SUPERSTITION IN THE 21^ST CENTURY INDIA

Ø     In a shocking incident, a daily wage labourer named Afizuddin Ali married his teenage daughter and made her pregnant, citing "divine sanction" at Kashiajhora village in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal recently.

Ø     A rickshaw puller in Chennai committed suicide so that his eyes could be used to restore vision to his blind brother. Tragically it was found out after his death  that his eyes could anyway not have been used on account of medical reasons.

Ø     A woman psychiatrist killed her elder son in order to use his blood for transfusion into the body of her younger son so that the latter could become as intelligent as  his [ now  dead] brother. The father who looked on   at the horrendous and bizarre operation was a doctor himself. All this was done at the behest of a swamiji.

One can submit any number of such  macabre  but true stories in support of the contention that we are a superstitious nation. I have done  some research into such bizarre stories in the media and found that this cuts cross boundaries of religion, caste economic status, and even nationalities. Even in the US some superstitions abound thereby suggesting that educational and material progress alone may not eliminate this problem.

Scientists are also prone to having their untenable beliefs despite their eminence in their field of specialization.

The dividing line between superstition and mistaken beliefs based on racism etc is not clear. Thus a Harvard dean announced that he believed women were genetically inferior  to men in the study of  mathematics. Even as this raised a storm another eminent  American scientist  said that Africans were genetically inferior and as such Africa could never progress.

I happened to talk to an American scientist who derided Indian scientists  for their superstitions. I asked him for an example of this superstitious behavior.  He replied that his Indian scientist friends went to a temple and offered worship before starting an experiment. I asked why he considered this to be a superstition. He said that praying to false Gods was a superstition. I then asked him what his definitions  of  ‘ superstition’ and ‘true God’  were .‘Anyone other than Jesus is a false God’ he said.

It struck me that even a scientist can  err  in such matters as religion. Clearly one man’s belief is another man’s superstition.

This scientist went on to define superstition as a belief that can be negated by common sense or scientific knowledge based on evidence. He then reminded me that the ‘milk drinking Ganesha’ that springs up occasionally even in a so called ‘educated city’ like Mumbai was a superstition. I  had to agree on that point. But I cornered him by asking if there was any  ‘ scientific’ evidence of the  biblical miracles. To his credit he switched the topic. I could reach the same conclusion  I have cited earlier—one man’s belief…’..

Does education help remove superstitions? Not necessarily as we have seen in the case of the doctor couple and many such cases. . Does economic development help? Not necessarily as the case of the  same doctor couple and millions of other such stories indicate. In the US the number 13 is considered unlucky. The highest paid astrologer in the US and maybe the world  is not an Indian but a woman called Marjory Orr.

Religion may in fact fuel  irrational beliefs. In this respect no religion is exempt. Some of the most basic beliefs of  most  faiths can be classified as superstitions  if the test of common sense and evidence is applied. I am sure that if I were to list them here I would be inciting a riot!. By the way many riots –religious or not --begin with the irrational divide between them and us.

Extremist ideology of the left or right have something in  common—the  tendency to divide people into two camps, the effort to demonise the other, the effort  to create hatred of the other and the appeal to irrational emotions  to fuel violence. At this point of time people suspend logic, common sense and common human considerations to kill. The Gujerat riots whose true dimensions are unfolding these days is just one example. Stalin and Mao are two of the moist heinous men apart from Hitler who will go down in history for their getting irrational behavior from ordinary people to kill millions  of innocent people. Perhaps this  proves that atheists are also superstitious. Ideology not religion is the basis for their brand of superstitions.

How then can we eliminate superstition? I am afraid there is no answer to this question.

When  I look back at human behavior over the entire course of evolution I am afraid I cannot resist coming to the conclusion which fortunately none less than Einstein endorses---

OVER THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF EVOLUTION, EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED EXCEPT THE WAY WE THINK.

There seems to be something in the human condition,  in the  thought process that makes us surrender even humanitarian considerations and turn to even close neighbours  to harm  or kill them and  to  believe in the unbelievable. The primordial emotions of man have remained the same over millennia—fear, greed, hatred, envy, anger, desire. Every religion asks us to conquer these but to no avail.

No Prophet, saint or holy man or woman has made much of a difference to humanity at large in our conquest of these negative emotions . Maybe a few  people have been converted and have been able to conquer the worst forms of inhuman behaviour —it is this conversion that ought to be the goal of all men of all religions rather  than the superficial transformation from believing    one ‘God ‘ to switching to believing in   another ‘ God’

The Rationalists Association has done some work to eradicate superstitions .Unfortunately in India at least they have been selective in their choice of people to ‘ expose’ with the result that they are clubbed with

 ‘ pseudosecularists’.  Maybe they too have some irrational beliefs .

I can only conclude that superstitions will be with us even in the distant future.

All that we can strive for is to guide our family members to abjure superstitions that  harm others physically or emotionally. Harmless superstitions—like  wearing a shirt of a particular color whenever we attend an interview--  may be ignored.

A   friend of mine says only  God can deliver us from superstitions.

This leads us to a critical question--Is belief in God itself another superstition?

This is my 13^th blog.  Wish me good luck!

 K.R.RAVI

USA