On the one hand, we cringe with disgust at Raj Thackeray’s identity politics as tearing the Republic apart, abhor the fact of vote-bank politics and communal tensions and more-than-politely, yet tactfully, disagree with reservations – particularly in the private sector.

On the other, we shy away from what really needs to be done to rid our socio-political structures of these ugly truths and rather prefer to pander to tokenisms in our debating discourse on TV. Undoubtedly grand debates with hosts ranging from rabid rabble-rousers to patronizing patriarchs in prime-time slots are better at attracting text messages, web votes and pandering to the ‘public need’ for entertainment.

In short, we have a nauseatingly recurring disease of missing the woods for the trees.

While reserving a cost-benefit analysis of this “interactive trend” for a later date, let me substantiate my argument with the Indian media’s understanding of Barack Obama’s historic election victory.

As much as Barack Obama’s win has fascinated India, the media has merely focused on one fact – his race and therefore so-called “minority” status. That has launched, with incredulous rancor, the hunt for a Bhartiya Obama who would be the winner the single-greatest five-yearly reality TV event.

“Since 1947, India has NOT had a single Muslim or Dalit Prime Minister,” exclaimed some commentators, while lambasting constant Brahmin representation at 7 Race Course Road. Others drew parallels with UP Chief Minister Mayawati, clearly keen to be PM, and the controversial Gujarat leader Narendra Modi, who belongs to the very backward ‘ganchi’ caste.

Ah celebrity culture, how we crucify perspective for hits, views and eyeballs!

In this parochial diatribe, what was brushed under the carpet was the “change” that America displayed and that Indian mainstream discourse has allowed to be shrouded under the fog of noise.

Obama’s win is not historic from the prism of ‘Oh a black (minority) candidate won’ but rather in terms of how a substantial section of America voted for someone who doesn’t want to play “minority-majority politics.”

Just a sample of that was the landmark “perfect union” speech delivered in the city of brotherly love where Obama called, urged African-Americans and whites to understand the underlying and legitimate reasons for anger on all sides and address them through investing in America and not narrow identities.

Apart from proving himself as stronger on the issues – economy, foreign policy and healthcare – his appeal and charm was not in being black or not being black enough, but rather in being American – it was an appeal for renewing the fundamental premise of the world’s oldest democracy, a sense of shared destiny.

So for those seeking an Obama moment in India, the first step is to alter the language of our politics, and in that the media should be the frontrunner – for this change will have to be a bottom-up phenomenon. Wasn’t that the Obama call?

The answer lies in addressing and redressing the wounds of our past while realizing that we need not continue to live as slaves to that history. We need to shred papers and scripts that urge us to discuss tokenisms like the need for a Dalit, Muslim, Yadav, Protestant, Catholic, Bihari, Marathi, Bengali, Brahmin PM, etc, while understanding the concerns of each of these and other groupings as Indians.

The dialogue should centre on not a change where we treat the state not as a community playground, but an institution that stands for good governance, security and prosperity for all – irrespective of who sits at the top.

The Obama moment is not when one or the other community gets a PM, but rather when it doesn’t matter to which community the PM belongs.

While his snore index moved much like the stock markets – bulls and bears for all I could care. His teeth crunched the meat, and his testosterone jumped an octave, “sell it out and let’s see them take this fall,” he shrieked. While I lay smiling, for my heart hoped that this wasn’t just a fall but the beginning of a collapse.

He said the Indus was shining, to me it was just a deep dive into anarchy – a precursor of the scarlet truth that was soon to manifest in this land of the sacred. On second thought, maybe the ride had been worth the night.

My messianic mission; next stop was to greet the saint. A century old motif nestled in the heart a city inspired by his divinity. I knocked and the gates flung open. Heaven never was so handy! Shoes off, palms rinsed, brows raised; I exhaled my Marlborough.

“The saint does not prefer people wearing jeans when they meet him”, heralded the sevak. His timid tongue spoke rather matter-of-factly.

“Don’t tell me, he’s on a crusade against the denim industry,” I snickered venomously.

A smile beamed all over his face, frustration never reaching the surface. “I see you aren’t carrying anything else, maybe we can help you.”

‘A druid with composure!’ I was impressed, but appreciation was a far cry. I threw my hands in disgusted defeat, a sign for the wily old minions to scuttle in and get me in uniform. The time that followed was wilder than the annual fashion week.

A wardrobe of white traditional Hindustanis displayed for my preference. Somehow I knew under the purity lurked an ugly saffron; not to be fooled my well-trained eyes could see all red. I grabbed on to one and protested the change. But as the mirror pleased my query I convinced myself that the only road to triumph was by being the enemy within.

I strode out, now as an insider. A slithering grin wrapped around my lips, I surveyed the field. Lumped in the distance, on a crooked wooden structure, in a shady green, he lay; a dish garnished with a pale carroty quilt, the aroma of which had filled the swelling proboscis of the chieftains. They sat – arms folded in awe, never letting a droplet of his saliva touch the floor. Pebbles and dung adorned the earth; simplicity they said, turning blind to the lush olives that garlanded his sanctuary. ‘Olives!’ howled my senses. Well perhaps I wasn’t the only one there who understood this betrayal.

The sevak led me, as we walked to the congregation, a missionary grin smeared all over him. Little did he know that this wasn’t a conversion, but rather a revolt. ‘Foolish zombie isn’t he!’ Carefully I manoeuvred through the yard. To my left a sign informed me off the Old Age Home that lay littered with beleaguered women. ‘Eliminated by modern rationality and thrust into dogmatic piety; our societal trap’, deduced my brain.

As we reached close I could hear the silence of the gathering. Contrary to my belief, no one was speaking. The saint lay on his oak chest just inside his hermit château, which opened straight ahead facing the garden. The wall behind him displayed pictorial memoirs of his escapades; a warm hug with Deputy Prime Minister, movie icons galore, even a peck on the cheek by some mystical nirvana seeking Westerner. Roaring next to the wall right beside his bedstead rested a huge sceptre on the end of which had landed an immaculately carved eagle.

The crowd seemed to be patient in waiting until he asked them to talk. I took my seat, and tucked my hair to one side. “The saint doesn’t appreciate long unruly hair,” I recollected the words of the sevak at the door. “Well I am sure he doesn’t, but then you don’t always get what you like.” I had retorted to his nauseating persistent smile. If he really was a man above all others, the first thing that he should rise above is his idiosyncratic demands. Nevertheless to my surprise an automatic gear had kicked in and I did tame down my curls. Rules always made me nervous but didn’t see that coming?

For a while the silence persevered. However, silence and patience aren’t in my arsenal of virtues. So my restless eyes measured the labyrinth of devotees gathered around. In one corner I noticed a small man crouched on the soil, his cane fallen beside him. ‘Prawasi of the year!’ His picture had flashed all over the business media a few months ago. A 78-year-old New York based entrepreneur, who eventually made it real big in the last decade with his first dotcom tikka masala business. And now he had been visiting India to satiate his newfound philanthropic appetite. “Greatness and humility” he wrote, “was in knowing when to do the right thing.” ‘Oh I am sure that he was always hypocritically right’. Nostrils flared, fish hooked brow; the thought spewed all over my features.

“Then what are you awaiting?” questioned a soft voice from the front. ‘My mission!’ My mind snapped back in action. “Guruji, everything is ready all we need is your blessings,” replied the dhoti clad international disciple. Apparently the silence was just a usual conversational pause for the saint. ‘For an all-knowing chap, fairly slow bugger isn’t he!’ “I thought I gave those to you even before the work started.” This time the voice had grown stern. Leaning in front of the masses, Uncle Sam’s benefactor bowed before his holiness and dutifully replied. “And for that I am ever so grateful. All the work has been completed for two months now but since the new temple has been built in the school building…”

School! Temple! Temple in School! my intellect interrupted.

“…we need your presence for the inaugural prayers and address to the media and the children. After that we shall start the classes.”

‘May-day! May-day!’ These men were vicious beyond my imagination. Two months and they’ve been sitting on it! I could now begin to smell my opening. They had wasted a precious year of the lives of little children, in order to allow this so-called pontiff the opportunity to thrust and permeate his submissive doctrine of regressive values. ‘Heinous I tell you.’ I had to lay bare their folly. Restore the true faith of emancipation and eliminate this phoney divinity. In a world where people were now talking about doing away with god from their national bibles, these people wanted to propagate discord and passive segregation by subjecting little souls to false piety.

“September!” hollered his meek voice, as he held tight to the sceptre. A bolt of thunder struck through the air. Well maybe not. “Your oath to me was to begin the teaching of those children as soon as possible and now their academic year is already delayed”, his raspy words rained with conviction. “God’s work is what you promised me.”

My cue was just about there… “Silly impediments are not His will.” The Yankee now beginning to stammer in soft protest. “But, before we begin any ‘good work’, how could we not… we need to at least… for the children… I can’t disrespect you…” ‘Steady, steady boy, only strike when the iron is raging hot.’

“God is not in your barren mud and porcelain. Neither does He emanate through the words of a man.” “God is in the work, you fool!” My heart sank an ocean. “It doesn’t matter which direction the deed comes from, till it is His work, for His people.” This time the devotee nodded in a disgruntled acquiescence. “For even the holy dove cannot take flight with an eccentric or broken Wing”. “Take this soil,” he suggested stretching his left hand out. For the first time I could see his eyes. Untainted white; smiling at me. “Heal the wound.” I stepped forward and bowed in acceptance. “And let the eagle fly, colour-blind as it should be,” he muttered in my ear before the sun finally set leaving a new light all around.

The historically bitter and often politically contentious tug-o-war between religion and science (which is based on evidence and reason) is, however, an inevitable product of the human condition – our desire to seek the more fundamental answers regarding our existence.

While there have been attempts at a convenient compartmentalization – suggesting that science seeks to answer the “how we exist” (Darwinian evolution) question and religion offers us the answer to “why we exist” (Creationism) and proposing the convergence hypothesis (scientific inquiry being a mechanism for the study of divine design), an uneasy co-existence is all that humanity has attained.

However, with religion once again occupying primacy in global political debates in the context of its influence on public policy and fundamentalism, there is a raging clash, particularly in the West, between “secular, scientific atheists” and the “men of god” – the process and outcome of which will shape our definition of “civilized society.”

At the forefront of the atheist charge is British scientist and chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford University Richard Dawkins, whose new book The God Delusion is a scathing attack on faith and the idea of God defined primarily as the creator, an omnipotent, omnipresent, supernatural entity that is interested in the daily affairs of mankind.

If I could take the liberty to paraphrase his central argument, then it would read: ‘we know what we know through scientific study, experiment, proof and probability; but for what we do not know, substituting god to fill those gaps is a lack of imagination or sheer ignorance at best and a serious mental disorder at worst (ergo “Delusion”)’.

Dawkins’ unapologetically intemperate approach (which by the author’s own confession is aimed at conversion) and the works of his vociferous contemporaries such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have earned them condemnation of militant atheism synonymous with fundamentalism and intolerance on display by religious extremists.

However, shrouded in the inflammatory language is a larger and principle quest, i.e., that an equitable and scientific burden on proof be placed on religion to prove divine existence.

In the present-day liberal secularist system, theoretically the separation of church and state and, besides equidistance, tolerance and respect for the various belief systems is sacrosanct.

And it is at this key tenant of modern society that the above demand impinges on religion as it seeks to not veil faith in the cozy private domain but rather bring it to a scientific and rational trial, thereby redefining civilization.

While the gauntlet they throw down may be robust, the task at hand is a tall order and faces a number of innate difficulties; however, I limit myself to just three.

The first is a pragmatic and policy level concern, which I term as the education and communication gap.

According to UNESCO’s recent estimates, there are around 781 million adult illiterates in the world and around 100 million children are out of school.

Moreover, there exists a clear conceptual and definitional difference between literacy and education, i.e., based on the traditional UNESCO definition, we can conclude that literacy is essentially a tool to attain “education,” and therefore, being literate does not in itself imply being “educated.”

This in effect suggests that at least around one-sixth of the world’s population lacks the basic skills necessary to begin to grasp the scientific message.

In addition, the complexity of scientific evidence, terminology and its communication also allows us to conjecture that at least a certain number of people, although literate and probably even educated (in the traditional sense), may find it difficult to absorb in earnest what is being communicated.

In contrast, the fact that the idea of divine existence and religious doctrines are a matter of personal belief and experience along with societal conditioning implies that accepting the probability of god does not essentially require scriptural mastery or ritual maintenance.

The second difficulty is an epistemological one, which is rooted in the proposition that argues that God is beyond reason and evidence.

For instance, in The changing face of God, Karen Armstrong quotes the great Greek Orthodox theologian who wrote under the pen name of Denys the Areopagite arguing that: “God does not exist. Don’t be afraid to say that. It’s simply that our concept of existence, our experience of existence is so limited that it cannot be applied to God.”

Inherent in Armstrong’s argument, which relies on a number of rationalist theologians from different faiths, is the debunking of scriptural literalism and the notion of God being an objective fact and the postulation that it is rather an unlimited reality that lies beyond our words, thoughts and concepts.

The reason that such a proposition poses a serious challenge to the atheist camp is that it takes the rational scientific atheist out of his element.

This, in fact, is evident as one goes through the pages of The God Delusion, where while Professor Dawkins’ answer to such a question – one that cannot be answered no matter how much ever evidence is gathered, because the idea of evidence is not applicable to it – sees him clutch at the straws of probability while failing to offer a philosophical counter.

The third and final difficulty that I posit is rather utopian in nature that resonates in the epistemological argument, i.e., does personal faith in God essentially need to answer to scientific evidence?

What I am basically suggesting is that for an individual even if God as a supernatural entity is a figment of his/her imagination, but one that is harmless and that offers comfort, direction and purpose, then does it matter whether scientific rationality argues otherwise.

If, in sum, the “delusion” does “good,” then how can it be “bad?” While some may be tempted to construe the above as the old “if ignorance is bliss…” adage, that would be a complete misrepresentation, although utilitarian it could be seen as.

The question is that the search for answers regarding our purpose, aim, role, existence, etc, has been a constant throughout human history, and if it is within this context that individuals and/or collectives construct a benchmark that encourages positive personal behaviour that even in a miniscule bit serves for personal growth and/or the betterment of humanity, then is it necessary for such a God to stand a scientific trial.

Moreover, the possibility of a negative impact of such a concept on humanity is about the same as the probability of scientific and technological advancements being used for fulfilling a malacious agenda.

Just as that doesn’t mean that we abandon scientific pursuit, the same parameter of judgement must apply to religion.

While the above are a few of the arguments from various dispositions that form a part of the whole debate that will eventually shape our notion of civilization.

The question, however, of rising fundamentalism from either pole is what threatens and muddies appropriate dialogue, and therefore, necessitates mass public participation and requires that each one scratch beneath the surface of their beliefs and seek, if nothing else, then a reasonable bridge between scientific rationality and faith.