Freedom from Nation or Scientific Caste?

-Dr. Anthony Savari Raj, 

As we have been witnessing these days the hot, sensitive and vehement debate on “freedom from nation or freedom in nation?” we will do well to engage ourselves with another important concern that needs to be equally or even more urgently addressed. It indeed concerns freedom from what I call the “scientific caste.”

The issue of freedom from nation or freedom in nation indeed involves the question on the caste structure of the Indian society and all its ill effects. To be sure, this issue has affected and still affects many deeply. But it is important to take note that it is the “scientific caste” today that seems to have accumulated a power on life and death immensely superior to any other caste of any other-period of human memory. The priorities, values and visions of the traditional culture such as ours seem to be at loggerhead with the “projects” of the technological world-view which seem to be penetrating every nook and corner of the earth, even faster than the wind.

Together with the blessings, we are only beginning to experience the deleterious consequences of the dominant technocratic world-view with signs of decay everywhere: the increase of violence, the decrease of happiness, the growth of poverty, the going down of self-confidence and in an unmistakable way, the response of the Earth making herself unfit for the human habitat. What is really significant is, whatever may be one’s traditional caste affiliation, the affliction caused by the scientific caste is universal and it affects ALL, individually and collectively. It is not limited to any group.

The common task ahead of us, therefore, is to wake up differently and dismantle gently the technocratic complex by voicing and asserting commonly, at the same time, uniquely our own visions and priorities of life, remaining at the same time, awake to our own peculiarities, strengths as well as weaknesses.

It is said that a bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on its own wings. Our concern on the break-up or the break-down of the nation is of course genuine, crucial and understandable. But what needs an urgent attention and care is our wings which are being broken and mutilated by the technocratic vision and mega machine, which indeed reduce reality to human beings, human beings to male, male to his thinking, thinking to his reason, and reason to calculation. And calculation can only cripple life.

Isn't life more than calculus? Can all the fish in the ocean of life and reality be captured by the technological or mathematical net? Perhaps a proper response to this question might lead to a better orientation to the issue of nationalism.