In Arthur C Clarkes acclaimed sci-fi story The Nine Billion Names of God, monks at a Tibetan lamasery aspire to list all possible names of God. They believe once this list is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Writing out the estimated nine billion names by hand, as they have been doing, would take 15,000 years, so they hire a computer (it is 1953) and two programmers for the purpose. The Western programmers are sceptical, but as they play along (for good money), they worry the lamas will get upset at the end of three months when the computer is expected to finish churning out all the names and nothing happens. So they plan to bolt the monastery just as the computer is printing out the final pages.

Lets save the climax of the magnificent story for the end, as Clarke did. But the tale brings us to the crossroads of science and religion, often seen as being at odds to each other. This debate is particularly vigorous in the US and India, two countries that are avowedly purportedly, to some secular in different ways. India asserts its secularism constitutionally, albeit through an (42nd) amendment; it is more implicit in the US in its founding documents. Both have been imperfect in the practice of secularism, the fundamental principle of which is separation of the state from religious institutions.

For the longest time, Indian and American leaders, going back to founders of the two republics, forsook overt religious outreach. Although Mahatma Gandhi identified himself as a Hindu, he was more spiritual in its practice, seldom going to a temple or conducting rites and rituals associated with Hinduism. He called himself both an idolater and iconoclast, and in one instance said he found the tree worship instinct with a deep pathos and poetic beauty symbolising true reverence for the entire vegetable kingdom which, with its endless panorama of beautiful shapes and forms, declares to us, as it were with a million tongues, the greatness and glory of God.

Americas Christian Founding Fathers notably Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were also deists who possessed a scientific temperament and rejected revelation, believing reason and observation of the natural world was sufficient to consider the existence of a Supreme Being or Creator.Several surveys have shown that India is now among the most religious countries in the world. According to the 2012 WIN-Gallup Global Index of Religion and Atheism report, 81% of Indians polled said they were religious, 13% were non-religious, 3% were convinced atheists, and 3% were unsure or did not respond. In the US, polls have shown anywhere from 60-70% of people are religious and 5-10% identify themselves as atheists or agnostics.

Fast forward to 2020, an age of immense scientific progress and there is growing display of religiosity. From President Donald Trumps walk across from the White House to a church to use the Bible as a prop, to Prime Minister Narendra Modis participation in the Ram Temple ceremony in Ayodhya, there is a sense they are appealing to their respective base of Bible-thumpers and beatific bhakts.

But are religion and science really incompatible? While it is said that science provides answers and religion offers comfort (and generates no small degree of strife), at the highest and purest level, both search for answers to similar questions about creation and existence. It is no accident that it was a Belgian Catholic priest-physicist, Georges Lemaitre, who first proposed what later became known as the Big Bangtheory, deducing from Einsteins work and the recession of nearby galaxies that the universe is expanding, and that it may have begun at a single point a primeval atom.

India seems particularly well-equipped to reconcile science and religion. Its principle faith and its canonical texts such as Rig Veda deal with cosmic issues such as the origin of the universe and the nature of god. Others emphasise values such as conservation and progression, even evolution. Even elements of nature agni, prithvi, akash were deified long before missiles were named after them. Small wonder many of Government of Indias scientific advisers are transparently and comfortably religious. We are the only country that conducts pujas ahead of rocket launches ostensibly to propitiate the space gods.

By some accounts, Clarkes finest work is said to be Rendezvous With Rama, where Rama is the name of an alien starship, an interstellar visitor to the solar system. One never discovers the purpose of Ramas journey in Rendezvous before it leaves. Which is probably why people often prefer the comfort that religion offers to answers that science strives to provide because the answers may not always be immediately comprehensible. There may even be no answers. For instance, what if, as the Tibetan lamas told the programmers, the answer to the question, Why are we here? is, For no particular reason just to list out all the names of god, and after that we will soon be gone in one instant.

Which brings us to the finale of Clarkes masterpiece. As the two American programmers depart the Tibetan monastery on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back home. Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time the computer is printing out the last of the nine billion names of god. They look up to the sky Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Rendezvous with Rama: India can comfortably straddle the crossroads of science and religion - The Times of India Blog