‘Truth’ is also relative.

There is no universal, objective truth according to relativism; rather each point of view has its own truth. Truth relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism).

Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the morality or truthfulness of views within a given framework.

Without differentiating between truth and false, you can not understand or know the real meaning of true and false. If the falsehood spreads everywhere and truth annihilates from everywhere then falsehood replaces truth completely.

In India, there are two traditions from very starting. One is orthodox and the other one is radical. In one side Brahma while on another side the Buddha. Eknath vs Phule, Savarkar vs Ambedkar are some pertinent example of this two tradition.

When we talk about these two ideologies in Indian context. Brahminical ideology always spread falsehood in the name of faith and divinity which most of the population practices, i.e., caste discrimination and gender dominance. From the beginning, some radical, revolutionary personalities challenged it and spread truth against it i.e., equality and fraternity.

It is the ruling class that decides what to spread and what to give to people. In past, kings spread their ideology or religion by force or policies in ancient time. In modern time, it is a particular political party influenced by a particular ideology work for its existence and survival, spreading particular religious ideology.

In ancient India Ashoka the great spread Buddha’s teaching around the world while Pusyamitra Sunga tried to kill Buddha’s teaching from India through destroying sculpture, books, vihara and killing million of Bhikkhus (Buddhist monk) and established varna system again.

Interestingly, it was Ambedkar who cultivated and nourished Buddhism again in modern India. He converted to Buddhism himself with almost half a million of his follower. But at the same time, his contemporary like M.K Gandhi, Nehru and Patel tried to stop him both politically and socially.

And now both Congress and BJP tried to make him irrelevant through accepting him as Dalit leader and constitution maker. They wrongly interpreted Ambedkar which resulted in hatred against him among upper caste and other backward castes.

In recent time many of Ambedkar’s statues are demolished which is the result of falsehood and misinformation spread by the upper-caste ruling class in the name of wrong constitution and reservation.

You can not speculate what future will be but if such forces will increase then definitely it will lead to the destruction of humanity. To stop falsehood, it is necessary to nourish the truth. Practising can be one perspective but it needs to be implicated through both socially and politically.

Why politically? As I mentioned above that ruling class played a vital role in spreading both falsehoods as well as truth. Followers of Buddha, Phule, Birsa, Ravidas and Ambedkar must need to practice compassion and loving-kindness at individual level socially and politically united for the transformation of both social and political system. For welfare policies and a healthy human community, they must be united and fight against the Brahminical forces in both political and ideological level.

Long live humanity, long live truth!

Author – Abhayveer Boudh