Bagwat Prasad’s latest article dated 5.1.09 is reproduced with his permission

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY IN THE QUEST FOR A NEW SOCIETY- By Bagwat Prasad

The world is facing many crises. We read about them everyday in books, journals and newspapers, What puzzles us is that in these hard days every ideology has collapsed and every utopia is nurturing a nightmare.

Post-modernists emphasize the bankruptcy of the America-European framework of thought. It bred slavery, genocides and colossal massacre of human beings. Has the Vedic framework of thought fared any better? With the history of the Varna system and untouchability burdening the core of this frame work, sentimental wishes like ‘Let all be happy, healthy and prosperous’ sound like the uttering of a shrewd hypocrite in the land of graded unsociability.

Post-modernism has wonderfully succeeded in demolition work. It has cleared many cobwebs that plagued seemingly lofty thoughts and grand narratives. With its Nihilistic state of mind, it fails to provide a positive agenda for a better society. Fortunately some scientists, particularly in the fields of modern physics and neurology, are coming with bright ideas that may open a path to preparing an agenda for a better society consisting of sane people.

Paul Davies, professor of Natural Philosophy, Adelaide University writes “there is a dual principle at work. There is a principle of rationality that says that the world is fashioned in a way that provides it with a rational order, a mathematical order. There is a selective principle – which is an anthropic principle- that says that out of a large variety of different possible worlds this type of world is the one, we observe.”1

Mr. Davies confines the anthropic principle to the selection of areas of research. We need an extended right anthropic principle that aims not only at selective areas of research but also at human sanity leading to the welfare of all sentient beings.

Is science, free from the wrong type of this anthropic principle because it is fully devoted to truth and objectivity as claimed by some scientists? ‘No’, says Prof. Lewontin (Biology) “He (Lewontin) even dares mention that dirty, well-kept secret that receives nary a mention in the popular press, the financial interest of those involved in biological research. His statement that “no prominent biologist of my acquaintance is with out a financial stake in the biology business” is a sad warning.”

A review of ’It aint necessarily so’ Nine reviews in New York Times by Prof. LEWONTIN.

H. F Judson, a science Journalist writes “…… after the Second World War, the state became the chief patron of science, currently committing about 35 billion annually directly to basic and applied research.”
The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science.

The position of science today justifies to a great extent what the Mahabharata says about truth. Mahabharata accepts that only as truth which leads to genuine human welfare (Santi Parva)2.

Is religion free from the wrong anthropic principle? No, because many wide-spread religions are nurturing communalistic and dogmatic tendencies. Moreover the rationalist principle is taboo for many of them. Buddhism and Jainism, though free from many evils that plague exclusivist and faith-based religions, have lost their way in the dreary deserts of Karmic fatalism and the theory of rebirth. They too, in their later incarnations, followed faith rather than reason.
Paul Davies made another insightful remark that helps us in clarifying our thoughts.

“There are two paths in investigating the world. The reductionist path and the synthetic path………. To say that the world is built up of a collection of certain particles playing certain roles of interaction is one thing. (The reductionist path). But, to give an explanation of the problems like the origin of life, the origin of consciousness, problems that refer to highly complex systems – that’s quite another.”3

A complex system may have many simple constituents, whose coming together results in its formation. But, once formed, these systems exhibit novel symptoms that lead scientists to describe them as emergent phenomena.

Murray Gell-Mann won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969 for his research in particle physics. After his success in following the reductionist path, he switched over to the synthetic path, that enabled him to study complex systems. Lee Smolin, professor of physics, Pennsylvania University wrote about Murry Gell-Mann, “The fact that, after studying all this, he has become interested in the ideas of complexity is wonderful, because he is right: physics needs a new direction, and the direction should have something to do with the study of complex systems rather than with the kind of physics he did most of his life.”

Professor of cognitive science at Ecole polytechnique in Paris, Francisco Varela says:--
“……. I have had only one question in my life. Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop up all over the place creating worlds at the mind-body level, the cellular level or the transorganism level. This phenomenon is something so productive that it doesn’t cease creating entirely new realms: life, mind and societies.” Varela was among a group of great scientists who understood the relevance of Buddhism for a greed-war-weary world He wrote “Buddhist ideas are prevalent throughout our culture-in physics and biology, the basic ideas are Buddhism in disguise.” …… The Emergent Self.



Buddha himself claimed that he was only a discoverer of truths found curlier by ancient savants. Thus spoke he “I, monks, have seen an ancient way, an ancient road followed by wholly awakened ones of olden times……Along that I have gone, and the matters that I have to come to know fully as I was going along it I have told to the monks, nuns, men and women lay-followers.”5

Kautilya refers to Samkhya, Yoga and Lokayat as the philosophies that united the rationalist principle with the extended anthropic principle. Their main tool for building a war –greed-free society was the brain, an emergent complex system that fascinates modern physicists and neurologists. Writes F Varela, the eminent the biologist, “My mind has the quality of ‘being here”. So I can relate to others. For example, I interact, but when I try to grasp it, it’s no where, it’s distributed in the underlying network”6

Man differs from animals in having the thinking brain consisting of consciousness and intelligence. One brain portion, mostly the pre-frontal cortex, controls the violent and aggressive tendencies that originate in the limbic brain, particularly in the amygdala. A recent study shows children who suffer injury to the pre-frontal cortex before age seven developed abnormal behavior, characterized by an inability to control their frustration, anger and aggression, according to an article in the journal Neuroscience.” 7

Pre-frontal cortex is the seat of all sorts of creativity.

“In particular, the orbito-frontal cortex allows for the inhibition of aggression. Individuals with orbito-frontal injury have been found to display anti-social traits (disinhibition, impulsivity, lack of empathy) that justify the diagnosis of “acquired sociopathy” and some have an increased risk of violent behavior. A balance that exists between the potential for impulsive aggression mediated by limbic structures, and the control of this drive by the influence of the orbito-frontal regions”.8

Two prejudices haunt Euro-American philosophy and science. Very few of these eminent thinkers and scientists are free from the racial bias. Aristotle distinguished between civilized men and Barbarians. He justified slavery. Even the great champion of liberty, J. S. Mill, justified India’s bondage in the name of the white man’s superiority. The tyranny of the Churchian Christianity and the lack of sympathetic understanding of other human groups as well as animals cast a shadow over the philosophical and the scientific works of the developed world. The rationalist principle is given good bye by Descartes when he brings God by the back door. Kant too, by using the term ‘Categorical imperative’ and Practical Reason’ cleverly avoids rationality. Many Indian scholars shut their eyes to the racial bias and non-rational ideas present in Hume and Kant’s thinking. To my knowledge the only civilization free from racial and species bias was one that was fanatically attached to the Ahimsa principle, – a value emphasized in the Yama part of Yoga. Totally devoted to the rationality principle was the Mahenjodaro Harappa civilization which nurtured the ANWIKHIKI philosophy (Samkhya, Yoga and Lokayat) as asserted by Kautilya Unlike the Christian, Islamic and the Vedic civilizations, Anwikhikians remained free from the fascination for mystery, miracles and magic. Yoga practices sometimes created an illusion of acquisition of mysterious powers but all the great teachers like the Buddha, Ramakrishna Parambahansa, and Swami Vivekananda advised against these powers. Yoga consists of mainly two mind-controlling age old principles of psychology 1. Concentrating the mind on non-attachment and non-spite (BAIRAGYA). (2) Keeping the mind in a state of profound tranquility by constant repetition of certain items of cognition coupled with emotion as advised by the teachers of Yoga (ABHYASA).

TAPA which resembles the Yoga, is power-crazy and is the contribution of Vedic Aryans. Many Tapaswis or sages are notorious for their activities (Parasuram, the powerful slaughterer of kshatriyas and Durbasa, the ever wrathful saint).

Most of the leading scientists of the Western world suffer from the racial and species bias and the affluent class outlook. The failure of existing ideologies and the futility of utopianism all stem from the same cause. They are the products of a warrior society and cannot transcend their cultural background even in their imagination. Who in the West or Islamic countries could have imagined that a godless rationalist religion is possible. The contact with Buddhism must have been a stunning one for them.

Western thinkers, angry with the present ideologies, got to the other extreme of denouncing rationality. Post-modernists, who welcome multi-culturism find their solace in Samanic indigenous communities. They are not averse to superstitious endogenous societies, instinctually egalitarian and community-loving.

When Megasthenis writes that there was no slavery in India or of seven hierarchical categories of Indian people, even eminent historians ignore the highest class whom Megasthenis calls “GYMNO SOPHISTS’. These are the people who have embraced the philosophies of Yoga, Samkhya and Lokayat and these out-and-out rationalists are spoken of highly by Kautiliya.

Pre-Vedic society was the only ancient society in the world which flowered in a non-violent ambience. Predatory Power-elitism of the bureaucrats and the party high-ups brought communism to its knees in the Soviet Union, China and other communist counties. Democracy also suffers from the exploitation of the rich, and the arrogant self-serving elitism of the party functionaries, the bureaucracy, the media and the groups connected with justice doling.

Pre-Vedic society developed an elite which shunned elitism and the Varna system. This system took roots in India when the Pre-Vedic culture system fared a degrading transformation by the intelligent but power – crazy Vedic war – lords and greedy Brahmins. India was not, conquered by the Vedic warriors but culture – pirates who defaced an emancipatory culture in such a manner that it became an exploiting one. The Rig Vedic greedy and violence-loving meat-crazy priests designated all of themselves as Brahmins (the term applied to only one among seventeen categories of priests-Kumkum Ray) and by an Orwellian extension of the term ‘Brahmin’ to include the Yatis, the most prestigious Gymno-Sophist class in India, succeeded in usurping the highest position. Why should one be good was the question that directed the life-long quest of Jaya Prakash. Kant heaved sigh of relief by renouncing rationalism in the field of ethics. ‘Categorical imperative’ was the term that solved his problem of ethics. Russell’s insatiable quest for morality could not eschew its subjective nature. Yogic India

Pre-Vedic Anwikshikians discovered universal ethics or morality in YAMA values of the Yoga system which could withstand the test of rationality and fill the mind with Sukha. SUKHA (happiness) was voluntary and individualistic and thus was available to everybody in the community in India. The principle of non-violence was preferred by the pre-frontal cortex and hence the Yogi’s profoundly calm mind, a product of violence and greed shunning activities, experienced supreme happiness. (Vide my essay ‘Rationalism and Morality in History and Human Psyche).

For millions of years, man spent his days as hunter-gathers. The hunter-gatherer society was remarkably free from lust, violence and greed. Pre-frontal cortex developed during those happy days of mankind.

Violence and greed lead to a sick mind thus endangering saneness in the human being. Yogis give non-violence priority over truth which a myth of the Mahabharata confirms. The Mahabharata directly preaches the supreme importance of non-violence as a value; Tirukural, a Tamil classic as famous as the Gita in Tamilnadu, also speaks the same language as that of the Mahabharata. (Santi Parva). Both place non-violence above truth.

The Yoga culture of mental tranquility (SUKHA) which Gita and Dhammapada consider the supreme value, has lent contented temperaments to the philosophers of India. To quote P.M. Gregarious, an erstwhile president of the World Council of Churches.

“Draw portraits of a tight lipped Voltaire, of a morose and intensely self pre-occupied kant or Schopenhauer, of a Locke or a Hume, a Kierkegaard, Nietzsche a Diderot, a Sartre; keep these portraits on the one-side. Draw portraits of Buddha, Ashwaghosha, Nagarjuna, Dharmatrirti, Dignaga, Vachaspati Misra, Sridhara and keep them on the other side….. I cite a simple passage from the book (of Ben-Ami Scharfsten an Israeli philosopher at Tel Aviv University).



“Hume, James, Russell, Wittgenstein underwent deep depressions, and were tempted by suicide”.

…..very few of them had attained anything like the personal integration that we associate with our great Indian philosophers”. Enlightenment: East and West.

The value of Non-violence got recognition in the world because Indian religions, Jainism and Buddhism and two great personalities, the Buddha and Gandhi perfected their life and activities, giving importance to this particular value. Christ’s sayings and his great noble act of forgiving his worst enemies had tremendous impact on the societies of the East and West.

Unfortunately an important Yogic value ‘ASTEYA’ was ignored by the scholars the world-over.

Human thought scaled great heights when the emancipatory ideology of socialism was enunciated by the world thinkers. Marx’s ideas branched into Democratic or Gandhian Socialism in India (J. P and Lohia). In the Scandinavian countries, it morphed into welfare socialism. Noam Chomsky preferred libertarian socialism; Michael Albert devised another form of it by advocating ‘PARECON’ (Participatory Economics).

Pre-Vedic thinking reached great heights of humanism when they discovered the humanist potential of an ‘ASTEYA’ Society.

A little diversion regarding the evolution of human beings and their societies is relevant here.
W. Danisl Hills, a leading computer scientist writes-
“On the physical side we are studying the general phenomena of emergence, of how simple things turn into complex things. How can simple, dumb things working together produce a complex thing that transcends them.”


The emergence of Homo Sapiens with his thinking complex brain and his consciousness has to be studied not according to the biological mechanism possessed by the animal world but as a unique phenomenon obeying its own laws.

Among theorists of the animal world, two groups of evolutionists often clash, Evolutionary scientists who favour co-operative theory over the competition theory neither lack numbers nor the presence of prestigious figures; Lynn Margulis, Distinguished university professor in the Department of Biology at the university of Massachusetts at Amherst, was the greatest exponent of endosymbiosis theory in biology. She put co-operation at higher level then competition. She writes “But certain invasions evolved into truces; associations once ferocious became benign …. Created a new whole, that was, in effect, far greater than the sum of its parts”.
Gaia is a Tough Bitch

Lynn Margulis, pushes life’s history to the past three billion years and urges us to study the evolution of molecules and cellular structures. Humanity went in a wrong direction in the past when war as a phenomenon bedeviled the human groups. No knowledge system of the Euro-Americans, the Vedic Aryans, the Semitic races and many others is free from the concept of conflicts. Their thinkers visualize permanently opposing forces. They say that the complex systems can work well only when the opposing forces balance each other’s rationalized self-serving activities. (Liberalism, Marxism the market, the Judiciary) Pre-Vedic community in ancient days was the only developed community which shunned and belittled the warrior mentality. Ancient China, which placed scholars above the warriors, did not reach the heights scaled by the Pre-Vedic society because, the state, not society, was the cornerstone of culture in China. Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann writes, “The accumulation of frozen accidents is what gives the world its effective complexity.”

The survival problem of nomads in the un-friendly grasslands was difficult. This problem converted them into animal domesticators in addition to being animal slaughterers. Acquiring cattle wealth through raids and domesticating human beings as slaves through wars evolved naturally among these predatory communities. As war was alien to human nature, it endangered human civilization. The frozen accident which sired wars be-devilled humanity in all recorded history. Greed and lust fueled the wars in ancient communities which became universal. A frozen accident, through mimetic tendencies and reactive or defensive postures, blossomed into a horrible Tsunami endangering all that is great and creative in the human civilizations.

In addition to non-violence, Asteya was the great value which shaped the civilization of the pre-Vedic days.

‘Asteya’ families and society reversed the Spenserian (Darwinian) ‘survival of the fittest’ concept. Asteya lost its lofty meaning when scholars equated it with ‘non-stealing’ though prouddhon’s adage ‘All property is theft’ is covertly internalized in the Asteya society and family.

Mahabharata gives the true picture of an Asteya family “In the family, the partriach, the leading or dominating member (GRUHAPATI), did not have his meals till all the residents in the house including the servants have had their meals earlier”.12 The same picture of an ‘Asteya’ family comes out in Kauilya’s Arthasastra. The true meaning of Asteya can be understood only, if we understand the word ‘STENA’ explained in the third canto of the Gita (verse number twelve). A man becomes guilty of ‘STENA’ when he forgets to satisfy the gods first. ‘ASTEYA’ which was a yogic value originated in an atheistic civilization. It must have meant meeting first the needs of the other members of family or society before the leading member fulfilled his needs. According to Megasthenis the highest place of honour was reserved for the society of GymnoSophists. They were the people who lived by gathering fruits and wearing the barks of trees. Evidently they were the Anwikhikians of Arthasastra fame. They were given the highest place of honor because they practiced Asteya, non-violence, truth and Aparigraha perfectly.

Leading historians of India are neglecting the internalising value factor present in Pre-Vedic India which led to the iniquitous caste system later. Vedic priests legitimized the Varna system through clever devices like the trick of adding to Yogic values SOUCHA (Purity pollution factor), the Upanayana (a ritual) and magic (simple repetition of words like OUM or sentences like the Gayatri Verse). The Vedic priests managed to usurp the elitist position of the GymnoSophists by giving greater importance to these three additional features and ignoring the fundamental values of Pre-Vedic culture. Mahabharata (Santi Parva) contains evidence regarding this change.

Asteya society existed during the Mahenjodara Harappa days. There were no temples or palaces indicating that there were no gods or kings in Mahenjodar Harappa days. When Gordon Childe expressed surprise that in the Pre-Vedic city of Harappa, costly jewelery was found in workers’ quarters, he could not visualize that chiefs and rich men often retired to poorer areas, opting for a life dominated by the values of AHIMSA and ASTEYA. Chandragupta and Kharabela were the examples of such life changers. Probably what some historian specify as poorer areas were cottages where the Gymno-Sophists (Anwikshikians) lived and preached Yogic values. Communism failed because its vision lacked the successful manner of bringing a new culture into being. Marx believed that abolition of property rights was enough for his purpose. Asteya society in India existed and continued for thousands of years. Otherwise Megasthenis living in the age of Chandragupta in the 3rd and 4th century BC could not have written about the seven hierarchical divisions of society. To avoid the man-made disasters that the world faces today, we must struggle to build a non-violent Asteya society. Our values, culture, societal and political institutions must be overhauled for that purpose. Intellectuals the world over should unravel the tangled threads of the pervading force-internalizing predatory culture and social structures (Foucault, Z. Bauman) so that an agenda for a new world becomes possible. Time is fast running out. Before communal or ethnic darkness obliterates all traces of a richer Pre-Vedic civilization based on praxis, historians for whom objectivity is sacrosanct, must not ignore the reality that the unexplained and undiscovered factors of Indian history cover features which are likely to become the foundation of a glorious human achievement which modern Euro-American framework of thought will also welcome. Kosambi has blazed a trail partially. Ramila Thappar had a few flashing insights (Patel Memorial lectures 1971 and Early India- Introduction P-XVIII – Top Para). Amartya Sen in ‘The Argumentative Indian’ shows a greater understanding of ancient atheistic India. More research should be done by these scholars and other eminent ones. Instead of ignoring archeological facts or thick items of cultures, not fitting their theoretical frame works, whether Marxist, nationalist, subaltern or Hindutwavadian, they should, like the quantum physicists, who upset the apple carts of Newtonian or Einsteinian certainty, be ready to shed their anchored biases to accommodate the holistic combination of the anthropic and rationalist principles that the original slim Mahabharata embodies (Eight thousand eight hundred verses instead of one lac verses which the present Mahabharat contains).

Western intellectuals who, out of disgust, with the present genocidal society, have banished the rationality principle, should not confine their quest to indigenous egalitarian communities that rely more on instinct than reason. Russell, Einstein, Schumacher, Erich Fromm; the Quakers and other Christian (not Churchian) caring communities, Latin American exploring human groups inspired by creative anarchism, are all travelers in the emancipatory path. The Buddha and Gandhi were both products of the pre-Vedic culture; Buddha consciously followed it, Gandhi internalized the ancient culture through his contact with the Jains and his Christian friends and his intuitional interpretation of the Gita as a book of non-violence. Asteya combined with the Yogic value of ‘APARIGRADHA’ (minimize your wants) only can save humanity from an ecological disaster which is hovering over the horizon of the twenty-first century. Elitism that plagues all the political systems generated by the Euro-American frame work of thought can only be eliminated in an Asteya society as depicted in Megashenis’ writings and the Mahabharata. That this sort of society and the caring and sharing individual is favored by nature comes out in the latest neurological experiments, made to discover the inherent tendencies of the orbito-frontal-cortex. War was an aberration, a product of the defective gene that was the result of an unhealthy mutation. Stephen jay Gould, an eminent biologist, asserted that ‘war’ as a phenomenon was not a product of the natural process of evolution. Through mimetic cultures and the survival compulsions, the violent mentality that sustained wars spread throughout the globe. We have to undo the last ten thousand years of history if we want to survive.

Asteya elite strive neither for wealth nor for power or fame (popular applause). They follow only their refined or meditation purified conscience. Because of their moral influence, they can restrain the state authorities, the media and the judiciary from indulging in people-harming activities. Gandhi, had he lived, would have played such a role.

We need not lose faith in humanity. If a non-violent Asteya society could exist for more than thousands of years in the past, (From Mahenjodaro days to the age of Kautilya and Megasthenes) there is no reason why a modified form of it imbibing elements of democratic socialism and creative anarchism will not prevail in the coming world. The frozen accident of a war-crazy society must not be allowed to dominate humanity, if we really want to have a new exploitation-free world where everyone is happy (enjoyer of SUKHA).

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References:-

1. The Synthetic Path
2. Santiparva (Moksha-Dharma Parva) 287-20
3. The Synthetic Path
4. The Emergent Self
5. Samyulta Nikayya
6. The Emergent Self
7. Scientists look to disrupt the brain chemistry of violence (by pys org)
8. Violence and Brain:- An urgent need for Research (the Scientist 17-01-2006.
9. Patanjala Yoga Darsan.
10. Romila Thapar in ‘Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas’
11. Vide my essay ‘Rationalism and Morality in History and Human Pryche’.
12. Close to the Singularity.
13. Mahabharata- ANUSHASHAN PARBANI (DANA-Dharma PARBA) canto-141, verse-41, 42.

Note:- Most of the articles of science quoted in the essay are from the book
‘The Third Culture’.

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*********BIO-DATA OF THE WRITER*********

Bhagwat Prashad, is a heretic, Gandhian socialist. He built educational institutions, got elected as a chairman of a Panchayet Samiti, resigned and worked as a lecturer in English. A believer in Lokayata philosophy, he is an ex-editor of journals-Vigil-English, Sarvodaya-Oriya. He is also a writer of several novels, poems (in Oriya) and essays (in Oriya and English). He has often been subjected to police harassment, false cases and threats from anti-socials due to his association with people’s movements and connection with human rights organizations. Presently, he is researching upon the works and literature on ancient Indian culture.
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