For two days from February 19, demonstrations at the Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishat at Banashankari will expose how credulous masses are taken for a ride by godmen and their humbug of tantra-mantra-astrology.
You could call it the annihilation of superstition. For two days from February 19, demonstrations at the Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishat at Banashankari will expose how credulous masses are taken for a ride by godmen and their humbug of tantra-mantra-astrology.
Three bodies of rationalists have organised the two-day demo-workshop, Yukti Sammelan, to encourage scientific temper in mass thinking and public behaviour.
The Bangalore Freethinkers Association, an essentially young working people’s forum, Dakshina Kannada Rationalists Association, and Federation of Indian Rationalists Association have, in collaboration with Nirmukta, an online endeavour dedicated to spread rationalist thinking, arranged seminars, demonstrations and workshops to explain how unwary commoners’ hard-earned money is being extracted for private profit by crafty religious bodies who instil the fear of god in them.
“This is the first attempt to bring various freethinkers on one platform,” said Pankaj Kulkarni of the Bangalore Freethinkers Association. “Currently, we are all struggling to spread scientific temper in masses though the government does nothing in this direction despite the Constitution desiring the same. Barring the first prime minister of India, no leader has made any attempt to make public mind secular and rational,” he added.
“It is surprising,” said a rationalist of Bangalore, “because secularism, the accepted policy of India, is the political expression of rationalism.”
Babu Gogineni, executive director of International Humanists and Atheists Union, Narendra Nayak, president of Federation of Indian Rationalists Association and freethinker Sujai Karampuri are among those will speak and steer the workshop.
Nayak, who is also a founder of the Dakshina Kannada Rationalists Association, said freethinking was not spreading because of political chicanery. He said many achievers and political bigwigs such as AK Antony, P Chidambaram and M Karunanidhi were rationalists and yet political compulsions kept them away from such forums.
Another luminary in this category is former president APJ Abdul Kalam. Rationalist Joseph Edamaruku, a follower of famed rationalist EM Kovoor, had penned books that attacked the rituals and rationale of all the three major religions in India. But there had not been any concerted effort to consolidate scientific temperament in mass education after the initial surge during the Nehru era.
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