Superstition and the Indian Establishment Mehul Kamdar

Superstition and the Indian Establishment

Mehul Kamdar

Published on February 13, 2007

For a country whose constitution has a preamble that states that one of the Fundamental Duties of Indian citizens is to ï¿½to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reformï¿½ (Article 51 A (h) of the Preamble) Indiaï¿½s government has deviated vastly from what the nationï¿½s founding fathers hoped the nation would develop into. A recent article by a reporter in ï¿½The Hinduï¿½ spoke about how scientists in ISRO (the Indian Space Research Organisation) routinely sought prayers at a Hindu religious centre in Dharmasthala whenever a satellite launch was planned. This ritual included handing a small scale replica of the satellite in order to seek blessings to ensure that the launch was successful. This was not something new - in 1986, the Indian Navy had bought an old aircraft carrier from the British Navy, the HMS Hermes which was later renamed INS Viraat in India. In order to take delivery of it, the navy had sent a team of pundits to Felixstowe to perform a yagna prescribed by the Atharva Veda to make ships ï¿½invincible.ï¿½ In just ten yearsï¿½ time, the mantra from the Atharva Veda seemed to wear out because the navy retired the ship and bought another secondhand aircraft carrier, this time, the Admiral Gorshkov from Russia.

The intense religiosity of the Indian people, something that had been responsible for bloody wars and schisms for more than 3500 years was something that worried Indiaï¿½s founding fathers considerably. Indiaï¿½s Independence Day, for example, falls a day after Pakistanï¿½s because astrologers in India insisted that Aug the 14^th 1947 was an inauspicious day. Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who did not care for their superstitions, had to fight a pitched battle until a compromise was reached and India became independent at midnight on Aug the 15^th. It is not just possible, but highly probable that the duty outlined from the Preamble was in the hope that India would become a modern nation and cut itself free from the mental shackles of superstition and ignorance that had kept it weak and a walkover for any invader from Cyrus the Great to the British in the countryï¿½s long history. The countryï¿½s founding fathers were worried about India lapsing at some point in the future into the kind of obscurantism that had characterized the country in its past. Their fears were to prove prophetic in just a few decades.

While there were many regional leaders who were not just religious fanatics, but even superstitious to the extent of appearing silly to the world, it was not until Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister that India saw superstition right at the top. While the Congress Party bandies about a letter written by her to a party member in the early 1970s where she says that she has no time for religious leaders, she encouraged Dhirendra Brahmachari, her ï¿½yoga teacherï¿½ to become an influence on her like a Rasputin on the last Tsar. Among subsequent Prime Ministers, there were both secular and superstitious ones - Narasimha Rao had a long relationship with godman and convicted criminal Chandra Swami while Atal Behari Vajpayee has been ï¿½blessedï¿½ on more than one occasion by Kerala godwoman Mata Amritanandamayi. But none of these could hold a candle to Indiraï¿½s son, Rajiv Gandhi who went to Bangaru Adigal, a Tamil guru who had been imprisoned earlier for forging Indian currency notes for his blessings and to Devaraha Baba whose way of blessing devotees was to sit on a tree and kick them lightly in the head. The kick did not help Rajiv win his second election - he was assassinated and Devaraha Baba died very soon afterwards. Current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has so far been very careful not to involve himself with superstitious causes.

That said, it was under the rule of the BJP led coalition that India saw superstition become a part of day to day affairs of government. Murli Manohar Joshi, a former Professor of Physics at Delhi University and Minister for Human Resources and Science and Technology would introduce Astrology as a subject of study at university level and threaten universities that did not introduce the course with reduced funding. The BJP tried to make the recitation of the ï¿½Ssarasvathi Vandanaï¿½ compulsory in schools and forced rural schools that had been given grants under ï¿½Operation Blackboardï¿½ to upgrade school infrastructure to buy harmoniums and tabla s to promote this prayer. A Muslim President whom the BJP promoted, APJ Abdul Kalam, would prove no less superstitious than his Hindu fundamentalist benefactors - he would actively promote the postponement of elections in Ochera district in Kerala in order to attend the 50^th birthday celebrations of Mata Amritanandamayi, the godwoman and spiritual advisor to Prime Minister Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and others.

It is clear that after a brief attempt at fighting the superstition and obscurantism of centuries past, India is sliding slowly into a pit of stupidity. Pranksters have, in the recent past, been able to succeed in a very big way in fooling millions of Indians first by spreading rumours that idols of the elephant headed Hindu god Ganesa would drink milk on a certain day and then talking about a ï¿½Monkey Manï¿½ based on the myth of the Hindu god Hanuman. And the exploitation of poor and gullible Indians continues unabated by religious frauds. At a time when the average Indian ahd to wait eleven years to take delivery of a Bajaj scooter during Indira Gandhiï¿½s socialist years, someone gave Dhirendra Brahmachari an aeroplane as a gift. More recently, in a recent article in ï¿½The Indian Skepticï¿½ B Premanand quotes an Economist article that estimates the worth of Indian godman Sathya Sai Baba as $ 2 billion. Other missions have discreet but equally large assets gained from cheating gullible people. In a land of mainly poor and starving people, this difference appears stunningly sad considering that it is mostly the poor and uneducated who have been fooled into parting with money from their meager incomes by sundry charlatans. And, the Indian state is complicit in this thanks to politicians flouting the directions laid down by the countryï¿½s founding fathers.

Mehul Kamdar from Chicago is currently moderating Mukto-Mona forum. He was the editor of The Modern Rationalist under late M D Gopalakrishnan and associated with various rationalist movements. He can be reached at [email protected]