Looking at the journey of a 100 blog posts in retrospect.

When I published this post on reactions to my style of critique, on my blog, that was my 100th post. I only realized sometime later it was perhaps a milestone that I should keep note of, if not really cherish. That post was not particularly a memorable one for me since it was the culmination of a hasty retreat that I had to beat on my perceived tendencies or credentials of reasoning and presentation of arguments.

That blemish or more notwithstanding, there are things and aspects to look into and relish in that effort that took this blog to completing 100 posts.

One of the main topics that this blog has attempted to deal with is knowledge claims that its proponents argue to exist in primary scriptures of Hinduism such as the:

1. The Chaturvedas or the four Vedas
2. The Upanishads (It is a different matter that most Hindus consider and accept Upanishads to be part of the Vedas)
3. Bhagavad Gita
4. Puranas

The contention of this blog, through many of its posts on Vedas, Vedanta and Gita is that no meaningful and verifiable knowledge claims exist in these texts. There are many opinions of what can be termed to be of a metaphysical variety, but none that can stand up to the scrutiny of reason, logic and sense.

To be fair, I have not formally laid out any epistemological framework of empiricism to contest these claims, but tried through arguments and counter-points, to make out the case for refutation. Instead of getting drawn into the quicksand of epistemic war of words and conferring respectability upon the idealistic framework of religious opinions, used the tactic of questioning the claims on the common grounds of holding beliefs to the scrutiny of validation and demonstrability standards. The stand taken, though not explicitly mentioned is that all claims are subject to the examination of logic, reason and independent verifiability (perception, inference, deduction and other fact-finding tools). The taking or acceptance of any of such opinions on faith, assumption or axiom is not an option.

For instance the following claims have been, to varying degrees, subjected to a deeper look and critical assessment:

1. That there is an Ultimate Reality and that it is the Absolute truth
2. Vedas and Upanishads lay out the eternal rules and truths of life and existence.
3. All kinds of knowledge are  contained in the Vedas and Upanishads and that everything that is to be known can be known by mastering these texts. 
4. The Vedas are eternal, without a creator or author and therefore are free from any error and thus authoritative.

This blog has been particularly harsh and brutal on a supposed system of thought called 'Advaita Vendanta', which I have dismissed and condemned as a worst species of intellectual sham, deception and hoax that very incredibly enjoys a lot of respectability as a system of philosophy and spirituality. 

 I have also tried to critically attack the ideas and legacy of the leading exponent of Advaita Vedanta, Adi Sankara and provided arguments to show how the ideas and evangelism of Sankara has been the ideological vanguard of promoting and  imposing medieval Brahminism and suppressing the  cause of free inquiry and intellectual skepticism(which prevailed in Buddhism and Sankhya systems).

The other issue analyzed and critiqued on this blog is the revisionist tendencies and attitudes of the Hindu conservatives and intelligentsia in dealing with the history and legacy of ancient and Middle age scriptures and religious ideology of India. I meant two major types of tendencies:

• Outright revisionism and re-writing of ancient texts, myths and legends which is more likely the work of the extreme fringe of Hindu intelligentsia and political affiliation like the RSS, VHP and some sections of the BJP itself, apart from sundry historians like NS Rajaram, David Frawley (who has oddly renamed himself as Pt. Vamadeva Sastry), S Kak and right-wing reactionary groups on the internet, blogosphere  and social groups outside of the web. This strategy involves, apart from other things, outright mucking up of History, archeology and chronology with tactics like pushing the dates of ancient scriptures, events and characters way before generally accepted estimates and out of line with principles and techniques  of  chronology and archeology, in placing Indian civilization ahead of the pack in terms of of antiquity.  

• Couching the content and certain central ideas  in the scriptures, in pseudo scientific jargon and claiming empirical and scientific validity for them. Discovering  science and empirical disciplines in them by the use of retrofitting and cherry-picking of verses.  One of the prominent instances of this type of intellectual vanity and dishonesty is to claim that all modern concepts and ideas of physics, astronomy, weaponry, medicine and cosmology were already anticipated and dealt with in the Vedas and Upanishads. 

The journey hopefully will continue its slow and gradual path and learn from the experience of review and reader feed-back.  The efforts at advocacy and polemics will also be attempted from time to time. Reactions and feedback are always welcome and I hope readers, skeptics and critics will continue to find useful resources and opinions in these blog posts and the ones to come.