Two years after taking the oath of office, President Trump made 8,158 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. That includes an astonishing 6,000-plus such claims in the president’s second year says a New York Times report

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‘’In this post-truth era, biting realities have been stumped and stymied by current rulers’ style of lies and misinformation. It is high time that the suffering ordinary people are awakened to revolt and react,’’ declared a two-day symposium ‘Quest for truth, a spectrum of certitude’ by Kottayam’s powerful think tank, the Pourasthya Vidyapitham.

The declaration coming from the dialogue led by eminent theologians, philosophers, historians, etc at the St Thomas Apostolic Seminary at Vadavathoor, in the suburb Kottayam, assumes importance at a time when the leaders of the world’s two largest democracies are being accused of lying and spreading misinformation for political ends.

Felix Wilfred, chairman of the School of Philosophy and Religious Thought, University of Madras and internationally known consultant for the Vatican, who set the tone for the symposium, quoted Plato to assert that philosopher-kings should rule the world because they would be detached.

The idea of a philosopher-king was born in Plato’s dialogue called ‘Republic’ as part of the vision of a just city…. The first is that the guardians should include qualified women as well as men; thus the group that will become known as ‘’philosopher-kings’’ will also include ‘’philosopher queens’’.

‘’Gandhiji enunciated the quest for truth as the cardinal virtue of his life in his ‘My Experiments with Truth’. Philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurthy said truth was his ‘’pathless land,’’. And Jesus said ‘’I am the truth’’. Plato, Nietsche as well as Sankaracharya were votaries of truth’’.

Dr. Wilfred quoted Brihadaranayaka Upanishad’s shanti manthram ‘’Asato ma sadgamaya, Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya,  Mrityorma amritam gamaya,’’ to exhort that only relentless pursuit of truth will remove the darkness in life and ensure peace.

‘’Contemporary culture is built on a series of lies. When Fukuyoma wrote the End of History, he saw liberalism wining. But of late we find liberalism in a crisis when populism has the upper hand. As in India’s Emergency, we need to see the rise of the lone dissenting voices and their ultimate triumph,’, Dr. Wilfred concluded in a note of  optimism.

The symposium opened by Mar James Anaparampil, coadjutor bishop of Alappuzha, wound up by Thomas Mar Eusebius, bishop of the Diocese of Parasala, and coordinated by Anto Cheranthuruthy and Sooraj Pittappillil, professors of the Seminary, was attended by over 200 men, women and seminarians.

Papers presented explored truth in most dispensations of everyday life namely   hermeneutics, philosophical sciences, contemporary politics, natural sciences, religious sciences, history, silences of history in India, literature, media, business and post-truth era.

Here are some select nuggets from presentations:

Martin Kallungal (Mangalappuzha, Aluva): In order to make sense of substantive notions of truth philosophical thinking has to leave its usual trajectories and take an explicitly hermeneutical turn….Tuth will reveal itself when it wills. For, truth occurs to us as manifestation in the course of a discourse that is actualized as event.

Vincent Sekhar SJ (Madurai): We should consider the various strategies the logical positivists and the religious theists use in handling the certification of physical and meta-physical realities.  Also how the Jain theory of manifoldness, known as Anekantavada, is a synthetic method to understand Truth in diversity of philosophies and religions.

Pius Malekandathil, (JNU, Delhi): History is being trampled on for political purposes. It is in constant dialogue with the past. Creative imagination has played its part in historic narratives. Complete objectivity is not possible.

Jose Kuriedath (CMI, Kalamassery): While there is certainty in natural sciences, it is only probability in social sciences because in a society, men and women  the main players are free to act according to their whims and fancies. As a consequence there will always be disputes.

Kuruvilla Pandikkattu SJ (Pune): Quantum mechanics has brought the scientists to their knees because there is no certainty. Cosmology has opened trillins of new horizons.Hence scientists are celebrating uncertainty.

Johnson J. Puthenpurackal, Ofm Cap (Eluru): “Certitude in religious science,” is not a study on the concept of a mummified God or the dead structure of religion, but as a reflective search into human transcendence to the Divine. Such an approach looks at truth and certainty, not from the perspective of reason, but of existing reason.

Sebastian Vazhappilly SJ (Pune): History has forgotten the untouchable Nangeli of Travancore who cut off her breasts and offered them for tax. The shocked king withdrew the tax immdiately. We should unearth the silences on the atrocities against the Dalits and restore them to history. Human rights violations by the upper caste against downtrodden should not go unnoticed.

Giji Joseph (SB College, Changanassery): Creative and imaginative writings, structured narratives, fiction and poetry inspire readers to act and revolt.  Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Orwell, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn have been prophetic. Voltaire inspired French Revolution.

Sivaprasad Kaviyoor (ex Professor, FTII Pune):  Media exaggerates to create illusions of reality. Goddard said photography gives an impression of truth and not the real. In a stunt scene, the man who really acts on behalf of the hero is kept in camera. Aisharaya Rai without makeup will not cater to popular imagination. We live in a world of falsehood, one of fabricated illusion. The question is how we could regain the lost innocence.

Suraj Mathew Pittapillil, (PVP, Vadavathoor): In this era of post-truth, everybody is caught in a world of make-believe. Nietzsche said nobody needs pure knowledge, he needs only illusions. Today falsehood is logically justified. Like xerox, this age is that of trutherox or post-Babel. One of sophisticated superstitions. Only Time can save the eternal truth.

Rose Mary (Rajagiri): Business is always profit oriented. It will appear that there is no ethics or truth in business practices but in an ideal world business should be conducted from receptive knowledge to productive proficiency for the larger interest of society.

Pourasthya Vidyapitham or the Pontifical Institute of Religious Studies is an autonomous faculty of Theology erected at the St Thomas Apostolic Seminary, Vadavarthoor. Established in 1962, the 25-acre campus luxuriates with red roses and green palms. About 250 students do bachelor studies in theology and philosophy apart from doing post graduate and doctoral research. Rev. Fr. Joy Ainiyadan is the Rector and Rev.Fr. Andrews Mekkattukunnel President of the academic affairs.