Religion: Radhakrishnan and J.N.Mohanty

An eminent Indian philosopher, Prof. J.N.Mohanty says “he is bored to death” to read Radhakrishnan! Prof. Mohanty should know! His beautiful little autobiography of just 130 pages (Between two worlds:East and West, OUP), is a precious little gem! It is endlessly illuminating and insightful. It would pay a rich dividend for intellect and I would strongly recommend for any connosieur of intellectual tastes. Mohanty had occupied the same high positions in teaching philosophy as Radhakrishnan,in Kolkatta and Oxford, besides doing original research in Germany under such eminent original thinkers like Edmund Husserl, perhaps the greatest German philosopher who revived the modern German philosophy...

Religion lost its central role in modern man’s life. And to quote Prof. Mohanty, a great Indian philosopher, more rooted to native Indian soil, more down to earth, more a Gandhian (his family members were great Gandhians, one was a Chief Minister of Orissa) than, I would say, the academic minded Radhakrishnan, says: "Conventional religious belief impedes both thinking and action.” Moreover, Mohanty is much more open-minded than Radhakrishnan. Says Mohanty "I do not deny God’s existence because I hold a materialistic world view that matter is all that there is. On the contrary, I totally reject materialism as a bad philosophy. Idealism, for me is a quite plausible philosophy. But these things have nothing to do with God’s existence" He says, I think more pointedly, the need for freedom of the mind. One must feel free to think. “Thinking is hard; to follow the path of thinking is harder still.” You can’t find such candour in Radhakrishnan.

And at the same time without knowing modern man’s many questions today, many questions can’t be answered only by referring to the sciences. The Templaton Foundation gives every year a Prize for the “Progress in Religion” and Radhakrishnan was also a recipient of the prize and this foundation does research in the interface between sickness and religions. A Templeton Foundation Prize winner writing in the recent issue of the Times Higher Education supplement says that there is a more interaction between scientists and the theologians (of all religions) to know more about, among other things. “How we can promote more toleration, the biological and social bases for forgiveness in areas of human conflict”.

Dr. Radhakrishnan’s much laboured argument for a belief in God, though he was speaking from the Hindu religion’s point of view is almost identical to what is expounded in the three major Western religions, namely, Christian, Jewish and Islamic ones! At the current state of research in what is called the man’s next frontier in knowing his own self is a mix of many areas: brain research, genetic make-up and man’s capacity to manipulate so that every human being, in theory at least, to have the same genetic capabilities. Incidentally, one Indian researcher, V.S. Ramachandran at the university of San Diego, California, is the director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition. He says we, humans are just DNA vessels, self-replicating molecules. What it means for our mind, consciousness? Questions that don’t seem to have adequate answers from the new knowledge. India Local News posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2005 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Society & Culture.