction and cultural assimilation over centuries and they can not come out of the frame of the stereotyped mind. Thus they remained disgustingly mediocre, except being ruthless in area of making money. That’s why we see today such a large crowd of mediocre politicians and bureaucrats who have amassed wealth through rampant corruption. Their only attempt to enter sphere of brahminic- elitism is by copying silly rituals like Gana-Homa, and Satyanarayana pooja at every opportunity and rushing to astrologers for any flimsy reason, avoiding, of course, Rahu-Kalam. State, intelligentsia and so called intellectuals should be ashamed of themselves for being passive on-lookers of such onslaught of mediocrity. This new disorientation has made Hindus mortgage their brains to ’Purohits, astrologers, and new-age frauds called ‘God-Men’.
Hinduism is a sexed-up polytheism and a huge subterfuge for self glorification of the kshatriyas and vaidic brahmins. Tribal deities, family deities of clans, vassals, feudal lords and mythological characters were cobbled up into a hierarchy of Gods; each group squandered their wealth for building hundreds of temples for their own deities as status symbols. Temples were made attractive with hard-porn in stone in almost all of them. Khajurao is the magnum-opus. Kamasutra by Vatsayana titillated the sense-buds of rulers and aristocracy. Luxurious -ceremonies were invented in temples. All this started by 2nd -3rd century, during Gupta Period. Here-After, by this hedonistic life-style kshatriyas lost their valour. This made it easy after another 3-4 centuries, for Turks and later Moghuls come in and establish their rule without much resistance.
Regarding the now prevalent ‘State-Temple- Corporate-Complex” (Ref: God-Market by Meera Nanda) let me give one example. Mr. NR Narayan Murthy, highly respected in the corporate world, writes in his Book A better India, A better world — ‘I am a Brahmin and I am minority’. He should know that this three per cent minority perpetrated so much misery on the lower castes. In no other civilization so few have caused so much misery on such a large mass of humanity over such a long period. In another lecture he drops a hint ‘I was on my way from B’lore to Mantralaya’. Rational thinkers know that these Samadhis of some ascetics are nothing but glorified versions of primitive tribals’ corpse worship. Actually IT Corporate Heads should visit Alan Turing’s tomb stone if they could locate it in UK. It was he who advanced the notion of universal computer. These celebrities advertise temples, Mutts, God-men as though Gods have a purpose to make only them rich and famous.
Grant Allen in his book The evolution of the Idea of God, (published a hundred years back) writes “Thus the cult of the dead is the earliest origin of all religions. In one word- that corpse worship is the protoplasm of religion, while admitting that folk-lore is the protoplasm of mythology, and it’s modern and philosophical off shoot– Theology”.