Customs and traditions suppress reason leading to obscurantism. Do you agree?

Obscurantism is the deliberate opposition to enquiry, reason and the spread of knowledge. Customs — inherited social practices — can shade into obscurantism when they demand unquestioning obedience, though the relationship is not automatic. The Constitution itself asks citizens to develop scientific temper and the spirit of reform (Article 51A(h)).

Where the charge holds

• Practices such as untouchability, witch-hunting, menstrual taboos, child marriage and dowry persist by claiming customary sanctity that places them beyond questioning.
• Social enforcement punishes reason: khap panchayat diktats, social boycotts and honour crimes target those who dissent from custom.
• Superstition is monetised by godmen and quackery, displacing evidence-based medicine and education, particularly among the vulnerable — the mischief Maharashtra's anti-black magic law of 2013 sought to curb.

Where the charge fails

• Many customs encode accumulated rationality: sacred groves, orans and johads conserve ecology and water; yoga and traditional medicine carry tested knowledge.
• Traditions are not static — they have repeatedly reformed themselves through reasoned critique from within: Raja Rammohan Roy against sati, Vaikom and temple-entry movements against exclusion.
• Custom also provides identity, solidarity and meaning, which pure rationalism cannot supply — tradition is, in that sense, society's accumulated memory.

The real test

• Courts now weigh custom against constitutional morality — Shayara Bano (2017) on triple talaq and the Sabarimala judgment (2018) subordinated customary claims to dignity and equality.
• Legislation such as Assam's anti-witch-hunting law (2015) shows the state confronting custom's darkest edges.

I agree only partially: customs suppress reason when they are frozen and weaponised by vested interests, not by their nature. The mature response is to pass every custom through the sieve of reason and constitutional morality — reforming from within, as India's renaissance figures did, rather than rejecting tradition wholesale.