Is "reason" the God? Part 1

I plan to write few blogs under this topic since the topic as such encompasses a vast area of thought process that it would be injustice to it if I use it just for one single flash of my thought.

My mind has been deprived of sufficient 'meat' to foster thinking, either I was lazy or was reluctant. The book by Jared Diamond is getting boring my the chapter. There is too much of micro research which I don't care about and I am forcing myself to read further hoping that I would soon encounter the chapter where he offers a summary of his research.

I spend quite a lot of time on Wikipedia and I should say that it is one of the most brilliant inventions of the Internet. I have always wondered if I would ever own the complete Encyclopedia books given the fact it is nearly unaffordable and also the fact that it can become outdated in few years when new information is discovered or new topics are added. Wikipedia solves that problem for me. It is online, reviewed by all concerned and nearly accurate and up to date. Another branch of Wikipedia is Wikiversity which is sort of free online university for people to learn in a structured manner. I am currently reading a bit in Philosophy and hoping that a more structured approach would give me some structure to my thoughts as well.

So, in the process of randomly clicking on different links starting from the main topic of Philosophy, I landed on the page about Chanakya or Kautilya as he is otherwise called. A lot of people in the India sub-continent have heard about him and know him as the angry academician who fostered Chandragupta Maurya to conquer the Nandas and eventually helped him establish the Mauryan dynasty. He is also known to many as the author of one of the earliest book on Economics and Politics - Arthasashtra. I have heard stories about him from my parents and grandparents who describe him as a very learned and short-tempered Brahmin who after being insulted by the Nanda Emperor, vowed to destroy him and never to tie his long hair until his objective was met. He did in fact achieve his objective and on a lighter note, I do not know if he tied his locks.

What many people do not know including myself is that Arthasashtra was one of the first comprehensive book written on Economics and Politics addressing topics such as fiscal and monitory policy, public welfare, international relations, effects of immigration and emigration, military tactics and politics. He is also credited for couple of other books namely Nitisashtra and Chanakya Niti. Nitisashtra is a treatise on the ideal way of life and it addresses various topics such as marriage, familial responsibilities, and duty to society among others. It draws upon all the knowledge he had about Vedas and Upanishads that he mastered in the course of his life.

I came to know all about this from Wikipedia while I was browsing and more can be found if anyone is interested. My objective of giving this background was that in one of the reference site I came upon an article written by Surin Usgaonkar who has written about Supreme Court of India uphelding Kautilya's jurisprudence on Hindu wedding. This was a case about a couple who applied for divource and the court granted it and the statement made by the judge was thus, "Where the parties are young and the mental disorder is of such a type that the sexual act and procreation of children is not possible, it may furnish a good enough ground for nullifying the marriage.". Apparently, this statement seems to have been drawn from one of the niti's of Chanakya which states, "If a husband is either of a bad character, or long gone abroad, or has become a traitor to the crown, or is likely to endanger life of his wife, or has fallen in the esteem of his community, or has lost virility, he may be abandoned by his wife." - Translation by Dr R. Shamasastry © 1923.

Remember Arthasashtra was written 2300 years ago. What makes me wonder is not that Chanakya was a man of such fore-thought or the fact that he wrote it 2300 years ago when many parts of the world was filled with hunter-gathering nomadic groups or the fact that the social setup was pretty much similar to our current advancement in social understanding. What amazes me is that where are we after 2300 years later? If divource is an acceptable norm under certain cases and if we follow the normal curve of evolution both biologically and intellectually then today the concept of marriage for instance should be redundant. Or at the very very least, divource should be accepted factually as a way of life. But is divource really accepted in all walks of life in India? That is a question for each of us to think about.

This again relates to my earlier question as why the people in the Indian peninsula when so educated at one point in time lost all the knowledge and wisdom and are starting afresh as urban hunter-gatherers? I am not a nationalist, in fact I am an idealist who thinks that the national boundries should not exist and that we are people of this planet and not people of a particular country or a particular sect or a particular religion. The fact that I bring up India in most of my blogs is because that is the environment in which I grew up. I understand the past about India better than the past about China or Egypt. If I had enough information about those civilizations, then my argument would encompass them as well. The underlying agenda is to understand a certain skewness that I believe I see in human intellectual evolution. It is as if someone took the time machine and re-directed the course of human development to point zero and all the so called advanced civilization had to start all over again. I am not convinced that it is due to war or disease that certain group of people evaporated into thin air. Intelligent people have better chance of surviving adversity than the not so intelligent group. If this is un true then we can safely assume that this planet will be defeated or diminished in stature by less primitive group.

So, why the title "Is "reason" the God? Well the previous paragraph was of course not my original intention to put it here but had to continue my flow of thoughts. One of the things that I constantly observe when I read the Indian scriptures is that most, in fact almost all of them are based on sound reason than speculation. Consider another quote from Vashishta Dharmasashtra which I pick up from Surin's article:

svayaMipratipannaa vaa yadi vaa vipravaasitaa|
balaatkaaraa upbhuktaa vaa chora hasta gataa api vaa || 28-2||
na tyaajyaaduSitaa naarI naasyaas tyaagasvidhIyate |
puSpa kaalam upaasIta R^itu kaalena shudhyati || 28-3||

I do not have the complete translation for the above verse and I know it is a "sin" to quote something which I do not understand but effectively the above passage says that the society should not abandon a woman who has been 'raped' and should support in restoring her life back to normal and those who oppose such support for the women should be considered as much a criminal as the 'rapist' himself.

How is that for philosophy based on reason. In my opinion the point in time when these philosophies where being written and collected together, the society had a vary rational outlook at least the people who were in the governing position and leading the development of the society if not every member in those time. An outlook of this kind perculated to the members of the society who do not have the time or inclination to ponder about profound things it probably is the first step towards an ideal society. Society free of prejudice, war, moral and material crime, jealousy, blind beliefs and superstition, craving for wealth and power and a material accumulation of any kind.

Given that we claim we inherit a lot of our thinking process from our ancestors who in-turn wrote the vedas and upanishads, we should be praying "reason" as God.