Religion versus Archaeology
The Red Fort where faith will soon triumph over Archaeology. Photo (cc) dijitalboy.
If you’ve been following my del.icio.us feed you’ll have already seen I’ve been reading the archaeological news coming out of India recently. I’ve held off commenting, because I’m not very familiar with Indian archaeology. You should bear that in mind when reading on. I’ve also spent a few days trying to pull together who believes what happened when. And today I found the post ABC of Ram Sethu at E-mc^2, which says more or less the same thing. As far as I can tell the story is this:
Around 1.75 million years ago Ravana, King of Lanka was being a pest. As a bit of foresight Ravana had ensured that he was invulnerable to the attacks of Gods, Demons and celestial folk, but left out men and animal from the list. Vishnu spotted the loophole and incarnated as the human Rama, to get round some legal paperwork. Ravana kidnapped his wife and during the ensuing rumpus Rama built a bridge to Sri Lanka.
Around 125,000 years ago geological action started to form a bar of rocks and shoals creating a string of islands or shallows between southern India and Sri Lanka.
Around 2000 years ago the poet Valmiki composed the Rāmāyaṇa, which described the events of 1.75 million. Unfortunately he neglected to state whether Rama was homo sapiens or homo erectus, which could have helped a lot.
This sets the scene for a controversy around the dredging of a channel through the Ram Sethu. In 2001 the BJP, then the ruling party in India decided a channel through the Ram Sethu might be a good thing. At moment shipping has to travel round Sri Lanka. A channel could cut out a day’s travel so they started a feasibility study. In the past month the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has been giving its opinion at an inquiry. As part of their statement they argued that the the Rāmāyaṇa could not considered a reliable text on events alleged to have happened over a million years ago. The Ram Sethu is, in their opinion, a natural formation. This has inflamed hardline Hindus led by the BJP, now out of office.
It’s about respect or lack of it. The BJP and other hardline Hindu groups like the VHP want to know how the hell the ASI can have the audacity to say there’s no archaeological evidence the bridge was man-made, simply because they didn’t find any archaeological evidence. The Rāmāyaṇa is fact say the BJP, and if there’s no scientific evidence that the Rāmāyaṇa is true, then it’s the science that’s wrong. They demanded respect and humility from the government and threatened that if they didn’t get it there’d be action.
As a result two members of the ASI have been suspended and the government have retracted the offending sections of the report. Is this the right way to tackle a clash of faith and evidence?
A popular idea is that really there needn’t be a clash at all. This is Stephen Gould’s idea of separate magesteria. Religion tackles one set of truths and Science tackles another. This is an important basis from the Framing argument. Unfortunately the above example shows there is a clash and this does have consequences.
“We come under pressure to give permission every year but have resisted for the past five years,” said a source in the ASI — an arm of the culture ministry — which has spent a large sum manicuring the lawns.
“The show involves cooking of food, digging up the grounds and lighting crackers, all of which violate world heritage site guidelines.”
Source: The Telegraph – Calcutta
Elsewhere the damage is more severe. Politicians are drawing comparisons between the Sethu and Ayodhya. Ayodhya is infamous as the site of a 16th century mosque torn down my a mob of Hindus.
If these sites genuinely are sites of Lord Ram, then arguably the BJP and VHP are in the right. The problem is how do they know they’re right? If sincerity of faith in the truth of Rāmāyaṇa is evidence enough, then the same should apply Koran, Bible and any other holy text. Any sincere believers should carry the same authority. Unfortunately there are no generic faiths. There are only specific religions, which causes a problem when any faith-based arguments enter public debate. Believers demand respect, but their own faiths usually preclude similar respect being given to non-believers.
By suspending the members of the ASI, the Indian government has become a lightweight theocracy. Effectively the rule is that Hindu faith takes precedence over evidence – repeated at Fort Agra. You’re welcome to believe Lord Rama walked the earth 17 lakh years ago, but nonetheless no amount of belief will make it science, only evidence. The choice for India and elsewhere is whether to follow faith or evidence and – unless a believer is infallible – it is an inescapable clash between religion and archaeology.
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