In Defence of Astrology

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For his fullest evolution, man needs all of them.

Science generally helps us to understand the cause and effect relationship between things. When the effect is there for everyone to see, but the cause is unknown, we call it a mystery, or even a miracle. However we have no right to brand it as humbug unless and until we have discovered it to be so, after a thorough scrutiny.

While dealing with astrology, one – if he has a truly scientific temper – should keep this basic fact in mind.

Hindu astrology is called 'Jyautisha' in Sanskrit. It means the 'Science of Light or of Celestial Object'. Astrology – called 'Phala-jyautisha' – is a subsidiary branch of the same. Its relationship with astronomy is akin to that of technology to basic or pure sciences. It is a well-developed system that has evolved over several centuries both in the East and in the West.

The very fact that the astrologers (in the U.S.A. and not India!) chosen and involved in certain tests were able to predict very correctly the professions, important events and even diseases, of persons whose horoscopes only had been supplied to them, shows that astrology is not superstition and astrologers are not humbugs (vide Lyall Watson, super Nature, pp. 55-68, New York, Bantum Books, August 1974).

Lyall Watson is himself a distinguished scientist in Biology!

This booklet is actually a reprint of the article, The Fault is not in Astrology…. Which appeared in The Hindu (dt. 1.5.2001). Prof. (Dr.) B.M. Hegde, its author, is a distinguished person of science and the supreme head of a deemed university. He is equally well-versed in the subject of Hindu astrology and hence competent to present it without prejudice to either of the disciplines.

We are grateful to him for having acceded to our request to publish it from here.

We earnestly to hope that it will help to clear at least some cobwebs from the minds of the 'scientists' with an unscientific temper.

He was the dean of Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore for nearly ten years. At present, he is the Vice-chancellor of Manipal Academy of Higher Education, which is a deemed university of Manipal, Karnataka.

His brilliant career spanning four decades has many faces as a brilliant teacher, researcher, social worker and writer.

The awards and prizes he has won are too many to enumerate.

And yet he is very humble in his thoughts and deed, a characteristic that distinguishes a true man of science.