People's Democracy

Misusing Faith

Sitaram Yechury

THE affidavit filed by the Archaeological Survey of India in the Supreme Court in the Sethusamudram project case has provided grist to the communal mill led by the RSS/BJP. The government of India had correctly decided to withdraw certain parts of the affidavit that by all means are extraneous to the matter at hand. It is, indeed, strange that the UPA government had allowed such extraneous comments to be filed in the affidavit, in the first place. Notwithstanding this, the RSS/BJP, bereft as they are of any constructive agenda for improving the people’s livelihood, have found an issue around which they seek to rouse communal passions for political benefits. Since the matter is now before the apex court, the country needs to wait for its decision.

This Sethusamudram controversy, however, merits a discussion as an earlier debate in the parliament also drifted towards replacing historical enquiry and evidence with mythology and replacing philosophy with theology. While on this issue and in the larger Indian context, it is the RSS/BJP that has been seeking such a metamorphosis, other persuasions of faith could be equally guilty under different circumstances and dispensations.

Before discussing this, it is necessary to note certain aspects of this project. The Sethusamudram ship channel project, inaugurated by the prime minister envisages the dredging of a shipping channel across the Palk straits between India and Sri Lanka. The project undertaken jointly by various shipping sector public sector corporations with an initial equity by the central government is designed to deepen the channel to permit modern ships to navigate from the West and East of India. Currently, ships have to navigate around the Sri Lankan coasts to reach destinations in the east of India. Once completed, this project will reduce the distance by as much as 424 nautical miles and save 36 hours of sailing time. Once completed, this is expected to boost maritime trade providing considerable economic activity in the region and save crucial time and money for movement from the East and West coasts of India.

The singular thrust of the BJP’s objections to this project is that this would destroy the chain of islets and shallows known as the Adam’s Bridge linking India with Sri Lanka. This Adam’s Bridge is claimed by the BJP to have been constructed 17 lakh years ago and is the famous bridge built by Lord Rama in the Ramayana for his assault on Lanka to rescue Sita. Despite the thunderings of the DMK’s Shipping minister in the parliament that there is no proof that this is a manmade bridge and that a NASA statement of 1987 quoted by the BJP had no scientific validity, the BJP continues to stick to its guns. What is strange is the fact that under the BJP-led NDA government, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) was asked to ascertain the facts. The GSI showed that the Adam’s Bridge alignment is a palaeographical formation dating back to several lakhs of years and disproved that it was a manmade construction. In fact, it was the BJP-led NDA government which allocated nearly Rs. 5 crore for a feasibility study to implement this project in the 2000-01 budget. Having in the first place sanctioned the project when in government, the BJP is thoroughly exposing its diabolic opportunism in now seeking to oppose this very project for political benefit through disastrous communal polarisation.

In the seminal series on people’s history being brought out by Tulika publishers, Prof. Irfan Habib in the first volume in the series, “Pre-history” informs us that geological studies and scientific advances now permit us to fairly accurately map the movement of land mass on our planet through plate tectonics. Such scientific studies have also fairly accurately mapped the geological ages of our planet along with corresponding organic life that inhabited at that point of time. This scientific classification, going back to 4000 million years, has divided this period into various Eons, Eras and Epochs. These have also mapped the physical changes that have occurred over this period. Accordingly, it has been shown that, “in India, as all over the world, a major result of glaciations in each Ice age was the great fall in sea level since enormous bodies of water were kept frozen in large ice sheets in North Western Europe and Northern America. It is believed that in the last Ice age, in the late Pleistocene (an epoch that began 1.8 million years ago and ended 10000 years ago with the advent of the current epoch Holocene), the sea level was between 100 and 150 metres below the present mean sea level. Such a retreat of the sea in the Ice ages meant that both the gulf of Kutch and the gulf of Cambay became stretches of dry land; Sri Lanka was joined to South India by a broad belt of land around Adam’s Bridge; and the North Middle and South Andaman Islands formed a single island”.

Given the current debate on global warming when the reverse is estimated to occur with the submerging of large tracts of land mass the above scientific evidence should not come as a surprise. However, seeking to communalise every issue for political benefit, the BJP takes recourse to Faith to authenticate mythology as history. Faith is a matter of individual choice. A right that a democratic system will assiduously protect. What we are discussing here are not matters of Faith. These are matters of historical enquiry and reality. By protecting the right of the individual choice of Faith, the Indian constitution also seeks to encourage scientific enquiry and spirit. These cannot and should not be counterpoised.

In this very spirit, consider the following interpretation of the mythological das avataras. We are told in the Mahabharata that in every yuga (epoch), God descends on earth to uphold dharma and to cleanse it. At the end of the present yuga, God is supposed to appear in the form of the tenth avatar, Kalki avatar.

The first avatar is in the form of fish. Science has now confirmed that the first life forms evolved underwater. The second is the tortoise, amphibious capable of living both on land and in water. The third is the boar, able to live only on land. The transition of life from underwater to land marks this stage. The next is the Narasimha avatar reflecting the transition from the animal to the human form. This is followed by the Vaman avatar representing the evolution of the human form in its dwarf size. This is followed by Parasuram who wields the axe as his weapon. This represents the stage of the clearing of forests for human settlement. Rama who follows wields the bow and arrow as his weapon, i.e., a weapon that can protect the human settlements by attacking the enemy from a distance. Balaram who comes next wields the plough. This is the stage of evolution of human civilisation to the levels of an agrarian economy. Krishna represents the further advance of human civilisation in the stage of domestication of the cow and the development of the diary economy. Kalki who is yet to arrive is portrayed as riding a horse representing the stage of the domestication of the horse.

The das avataras can, thus, be seen as a remarkable recording of the evolution of human life and its civilisational advance till the Aryan mastered the horse and majestically moved across lands.

Thus, without entering into any disputes on matters of Faith, this remarkable materialist interpretation of the das avataras, surely, merits attention. Faith in its quintessential form must facilitate the pursuit of truth and acquiring the ability to recognise the truth. Chinese civilisational wisdom, as equally old and ancient as ours in India, tells us to let a hundred flowers bloom, a thousand thoughts contend, so that finally we can seek truth from the facts. While truth is a fact, all facts are not whole truths. This is the difference between philosophy and theology.

Faith must encourage the adventure of ideas and promote scientific enquiry and not reduce itself to fanning communal passions for petty political and electoral benefits.