Attainment Of Moksha through the lens of Science
Recent Satyapal Singh’s remark that ‘Theory of Evolution is false and should be removed from school education again brought the age-old conflict between “creationism vs evolution” into the limelight. Almost all scientific Institutions protested against it and called it the diminishment of the country’s image at the Global level. If we look at the facts such as India’s rank in Global Innovation Index, the number of patents filed, etc, it shows the lack of presence of knowledge economy and remarks like this further reduces the faith of international scientific community towards Indian research.
The conflict between Creationism and evolution is on the origins of all life and matter where creationism believes that God is the reason behind all the creation, every Species is created by Him. The evolutionist believes in the “Survival of Fittest” theory where every species has modified itself through competition with other species and in this process gets evolved with unique features. This inherent difference is the cause of conflict today. Evolution is a well-proven phenomenon based on years of research and the theory of creation is based on religious philosophies like Hinduism, any talk of creationism is a stupid thing to do. It can lead to a lack of scientific temper, religious fundamentalism, communal feeling, the killing of diversity.
With this ‘constrained’ mind let's begin our journey to the two most beautiful religious cities in India Madurai and Rameshwaram.
1. “The beauty of Madurai”
I reached Madurai around 8 pm and went straight to my hotel(The Gateway Hotel). If you look at the structure of this hotel; it is built on a raised level 10 km away from Madurai mainland. You can see the whole Madurai from your room balcony. This hotel was built by Britishers for their own residence. It reminds me of the ‘segregation policies’ of Britishers in India. They deliberately kept all Indians away from them whom they considered lower race/class. Wait weren’t they implementing the theory of evolution on human species?. They formulated all the policies based on this theory where they considered Indians as uncivilized lower evolved individuals and it is ‘white man’s burden to make them civilized.
“Meenakshi Temple”-A great temple of Hinduism in Madurai
We then went to see this temple early in the morning. It holds great significance in Hinduism philosophy. First, we need to understand something about Hinduism.
Hinduism is not a religion it is just a way of life as said by Justice Verma because in religion a particular textbook or God is followed or believed by people. Indians were always seekers, we did not restrain ourselves to a particular thought or group. We were free to think about anything, follow anything as we all were seeking the truth, that is why India has a huge diversity representing different faiths. Hinduism just represents the philosophy to keep all this diversity in one unit. For example, the image of Vishu in Jagannath Puri has a dark ebony complexion, it is totally different from His normal image which is sky blue in complexion. It represents the accommodating nature of Hinduism where some tribal God worshipped by a large group was given a prominent place. So being Hindu is nothing according to the core principles of Hinduism. Note- It is not taught in our education system because of the secularist model of education that we adopted from the first capitalist nation of the world leaving young minds to the interpretation of religion by politically interested groups.
Now coming back to Meenakshi temple. It has a total of 14 huge Gopurams( Gateways) which are built in the form of the Human body. Five outer Gateways represent 5 human senses and nine inner gateways represent a total number of holes in a body( Guess it). Meenakshi was a prominent form of Goddess and represented the Shaktism sect, She is a sister of Vishnu and married to a form of shiva. Now if we think on the lines of how Hinduism tries to unite diversity in a single unit. By just laying the foundation of the Meenakshi temple Three Important Sects in India- Shaktism, Vaishnavism, and Shaivism were united in one.
Now if we look at the skewed version of Hinduism as taught by politically interested groups, you will feel sad about the forgotten value of unity in Indian society. Take a look at the photo inside the Meenakshi temple.
2. Rameshwaram- A sustainable development model
In the context of the growing Man vs Nature conflict all around the world. On one hand, we have the United States of America, a highly evolved society, which has produced different kinds of Red meat, their whole philosophy is based on ‘Survival of Fittest’ where nature is seen as a threat that humans have to conquer and on the other hand we have Hinduism philosophy which believes in the integration of nature and Humans.
In this context, if we look at the history of Rameshwaram Temple, where Lord Ram and his Vanara Sena decided to build a bridge across the sea to Srilanka to rescue Sita from the clutches of Ravana. Here the most exciting thing is the role played by various animals like monkeys, birds( Jatayu), etc. Hinduism has always integrated nature with humans' way of life. It has never seen nature in conflict with humans' aspirations.
Have you ever thought about various ‘Savaaris’( Rides) of Gods? Ganeshji has Rat as a ride, Nandi a ride of Lord Shiva and there is Kal Bhairav whose ride is Dog. Hinduism has always believed in the integration of different living species as all species are created by God according to the Theory of Creation. Don’t you think today’s problems of habitation loss, extinction of species, growing antagonism towards stray dogs can be solved by just this line of thought?
MY CONCLUSION
At this point, you may have various doubts about what I am trying to say through this article. First I want to clear some misinterpretations.
I am not an RSS follower and I do not agree with Satyapal Singh’s remark that the Theory of Evolution is false. I am a firm believer in this theory.
What I am trying to say is that by only studying science( Science is based on observations from physical senses and there is no role of emotional values in it), we have put ourselves in conflict with all living species. We are so self-absorbed that we are ignoring the things that make us human. Here is an extract from Advaita philosophy( Important school of Hinduism) “ Humans have two levels of existence one is individual consciousness where one is satisfying his desires and live a life of hedonism ( Which capitalism and theory of survival of fittest tend to create in society) and other is ultimate consciousness where one works for the welfare of all. Moksha is attaining ultimate consciousness”
Our education system, thanks to the secularist model, has divided us into various groups competing with each other. Look at the number of patents growing all over the world trying to conceal important information from others. Don’t you think the purpose of education is to promote equality, fraternity, and brotherhood? Don’t you think our education needs to stress upon dissemination of knowledge rather than protecting it through legal instruments? Don’t you think the education system should also build moral values along with rationality?
Theory of Creation may not be a scientifically proven theory but it surely helps in many ways. It builds a strong moral foundation rooted in equality and fraternity principle. It helps in attaining moksha It protects individuals from radicalization, communal violence, identity politics rather than moving society towards fundamentalism. It tries to create love with all living and non-living. Therefore Theory of evolution should not be excluded from the school curriculum but it should be complemented with the Theory of Creation. This is what I call Attainment Of Moksha Through Lens Of Science
