Missing the point in Sai Baba’s calling on Kalaignar

(adaptation of original post in akandabaratam egroup on 27 Jan 2007)

A well-practised knack for missing the point: this is what the columnist Balbir Punj demonstrates in his report in The Pioneer (26 Jan 2007). By so doing, such writers hope to keep up the illusion that Hindutva is holding its ground. Unfortunately, the reality is that knowledge and society are moving on, leaving the Hindutva elements far behind, as we shall see below.

Punj portrays the Kalaignar - Sai Baba meeting on Saturday 20 Jan 2007 as a "demonstration of the wisdom of the Shankaracharya and the Hindu philosophic ascent from unbelief to belief, from "rationalism" to the acceptance of the divine".

First, rationalism is not premised on opposing or rejecting divinity. It seeks to subject everything, including the divine, to the test of human reason, a unique gift in the entire animate world. In fact, Socrates (5th century BCE), the renowned ancient Greek preacher and practitioner of reasoning, felt he was heeding the voice of God (an inner sign or voice) and serving God by urging Athenians to take to questioning things.

Nearly 2,000 years later, when Western science set out to probe the mysteries of nature using instruments and experiments (while India was still keeping faith with yajnas and mantras), the motivation was to read the mind of God, NOT to deny God. Unfortunately (or, is it fortunately?), it turned out that the more and more science progressed, the more that God receded, conceding more and more ground to Matter! That is, scientists found that more and more of natural phenomena could be explained and predicted without any need to invoke God!! The trend reached an emotional peak point in the mid 19th century when Charles Darwin announced his theory of biological evolution, which dispensed with any role for God in the emergence of life in all the varied forms, including human.

As if extrapolating the developing trend in science, Periyar went the full distance in the social space of the Dravidian world. Unlike Socrates of ancient Greece, Periyar felt NO need for God to tell him what he had to do for his people. He saw for himself that the minds of people around him had been long numbed by superstitions and elaborate rituals spun around puranic conceptions of gods. He, therefore, felt that people had to be first liberated from such mental and emotional fetters before they can be expected to gain confidence in the uniquely human gift - human reasoning. It is by fostering the spirit of reasoning in them that Periyar hoped to bring people to recognize the servile state to which they have been reduced for centuries. Only then would they rise up against the debasing and unjust social order.

Therefore, Periyar, who had started life as a believer (a devout Hindu), openly challenged the Brahmanist doctrine of varnashrama dharma. He urged people to break free of the shackles of the socio-religious order that had been so cunningly imposed on them by the Dharmists in the name of Hindu gods.

Periyar has succeeded spectacularly! The results are already there to be seen in the social landscape of the entire South, though there is still alot more work pending. Understandably so, as it is about dismantling more than 2,000 years of legacy.

DMK, that emerged as a political organization from Periyar's DK (Dravidar Kazhagam), had always operated somewhere along the continuum between the two poles, belief (theism) and disbelief (atheism). Periyar positioned himself right atop the latter pole, in the vicinity of which the Buddha had also been some 2500 years ago.

Anyone who understands change dynamics would be able to appreciate the 'shock value' in Periyar's approach: so would physiotheraphists who administer 'shock therapy' to stimulate healing in selected parts of the human body!

Periyar's atheism may be headed towards its eventual vindication as God seems to be receding ever more as science penetrates deeper into the mysteries of the material world. Increasingly, scientists are finding it possible to account for 'immaterial' (or psychological / spiritual / metaphysical) experiences as emergences from matter! The implications of what is emerging are likely to be very unsettling for both religion and society.

That notwithstanding, DMK's slogan remains "one humankind, one God" (Note 1), and that the best worship of God is through serving mankind.

The reception for Sathya Sai Baba at Kalaignar Karunanidhi's home and at a subsequent public function is for Baba's service to the people: Baba's funding of the water project. It is in appreciation of Baba's service towards (one part of) humanity, not divinity.

The returning of courtesy is only human. Sai Baba came home and he is being received as a guest. That's hospitality, plain and simple. Paying respect to someone mature, whether by age, deed or eminence, even by bowing or touching his feet does not mean abandoning your principles, nor approving all that the guest may stand for.

For instance, in 2001, the then Prime Minister Vajpayee (at his age and health) bowed to touch the feet of a rural woman Chinna Pillai at an awards ceremony in honour of her success in community banking. It showed Vajpayee's greatness and his deep respect for what this ordinary (unschooled) woman from a remote village in Tamil Nadu had achieved, but of which social condition none in government had cared about for more than 50 years of independence. The woman was visibly moved by Vajpayee's act (I think I saw it then on Indian TV news):

http://www.expressindia.com/columnists/nina/20010206.html
Indian Express - 6 Feb 2001

QUOTE
A few weeks back, it was touching to see one of the greatest Statesman of modern times, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, bowing respectfully to a rural leader Chinna Pillai, at an awards ceremony in Tamil Nadu. Chinna Pillai is an illiterate,
schedule caste social worker, who has climbed from the depths of grinding poverty to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of indented slavery. This grey-haired, fifty-something-year-old, who worked as a manual slave labourer in paddy fields, collecting cow dung, has through a movement called Kalavijayam (loosely translated as ‘woman victory’) made waves in Tamil Nadu. Chinna is exceptional because she believed in herself and, despite being part of the lowest rung of the human ladder, made vital networking links of self-help groups in the villages that formed the block. China Pillai has set in chain motion a movement that is a credit and savings system, which helped to reduce the crippling debt that a lifetime of work could not repay, thus reducing families to a slavery, that really should have no part in a 21st century democracy like India. The Herculean effort apart, Chinna’s success lies in her basic
rudimentary understanding that till you help yourself no one else will. The rest, as they say, is history or her story.
UNQUOTE

(a more recent report on Chinna Pillai appeared in The Hindu, 24 Jan 2007)

But the columnist (Balbir K Punj) has done well to raise the matter of the ring(s) that Baba was supposed to have materialised (from thin air?). It is, indeed, perplexing that two ministers, including the young and dynamic Dayanidhi Maran, were overly impressed by the feat. If so, shouldn't it receive the scrutiny of Indian science. A Nobel Prize may be waiting: a new law of physics may be needed to explain the Baba feat. Except it is limited to rings! Why not uranium? : India could have been saved from its nuclear deal with US!!

There are also deeper issues underlying this Sai Baba episode:

a) Why should it take the intervention of someone like Sai Baba to persuade a state government, in this case, that of Andhra Pradesh, to permit a public project to make progress? It seems that the political process, including the judicial order, is not working too well.

b) The extent to which the lack of financing is holding back many public projects in a country floating on black money.

It is such questions that journalists should be asking.

In conclusion: it has been some time since the Dharmists were shown their place by Periyar. To the disappointment of Hindutva and for the good of the people of India, that fact is not going to change by this visit by Sai Baba to Gopalapuram.


Note 1: (to be filled)


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