Free thinking being impeded: Thampu

Religions are increasingly being used as mediums to choke the spirit of free and rational thinking, Valsan Thampu, former principal of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, says.

Speaking at a plenary session on ‘Youth and politics – The way ahead’, at the Kerala Legislative Assembly on Sunday organised in connection with the National Students’ Parliament Kerala – 2019, he raised caution against attempts to stifle the culture of liberal education.

Dr. Thampu said higher education was in the midst of serious peril.

“The culture of free thinking and free expression of thought is being stifled. Unfortunately, the existing dispensation is worried that if young people are allowed to think freely for themselves, there will be a revolution in this country. Everything is being done to stifle the culture of liberal education, the soul of which is the discipline to think rationally and freely.

The greatest atrocity that a political system or a structure of governance can do to a nation, particularly the youngsters, is to choke the culture of thinking critically,” he said.

‘Obedient slaves’

He said that religions had conditioned people into becoming obedient slaves who could not think for themselves, thereby favouring certain political ideologies.

“The greatest problem in the domain of religion is they exclusively focus on total ascendancy of rites and rituals, which are purely mechanical,” Dr. Thampu said.

Youth leader Kanhaiya Kumar demanded political parties to formulate ‘youth manifestos or charters’, considering the youth population in the country. He also claimed that the country was in the throes of the political crisis that was allegedly marked by a conspiracy to transform participatory democracy into procedural democracy, wherein citizens had less influence in the democratic system.

Party politics had evolved into a system in which the common man was just a voter, but could not become a policy maker.