01.02.09
Secular India?
James said,
January 2, 2009 at 3:29 pm ·
In addition to my links on the Indo-European debate, I should point out that taking the Indian leftists at their word is hazardous. I don’t care much for “Hinduism,†but the Indian leftists obviously have an axe to grind and it affects their objectivity. A case in point is Meera Nanda who is simply not among the most capable of scholars:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/politics/bogey.html: Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey
The birth of a skeptics movement in India is a puzzle for a Westerner such as myself. But then maybe we know little about India.
The current generation a la the Science bloggers, New Atheists and Dawkins groupies won’t rest until they completely obliterate the Indian religious tradition.
Will that include people like Sam Harris who is a closet believer? There are quite a few posts here on Dennett and his student Meera Nanda: type the name in the search box on this blog.
The term secular is not really adequate for discussions of India. The word arises in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Western modernity and doesn’t represent a set of beliefs. But the current Big Science culture is currently closing in on the change in the meaning of the term, and much else, so we might understand the significance of the Axial Age in the way it preempted the final homogenization of planetary culture by setting many streams of culture in parallel.