Does God exist? Does God need to exist? Did God create man? Did man create God? These questions are bound to elicit a lot of heat with only a modicum of light, which itself gets obscured by the dark cloud of emotions.
உள்ளம் என்பது ஆமை
அதில் உண்மை என்பது ஊமை
சொல்லில் வருவது பாதி- நெஞ்சில்
தூங்கிக் கிடப்பது மீதி
The mind is a turtle
Truth in it is silent
What comes out in words is just a part
The rest is asleep in the heart
A master, in a verbal stroke, paints the half-truths that people speak as the partly seen head of the turtle. At the same time, the near silent nature of the turtle is taken advantage of in extending the metaphor further. The poet does not forget rhyme and meter either. No wonder that Kannadasan was a class unto himself.
The next stanza is when Kannadasan takes this song to immortality:
தெய்வம் என்றால் அது தெய்வம்- அது
சிலை என்றால் வெறும் சிலை தான்
உண்டென்றால் அது உண்டு
இல்லை என்றால் அது இல்லை
If you claim it is God, it is God— 'tis
A statue if you say, then it is a statue
It exists, if you say It exists
It does not, if you say it does not
Kannadasan believed in his personal God. He was an atheist who later became a devoted Hindu. The socio-political landscape in Tamil Nadu, at that time, was dominated by atheists. The movie industry had its fair share of these free-thinkers. Was Kannadasan speaking to his erstwhile colleagues, justifying his new-found faith when he wrote this verse?—one can only speculate.
Materilaism and atheism are not new concepts. In India, they were prevalent more than 2500 years ago. The Charvakas (sweet-tongued) were one of the foremost skeptics, unapologetically materialistic, refusing to believe in anything that was not directly evident or perceptible.
There is no other world other than this:
There is no heaven and no hell;
The realm of Shiva and like regions,
are invented by stupid monsters.
A more bold declaration cannot be made even today. It is a reflection of the tolerance in ancient India, that nobody was burnt at the stake, or chopped with machetes (unlike what we see today) for these blasphemous statements. The atheists were not branded, banned, threatened or dismembered.
The Charvakas firmly believed that perception alone is the source of knowledge, and consequently, only the objects of perception are real.
Only the perceived exists; the unperceivable does not exist, by reason for its not having been perceived...
There is no heaven, no afterlife. The Charvakas therefore had no qualms about hedonism— eat, drink and make merry was their motto. Pursuing worldly pleasures was encouraged, nay, insisted upon. What morality? Why ethics?
If direct perception alone is the standard of truth as the materialists insist, how infallible is perception? Only so long as it is not disproved. Many a wandering traveler has been misled by a vision of inviting water in the desert.
Kannadasan brings this point across with the freedom afforded to by his poetic license:
தண்ணீர் தணல் போல் எரியும்-
செந்தணலும் நீர் போல் குளிறும்
Water may glow like fire
Sizzling fire may cool like water
Is sensory perception the only barometer of truth? Is everything that is imperceptible to our senses then unreal? Are love, kindness, pity, affection unreal just because they are imperceptible? Is it foolish to prioritize them over sensory pleasures?
Society seemed to have made a decision. The Charvakas faded from the mainstream of Indian philosophy over time, in spite of offering freedom from the shackles of ethics and guilt of moralities. Maybe man did decide that a God was needed after all.
Ref:
1. Billington, Ray. "5. The Heterodox Systems I." Understanding Eastern Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1997. 44-45.
