Debatable positions

Madhya Pradesh has been at the centre of the controversy over astrology courses. Lalit Shastri reports.

THE MADHYA Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. Digvijay Singh, recently stirred a hornet's nest by strongly backing the idea of teaching astrology as a specialised subject in colleges and universities.

The debate has been joined countrywide because of the official moves to treat astrology as a science. Mr. V. S. Lowalkekar, who is an engineer and an astrologer, is of the firm view that astrology is not a science but an art. The casting of the horoscope and the study of the movement of planets may involve mathematics but the predictive part is pure art, he says. Many of those practicing astrology in India do so on the basis of the classical books that have been translated, written and re-written so often that their content has got mutilated several times over, Mr. Lowalkekar says.

A large section of those contacted only held that astrology was a sphere of `knowledge'. Mr. Vidhya Bhushan Singh, who is also an engineer by profession and an astrologer, says the present controversy has been generated by those who do not know what astrology is.

The Barkatullah University Vice-Chancellor, Dr. H. V. Tiwary, says astrology is being taught as a subject for the last four decades in Government colleges at Ujjain and Raipur but there has never been any controversy.

But formalising an issue of faith has its own dangers.

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