Charvaka (Carvaka, Chaarvaaka)

Charvakism was an Indian school of thought which perhaps the only Indian philosophy that was materialistic in nature. However, their real influence on Indian social life was absolutely nothing. Perhaps, a wrong step in the evolution of civilized Indian society.

The basic features:
Via Amma's Column(Jyothsna Kamat's Blog) at Kamat's Potpourri

* God is non-existent.
* There is no pre-existence or after-life.
* There is no such thing as salvation (moksha); death itself is salvation.
* Happiness is the only goal of life.
* The wise should seek happiness with productive work.
* Pursuit of music, eroticism, medicines etc., add comfort to life.
* Distinction of class and caste are humbug.
* The term "chastity for women" is rubbish (men and women are alike as far as chastity is concerned).

It is said that, Charvakas were attacked for the fourth point. What about other points? Not much is said about that except they were called 'vitandavaadi's(one who indulge in jugglery of words). Madhvaacharya said that it was very difficult to refute their arguments. At that time India was a society where many schools of thoughts supposed to have lost out to Vaidiks in debates. And Charvakism was supposed to be undebatable! So even with such strong foundations why couldn't they attract the great majority of intelligent people of that period to its fold?

The fringe philosophers:
The other name for Charvakism is Lokayata. Some people define it as 'philosophy of common people'. But I would go with the other definition that is 'philosophy of worldly'. Since I am sceptical about the number of common people among its followers I won't go with the former definition. In my opinion, there were only few philosophers at any point of time subscribing to this school of thought. And they didn't have any position in the society.

One striking feature of Charvakism was its relentless opposition to Brahmins and its call for rebellion against authority. These two things possibly demonstrate their position outside the public sphere of influence. Also, since none of the Indian schools of thought or the establishment found it necessary to open educational institutions for the common people, it was impossible for Charvakas to attract the vast majority of the population which was too superstitious, barbaric and illiterate to accept their philosophy.

So it leaves us with brilliant people of that era. Though I have talked about tendency of Indians to follow whatever their ancestors had said without any question, this kind of closed mindset baffles me. Was Charvakas’ strong stand on happiness too distasteful for the ascetic minded Indians? Extremely hard to believe. Were Charvakas the people outside the Aryan (this includes Vaidiks, Jains and Buddhists) society? Were they descendents of Greeks(who had developed such kind of materialist philosophy by that time) who stayed back in India. Hard to say since they were not called as Mlechchas, Yavanas, Panchamas etc. in any of the Vaidik literature. Or were they really Indus Valley people as claimed in the Wikipedia article on Charvakas? At this point this claim is too preposterous considering the number of questions it would raise. Not least of them is the question of Dravidians.

Charvakism and the concept of Maya:
Ironically, whatever we know about Charvakas is because of their arch rivals’, Vaidik, Buddhist and Jain, literature. The philosophers belonging to these schools of thought had written about the works of Charvakas sometimes with a neutral angle or sometimes with an intention of refutation. So whatever might be their intention they never really overlooked that philosophy, especially Brahmins.

Brahmins, being dominant, were always at the receiving end of Charvakas’ arguments. However, they were never closed minded to whatever Charvakas said. I suspect they might have used at least one observation of Charvakas to complete and be comfortable with their theory of Maya (illusion)

Charvakas refused the role of inference and accepted only direct perception to prove the truth. This is more in line with modern Western philosophy of refuting ‘divine influence’. Whereas West went on to develop empiricism which gave a complete role for observation and experimentation in developing theories for the world’s mysteries, Charvakism failed to give a proper direction for its philosophy.

After refusing the role of inference, the later philosophers went on to reject the role of perception in finding the truth! In a sense, they said truth can’t be understood either by inference or by perception.

The Vaidik school of thought that had become stagnant because of its total devotion to its founding fathers’ words found a new proof in Charvakas’ philosophy to further their own theory of world(confusion about the world would be more appropriate). As claimed by Charvakas, if truth about the world can’t be found either by inference or perception then where was the proof that truth existed at all. It was only Maya (illusion). This theory became a dominant and salient feature of Brahmanical religion after Shankara’s time. I am sure the Charvaka philosopher who rejected the role of direct perception must be Shankara’s antecedent.


Charvakism is not a great loss:
Indian society could have been more civilized had it embraced at least few points of Charvakism,viz., No caste, Equality of sexes. However, considering it as a philosophy which would have heralded a scientific thinking in line with Greek philosophies which put the foundations for the modern Western philosophy would be far fetched. As I have discussed, they failed to give the right direction for their philosophy. However, they were the ones who came very close in achieving it.

Hindu Gods

The concept of god would look very complex in Hinduism. People would argue that Hinduism accepts both idol and symbol worship; Hinduism is actually a monotheistic religion(or way of life). But the majority Hindus are generally idol worshippers and pantheists. I wonder whether Shankara's 'atma', 'paramatma' doctrine has any relevance in Hinduism practiced by the general public. But one aspect of Hinduism that depressed me over the years is that the belief is sustained by the fear not by the devotion.

Fear and religions:
Most of the religions cater to fears of after life. Every religion tries to instill a fear of hell into its adherents. Here the God will punish the wanderers after their death. But Hinduism differs in this case. Just like the religion the gods are also unique in Hinduism. Actually, Hindus have two types of powers. Deva(god) and Daiva(Spirit). And these together will always punish their believers for doing something right, moral and totally harmless unless they are pleased.
Generally the spirits are simply spoilsports in everything. You have to always keep them in good humour. By the way, who are these spirits? They are Lord Shiva's Ganas(some kind of army set). Ofcourse, they got that place because of the Vaidiks efforts to assimilate all the cults into a single Brahmanical religion.

God as a nasty mafia don:
As I said before, the uniqueness about hindu gods and spirits is that they will give you all the troubles even if you are doing something right, moral and totally harmless unless you please them. Ofcourse, if the gods and spirits are pleased then you can indulge in all kinds of activities, good or bad notwithstanding, they will protect you.
That's not all. Let's say, you don't believe in any of these shantis, poojas and yaagas(hindu rituals). They(gods and spirits) don't punish only you for that. They might target your close relatives for your sins. So you don't have any respite from them. Unless your close relatives are also rational like you, the fear that fills your surroundings will be unbearable.

Everybody is equal before hindu gods:
I have to admit this aspect frustrates me all the time. I am an atheist. But I would like to oppose Hinduism for the only reason that it supports the concept of god or some supreme power. I won't be having any problems with its moral teachings and its stress on disciplined lifestyle. But Hinduism is highly perverted. It doesn't make any difference between a person into corrupt practices and a straight person. I find it really disgusting when the offerings from all sorts of people to Tirupati's temple is accepted without any reservations. I would expect some official declaration from Hindu religious heads to the effect that the god accepts gratitude only from the straight persons. I am sure all the sins must have been listed in the scriptures. Atleast let the simple have some sort of consolation that their after life will be better than those who could afford to offer greater riches accumulated from wrong means. Otherwise, it's an outright humiliation for the straight, simple believers.

Let life be simple for simple people:
The greatest favour that Hinduism can do for the simple people is to offer them a life without fear. Most commonly, they all believe in god and a religion based solely on devotion and disciplined lifestyle will be just perfect for them. I am not sure whether Bhakti(Devotion) movement stressed on disciplined lifestyle. But I don't see Bhakti movement's influence in South India.

Caste and Hinduism:
I no longer hold Hinduism responsible for the Caste system. I consider it more a racial and class problem. Hinduism as a way of life can do as good or bad to lowest castes as it would do to the highest castes. The rise of Nadars(Tamil Nadu) and Tiyyas(Ezhavas, Kerala) using Hinduism without depending upon Brahmins has convinced me that if not better but it could be as good as Christianity or Islam in imparting a disciplined lifestyle.

Our ancestors were the smartest...

I have discussed about religions and scientific mindset. There I have talked about Christian Europeans questioning their religion and the knowledge on which it was based. The people who ventured into this prohibited land of infinite knowledge, not infrequently, were the men of the same religion. A really fascinating aspect of western civilization.

If we observe the development of Indian philosophy, an unwritten code was that the Vedas, Upanishats can not be questioned. There could be only interpretations of these early works. Birth and Nirvana of the knowledge was complete in those works. In Shankara’s own words, these early scripts contain everything that a person has to know and they can’t be questioned. Ofcourse, there were people who didn’t accept the Vedas. But these Nastiks were not part of Astik schools of thought. Interaction between these two groups was just an interaction between two different religions with both staunchly believing what their ancestors had told them.

Europeans didn’t think so. There were so many religious men, who fervently believed in the Christian god but not the words in the Books about him or his deeds. To their inquisitive mind the knowledge of the books looked inadequate and flawed. They went to the nature with their observations and experimentations and heralded a new era of secular scientific knowledge.

What was wrong with Indians? Physical threat by the uncompromising society held them back? Europe was merciless in this regard. Or Indians of the middle ages were really dumb in comparison with their ancestors?

It was no wonder that Europeans developed theory of Evolution. For the people who thought they were mentally more evolved than their ancestors it was natural to come up something like evolution. But Indians were devolved people, in their opinion, from human beings to animals. They continued to think so.

Update 21-Mar-2005:

A coincidence. I came across this book on Human devolution via this blog. There are so many people even among Europeans who still think our ancestors were the smartest. Ofcourse the smartest among these people have come up with Intelligent Design concept to uphold the greatness of their biblical ancestors.

Why does fate exist?

If something goes wrong or if something does not turn out as expected, a typical Indian tendency is to ascribe those situations to ‘fate’. While ‘destiny’ is sometimes used as a counterpart to ‘fate’; in Kannada only one word describes the cause for the good and bad things, ‘vidhi’, which could be translated as ‘fate’.

People generally overlook numerous instances of things going right or otherwise but base their opinions on few incidents. However, these are the situations that matter them a lot. Though destiny does not matter much since the superstitions it develops do not necessarily harm the person or the society. But fate can have negative impact on person’s psyche, confidence and motivation. The superstitions that the person develops to get over the bad luck can be detrimental to him or the society. A question of interest would be ‘why does fate strike a person?’

A surest answer would be person expects something in a situation with too many ‘random experiments’. Let’s consider a situation.

Everyday, you take an auto to your office. Let us say you catch an auto at 10:30 in the morning. Here, the incidence we are expecting is auto’s availability at 10:30. Since autos do not have any obligation to arrive in front your gate at 10:30, its availability is a random experiment. I will call this as an ‘external random variable’. Now we have to determine the probability of the availability of the auto. It is possible that out of 10 days you have caught the auto on 7 days. A probability of 0.7. Since majority of the times you have found an auto, a common misconception of its availability will develop in your mind. Now let us consider that ‘emergency situation’. You have to find an auto at sharp 10:30 so that you can reach somewhere in time.

A common person, even with a misconception of 0.7 probability as 100% availability, wouldn’t have fallen for a concept like ‘fate’ if atleast 70% of his ‘emergency situations’ have occurred as expected. A rarity. What is wrong? Simple. He has overlooked one more random variable, emergency situation itself. I will call this as an ‘internal random variable’. A probability 0.7 has to be divided between normal situation and emergency situation. Let’s consider you have emergency situation once in five days. A probability of 0.2. So, what is the chance of you catching an auto in an emergency situation? I will call it as probability of destiny(P_destiny) and is equal to 0.7 * 0.2 = 0.14. In other words, you have only 14% chances of catching an auto in an emergency situation. This is the case in most of the human expectations. Fate will always triumph.

The only way to get rid of this spell of fate is to make sure you have as few ‘external random variables’, that you can’t control, as possible in your life. Also increase the probability of your ‘internal random variables’. An easy example would be trying to do something. One or two attempts will result in very low probability. So number of attempts must be many. Of course, you can always accept the fact that your probability of success is very limited.

corruption, intelligence and hardwork

The question why people are corrupt is something can't be easily answered. The gene for corruption is yet to be identified. But as we understand human nature it is accepted that corruption is a natural trait and being non-corrupt might suggest a defective gene. A fine analogy could be smoking. Though the individual benefits of smoking and corruption can not be correlated, their overall effect on the society is generally negative.
As this article suggests, non-smokers possess a defective gene which prohibits them from smoking or controls the habit of smokers. This could be true for non-corrupt people. I have drawn a chart that tries to classify corrupts and non-corrupts based on their intelligence and attitude towards work. This attitude is generally a function of motivation, drive and passion.



Where, NC -> Not Corrupt
LC -> Less Corrupt
C -> Corrupt
NO -> No Opportunity for being corrupt

Indian Military -a thought

All over the world, countries are revamping their military setup in line with the new realities of war. In the western civilization military might and technological developement has a symbiotic relationship. This was the case with muslim world too.
In India(as a cultural entity), the situation was different from the beginning. The early Buddhist and Jain (elite religions during that period and possibly confined to ruling class and rich traders) kings gave more consideration to non-violence, non-alcoholism and religious piety than military and war. So majority of these kingdoms were easily destroyed by the caste kings and few of them (Kashmir and Gandhara(southern Afghanistan)) were routed by the foreign armies. Later the caste kingdoms were handicapped by the division of society along men of knowledge, men of war and men of skills. The technical development required all these people working on equal footing, with equal education. Though bravery was never lacking all the caste kings were soundly beaten by the Muslim and European armies with better technical skills and individual brilliance. During British conquest even the Indian Muslim kings lacked the technical superiority. However, it was not a totally hopeless situation with them. Tipu Sultan was supposed to have employed world's first missiles against the British.
Modern day India(after independence) is still struggling with these handicaps. Though technically, it has lost only one war against China, the wars it has won against Pakistan replete with too many strategic blunders. Ofcourse, then there is LTTE. The war against China was a model of total failure in all the departments. The US can afford to lose a war in far Vietnam but not India in its own soil, with its present boundaries encircling only two-thirds of its cultural and ethnic boundaries. Then there is a talk of brilliant men not joining the military. I wonder whether it makes any difference in Indian context. Our highly educated cricketers were hardly superior cricketing brains in the real world.
Quest should be for instilling a mind of a canny military strategist within our great brains. I would expect Indian establishment encouraging top brains from the technical universities or field to enroll for voluntary military training during their leisure. These men should be given incentives to combat as mercenaries in our internal struggle. A new command should be constituted especially for these men( and women). And it is also very important to allow private sector and universities to be part of defense research and development. This is already in place in the US. I think government is taking steps in this direction.
I think we have to experiment with this for atleast one generation ( 40 years) to see if it springs up great military minds and inventors. Whatever we do in this direction will never be a disaster in the scale of our past ones.

Religions and scientific mindset

The religious mindset and the scientific mindset make a very intriguing pair. The Baconian school of philosophy would have us believe that scientists were expected to be atheists. How could an empiricist possibly believe a ‘divine cause’? But was it the case with all our scientists?

Here, I have tried to analyse how Christianity, Hinduism and Islam are living with scientific mindset. The people of interest are the ones who have been identified with these religions stereotypically. Therefore, I would be discussing about Christian Europeans, Hindu Indians and Muslim Arabs.

Christianity:

Christian church had a very troubled relationship with scientists. Its problems were compounded by the fact that people who questioned and falsified the Christian truths and solutions were its own people. From the beginning of the renaissance it had to compete with scientific developments that have since then taken away most of its folk in the Christian heartland of Europe. Now most of the European churches have very low attendance to its services. Christianity is surviving because it has become a cultural identity there. But not everything is lost for the religious Christianity.

In the United States of America, it’s still fighting against scientific theories that directly question its existence. We are now finding “Intelligent Design” (ID) theorists trying to push their arguments into school curriculum and calling the Darwinian Evolutionary theory flawed.

At the one end church proudly and may be with some justification claimed that Christian life style paved the way for the glorious industrial and scientific development in Europe, ironically, on the other hand, it had to fight for its own existence as a spiritual guide of the masses. Still it grew to be the most dominant religion around the world within few decades because of those developments. It’s still strong among the converted people without any indigenous scientific development. This is generally the case with rest of the world. So the interesting thing would be how these converted people, scientists and deeply religious among them, handle the anomalies which European Christians fought and still fighting over? Well, it’s beyond the scope of my discussions.

Hinduism and Islam:

I thought it would take much of time and space while discussing about Indians and Arabs. Sadly, as I wrote through the passages about Christianity, I found I could easily finish off this discussion about Hinduism and Islam within few sentences as there were no conflicts between religion and scientific developement in these societies.

The western influence is the direct cause of any scientific development and industrial revolution in these countries. This scientific development has never really threatened the most advanced form of religious philosophies in these countries. However, the most barbaric forms of religious practices have vanished or gradually vanishing. But this can’t be attributed to the development of scientific mindset when in most of the cases, reformation of the religions was the major drive in eradicating these practices.

But, has the scientists of these countries directly ever challenged and proved that major religious philosophies were flawed? Unfortunately, the Baconian scientists in these countries were hardly bothered about these philosophies. In India, the religious institutions were hardly threatening. In Arab countries, they were hardly sparing. In both these regions religious mindset and scientific mindset were happy to be separated and co-exist. The scientists, even if inclined to challenge, were further hampered by the fact that the theories that they were trying disprove were developed by their own ancestors and the theories that they were supporting in its place were developed by the people of different religious and ethnic background. This is a very subtle and a powerful dampener. The most brilliant people of these countries have become victims of their identities.

Now, we find both in India and in Arab countries religions are thriving without any serious threat to their foundations. The failure to produce the philosophers in the mould of Francis Bacon to put an end to the religious solutions (corresponding to Islamic and Hindu philosophies) has left these countries with Physicists that believe in astrology, biologists that believe in the Supreme Being.

Now, that puts us an interesting question whether there were no western scientists with beliefs. Newton was supposed to be a believer. But his god was supposed to be more sophisticated than as explained by the existing religions. Anyway, he lived before Darwin. What about others? I really don’t have the percentage statistics of atheist scientists and believer scientists in the western world.

The quest of 'higher' god drove many religious people in Europe to doubt the biblical knowledge. But will Hindus and Muslims ever have that feeling of inadequacy with their religious beliefs?

Perhaps the cultural renaissance in India and Arab countries need serious threat to the existing beliefs. I consider that path taken by the European society after medieval ages is the right one(if not perfect, though I don't know the criteria for that) from evolutionaly point of view. Any alternatives at any point of time in the history doesn't seem to be viable and worth emulating.

This conclusion might imply that Hindus and Muslims in western countries have better chances of producing great minds. Nevertheless, it also depends upon the degree of assimilation of these populations in those adopted countries.

Greek philosophy Vs Indian philosophy

Western philosophy traces its roots to Greek philosophy. Greek philosophers, beginning around 640BC (Thales of Miletus) to third century AD, developed various branches of philosophy. Their secular/scientific way of reasoning gave birth to glorious western ‘renaissance’ centuries later.

Around the same time Indian philosophers, Vaidiks, Budhists and others, were developing their own axioms for all their observations of the world. But their solutions have not stood the test of the time. While Europe went on to became dominant power in the world, Indian society degraded. Its recovery could begin only when it came in contact with western colonial powers and their philosophies and institutions.

Many western philosophers felt Indian philosophy couldn’t come out of the concept of God or of some supreme power and give its observations more objective solutions. In simple words, there was no practical way of verifying the theories.

Recently, I was reading about Greek philosophy and I came across a very interesting commentary about Greek arguments. Like Indians of that era, Greeks used to have debates to put forth their ideas. But unlike Indians, Greeks soon found out shortcomings of such arguments.

They realized that a person with stronger oratory skills and verbal power could effectively argue and win even when his arguments were weak. Moreover, many professional oratory groups, Sophists, who would argue anything for money, held sway in such debates. Understanding the futility of this arrangement, they went on to develop empirical way of verifying the theories. But in India, Vaidiks were obsessed with debates. In their literature, they would claim challenging other schools of thoughts and defeating them in debates. Though there were humourous comments(by other Vaidiks of the same period, check out Panini and Snake's conversation in the mailing list) about Vaidiks' obsession with ‘tarka’(arguments), nobody seriously challenged the usefulness or practicability of such an arrangement to further ones ideas.

Possibly, it’s one of the wrong steps in the evolution of Indian philosophy.

End of Indus Valley Civilization : (3)

Invasion by Pre-Dravidians :

There are so many theories about IVC. So here comes one more. Based on the observations I have made in my previous articles I’m proposing theory of ‘Pre-Dravidian Invasion’. This has a stronger case in the Vaidik age Indo-Aryan literature.

Most of the Vaidik literature talk about Aryans fight against a dark skinned people called Dasyus. The description of these people hardly suits to the urbanized people of IVC. So it’s very clear that these people can not be the ones who built IVC. But they can be the people who destroyed it.

Around 1700B.C Pre-Dravidian people of South India started attacking IVC. IVC was not known to possess a strong army. These urban, trading people along with their grand constructions became easy victims of attacking pre-Dravidians. A closer analogy could be barbarians (Germanic tribes) attacking Rome. It looks like these pre-Dravidians were mainly from South India, since pre-Dravidians of East India do not exhibit Dravidian culture( languages and Shaivism, which I feel is the main religion of Harappan people) of South India but still practices pre-Dravidian rituals of worshipping dark skinned goddesses. Now back to the main argument.

Emergence of Dravidian people:

While pre-Dravidians were destroying their homeland, the IVC population started migrating to Southern regions. Ironically, moving to the homelands of their destroyers. And overtime they mingled and crossbred with local pre-Dravidian population, influencing and assimilating with local culture. Since it was no more a homogenous block, these people never had any distinct identity of themselves. It was probably during first or second century AD these people were classified as Dravidians by the Indo-Aryans who by this time settled in all of North-India. ‘Manusmriti’, written around this time, categorizes all Dravidians as ‘Shudras’. Though there were further divisions in the society after Aryan Brahmin missionaries started arriving between 4^th to 7^th centuries.

Aryans and pre-Dravidians:

After defeating and destroying IVC something around 1700BC, pre-Dravidians continued to live in north-west of India. Possibly when Indo-Aryans started arriving around 1500BC they were the pale shadow of their forefathers who invaded that territory. Even the numbers could be favouring the Aryans. Defeated by these Indo-European people, Dasyus started retreating from IVC area and migrated to other parts of the country. A part of them might have been assimilated with Indo-Aryans. But some of these disintegrated people because of Aryan onslaught found it difficult to become a single, strong entity and degenerated to live a pathetic life. And in later centuries these people might possibly oppressed as ‘untouchables’(This argument is influenced by Ambedkar’s theory of origin of untouchablilty in India. I am proposing my theory of brokenmen ) by other Indians, now a mixed race of Aryans and pre-Dravidians.

In this series of articles, I have proposed IVC population was light skinned Mediterranean race. This civilization was destroyed by the dark skinned pre-Dravidians(australoids) of South India. The escaping Mediterranean population migrated to South India and assimilated with local people and gave rise to culture described as “Dravidian” by the Indo-Aryans. Indo-Aryans defeated pre-Dravidians on entering India from north-west and established their civilization. This argument tries to explain the missing link between end of the Indus valley civilization and invasion/migration of Indo-Aryans.

End of Indus Valley Civilization : (2)

It is agreed that Harappan civilization declined around 1700B.C and Indo-Aryans began to appear on Indian Horizons about 1500B.C. So it is ruled out that IVC was destroyed by the invading Aryan tribes. There are numerous theories like, earthquakes, famines for the decline of IVC. Few historians do not rule out invasions by barbarian tribes of north-west.
But I found nobody has taken into account two important factors.
1. Melanin pigmentation distribution among population
2. Behavioural outlook of the people.
These two factors will be discussed in the succeeding paragraphs.

1. Melanin pigmentation:
If we observe present day population of Indian sub-continent the skin pigmentation increases as you move from north-west( present day Afghanistan) to south-east (Tamilnadu, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). It is very difficult to imagine around 4000 years back the complete Indian population was purely dark skinned. So I propose IVC population was similarly light skinned as its Arab neighbours. And the South-East region of India was dark skinned as present day population in Tamilnadu, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

2.Behavioural Anthropology:

The main occupation of Harappan people was trading. And present day Harappan tract population of Sindhis , Gujaratis and Rajasthani Marwaris are still predominantly trading communities.

The dark skinned population of South India was known to be aggressive (still so, if you consider Tamils). Many communities worked as mercenaries in olden times.

Continued…