Rejection of Rationality IV: Snippets

In my previous article, Rejection of Rationality III: Western constructs, I have made sweeping statements about the present mood of Hindus. Most of these observations come from my experiences from debating with various people on the topics concerning India. The moods I presented in that article are coming from various sources and you will hear them too if you poke some people and keep your ears open. In this article, I wanted to capture some of the moods coming from some of the forums. Please don’t miss out on the article from Times of India (TOI) which is linked in here.

An Indian lady from Britain would like to absolve Hindus of all discriminations by moving it onto British:

Lets not forget that the Schedule of Castes and Tribes that codified "caste" in India is a colonial British invention. Thanks to this wonderful document, certain people were not only allowed to hold certain jobs, but also prohibited from employment…

A paper on status of Indian women writes:

But in the later period the position of women went on deteriorating due to Muslim influence. During the Muslim period of history they were deprived of their rights of equality with men. They were compelled to keep themselves within the four walls of their houses with a long veil on their faces. This was definitely due to Islamic influence.

An article in recent TOI captures the mood completely (all emphasis mine).

If you read the Ramayana and Mahabharat as history, you will find lots of mythology. If you read them as mythology, you will find lots of history- A L Basham

Hindus do not like facts, we just like mythology.

Try telling any child — and that includes the inner child within all of us — facts and dates, and they will quickly lose interest. But narrate a mythological tale, and they're all ears. Parents know that. So do advertisers. After all, as Deepak Chopra once wrote in The Times of India, "A brand is an encapsulated mythology. A person will buy a product not because she is consuming the product but because she is consuming its mythology."

We do not need proofs, we already know Rama exists.

Which is why the whole debate about whether or not Lord Ram existed as a historical figure is redundant.

To millions of Indians, Ram and the other heroes of the epics are living entities; eternal role models who exist outside of time and space. To try and confine them within the boundaries of geography and chronology — as attempts to prove their historicity must necessarily do — is to do them a huge disservice.

We don’t need history, we are quite happy with fables.

In any case, the obsession with historical accuracy is a Western, rather than an Indian construct.

Historians have cited the traditional Indian habit of creating myths and fables rather than 'accurate' historical documents to lament that India has no sense of history. Absolutely true. But rather than getting defensive about this 'criticism', we should be proud of our ahistorical view of civilization.

Because our forefathers intuitively knew that mythology provides a far more authentic understanding of a civilisation than history does.

And here is the gem!

Indeed, as Indians, we believe in creating myths, and obliterating history.

Why is Ram human and at the same time a god? Here’s the answer:

“There was initially no ontological gulf between the world of the gods and the world of men and women," says Karen Armstrong in one of her books on mythology.

Did I already mention that we need a Westerner to validate our ridiculous claims?

Ironically, the statement that's possibly the wisest ever made on Indian mythology was by a westerner, one of the few who understood 'The Wonder That Was India' — the renowned historian A L Basham, who we've quoted at the beginning of this piece.

I rest my case! TOI comes up with so much idiocy I don’t need to prove much.