Nehru and the rationalist thought
The origin of Science owes a great deal to the development of the analytical approach and the empirical temper. The age of reason had been in many ways the forerunner of the age of science.
THE ORIGIN of science owes a great deal to the development of the analytical approach and the empirical temper. The age of reason had been in many ways the forerunner of the age of science. But yet the application of scientific discoveries can be divorced from reason or it can stand in the way of proper development of Science as a contributor to human knowledge.
One can recall here the implications for mankind of the first atomic explosion at Los Alamos which made Robert Oppenheimer recite lines if the Bhagawad Gita in shocked disbelief: it served to bring out this crucial happening as a challenge to the rationality of man. The early awakening of the scientific spirit in Europe was the result of the Renaissance and very soon scientific knowledge became a part of the great human heritage.
A rational outlook has a wider connotation in the context of history. It comprehends the scientific temper but goes beyond it to recognize the worth and importance of the individuals and their capacity to judge and act rationally.
Traditional societies, whatever is their strength, were built on the edifice of unreason whether it was in the West or the East. But there have been interludes in history which are an exception to this rule. The teachings of Buddha, for instance, had a deeply rationalistic core while on the other hand the Manusmriti perhaps summed up views and attitudes which were more popularly held.
After the European Renaissance, rationality or the concept arising out of it became the main component of Western thought. Logic became allied to empirical judgment, and religion came to discard the faith in miracles. The spirit of enquiry now formed an intrinsic part of the reasoning faculty of the human mind.
Renaissance humanism, whether it is secular humanism of the true spirit of Science or Christian humanism, that is, the essence of Reformation, depended severely on the deeper convictions bearing on the rationality of the human mind. In the west, rationalism naturally applied to breaks on mystical, the occult and on extreme forms of romanticism. All the positive features of the 18th and 19th century civilizations in Europe can be traced to the deep allegiance to the rational temper.
India’s 19th century renaissance, though a by-product of the impact of the West, had its own peculiar and historical characteristics, one important feature being the historical situation of the Indian society in that particular point of time. Some of the most important ideas of the period had been those relating to man’s rationality- and his historicity.
One should understand this important development in the thoughts and ideas of the Renaissance personalities and humanists of India of the 19th century before we come to someone like Nehru, who related those ideas to the most modern period in India’s democracy. The rationality of the thought and vision of Rammohan Roy (1772-1833) is quite manifest in his approach to traditional religion, the most dominant influence in the traditional Indian society.
Has Rammohan advocated radical social reform, purely on humanitarian plank, his impact could not have been so far-reaching. His advocacy of monotheism was based on a rational appraisal as was his propagation of the most radical social reforms of the 19th century. It was not his fault that his rational outlook and his historical sense failed to register on the minds of some of the other thinkers and personalities of the period. However, Tagore summed up the quintessential elements in Rammohan’s thoughts as being representative of the true spirit of the Renaissance.
It is significant that Rammohan’s ideas did not remain influenced by these ideas, challenging the order of values in the traditional societies. M. G. Ranade (1842-1900) and R.G. Bandarkar (1837-1925) carried on the mantle of Rammohan Roy and established a firmer outline of rationalist and humanistic outlook than could be done by Rammohan’s successors in Bengal. Very soon, the Prarthana Samaj was set up on the model of the Brahma Samaj and it was here that Ranade declared that the ideal of the Samaj was to follow the teachings of Gautam Buddha, which can be said to represent the earliest trend of rationalism in Indian thought.
Ranade, who deeply imbibed the values of Western philosophy and history, adopted the same methodical approach to knowledge and like Rammohan, interpreted religion to give it a rational base. R.G. Bhandarkar, the younger contemporary of Ranade, extended the same spirit of rationalism to other areas of the intellect. He laid great stress on the cultivation of the historical sense and the analytical method.
Nehru, who studied Science at the Cambridge University, had been influenced by the contemporary developments in Science. He also had an early preference for rationalist philosophers. Like Bertrand Russell. Later, he was influenced by Gandhi’s humanism with it overwhelming sense of social justice and Tagore’s unified and integral vision of man. Significantly, while militant nationalism led many to terrorist cults or fascist postures, Nehru’s rationalism led inevitably towards democracy and socialism.
Nehru’s rational approach to India’s past is manifest in his The Discovery of India- a book whose unique quality is to found what Dr. Einstein described as objective understanding of process of history, of a whole civilization. While he agreed that life does not consist entirely of what we see and hear and no thinking person can ignore the visible world, Nehru opted for the method of science in his effort to understand all aspects of life and reality.
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