Religion as insurance against retribution
Lalit Mohan

"THE first divine," wrote Voltaire, "was the first rogue who met the first fool." Somewhere in our distant past that was how organised religion made its debut. And that is the way it has stayed ever since.

All faiths profess, in theory, common moral and ethical values. It is only when religion takes an organised form that the differences, couched mostly in bigoted doctrines and questionable practices, come to the fore. And these are what most seers and believers lay stress on. A Hindu may kill, burn, rape and treat fellow beings worse than dirt, but as long as he donates to temples, goes on pilgrimages, does not eat beef and holds bovine life more sacred than human, he will pass muster. A Muslim may do likewise, but remains a pillar of the community as long as he performs ritual namaz, goes on Haj and abstains from pork. A good Sikh is one who does not cut his hair, is a teetotaller and performs the Akhand Path regularly, even if he indulges in a bit of bloodletting now and then. And, of course, all of them believe in God, whatever name they call Him by.

In fact, if ever a survey is done of the religious inclination of all thugs, cheats, murderers, dacoits and corrupt politicians in our country, one is not likely to find any atheist among them. All criminals are devout believers. The dacoit who prostates before the mata even as he goes about his business of robbing and killing, the terrorist or the rioter who seeks the blessings of his chosen God before he slaughters innocents, the shopkeeper who does his ritual namaskar to the goddess before he starts the day’s routine of cheating or adulteration, the tycoon who builds temples while he decides whom best to bribe and how much, and the neta who organises yagnas to cover all his sins, are all people with deep religious convictions.

When they ask for divine nod, they all do it with utmost faith and sincerity. Religion and prayer are an insurance against retribution. The God that looks on passively as innocent people are being killed, maimed or raped cannot be omnipresent, omnipotent and compassionate. As Voltaire said in The Sage and the Atheist, "If so good and powerful a God existed, surely he would not have suffered evil to enter the world, nor have devoted his creatures to grief and crime. If he cannot prevent evil, he is not almighty; if he will not, he is cruel."

Such words would give comfort to the believers. Its corollary is the exaggerated emphasis on ‘self fulfillment’, whereby theological doctrine implicitly overlooks social implications of our actions. Religion remains almost exclusively a personal matter, followed for personal goals. On the highest plane what we taught to pray for is moksha or nirvana; to look and to travel inwards; to discover God within; to get out of the cycle of life and death and to, ultimately, merge with the divine. Our religion does not prescribe social service as the preferred path to salvation.

Swami Sivananda says: "In all ages, at all times, in all worlds, by repetition of the name of the Lord, men have crossed the ocean of samsara and attained to the highest eminence." Is that all that is there to it? Chant the name and let the devil attend to the rest? Even if a jaap of the Lord’s name brings salvation, is that not a very selfish goal to aim for? Why pray for an exit from the life-death cycle at all? Would it not be better to keep on being re-born so that one can serve the destitute beings? Why withdraw from society when there is so much to do to ease the suffering of those who live in misery? Which is a higher form of godliness — to seek one’s own salvation or to do good unto others?

This business of looking inwards and cleansing the soul through prayer and ritual is an integral part of our mindset. In every aspect of life the focus is on internal purification, the external be damned. We may wash our kitchen and bathe twice a day, but think nothing of throwing garbage or spitting or doing worse on the street outside. The house is an extension of the self and must be kept clean inside. What is outside of our self, family or home is none of our business. That is the prevalent belief in our society.

Social service has no place in either our rituals, or in the conduct of our religious seers. Our mythology is replete with instances of all manner of undesirable characters — from Ravana to Duryodhana — being blessed with incredible boons and powers because of tapasya of some God or Deputy God, but never for doing any selfless service among the most downtrodden. Our sadhus and godmen are known more for conducting yagnas or producing miracles than plodding in the slums where those most unfortunate live.

This explains why, some years ago, when the bloated bodies were being collected for burial; food and medicines were being ferried to marooned villagers in the cyclone affected Orissa, the much revered sants, godmen and other leading lights of our faith were, if anything, conspicuous by their absence from the scene of calamity. Neither was any of the Shankracharyas, one of whom has his dham in Puri, close by, seen anywhere dirtying his hands or wading through the corpse-filled waters or coordinating any relief effort. Nor did any godman roll up his sleeves and go to Gujarat and try to conjure up some medicines and water for the people stricken by earthquake, and later riots.

Why is it that the service of the faceless downtrodden gets such a low priority in our religious beliefs and practices? Is it because the predominant creed in our country is basically self-centred? "Hinduism is about man, man at his deepest, his self," writes one authority on the subject. That, exactly, is the problem. There is too much of ‘self. Too much emphasis on prayer, rituals and meditation with the ultimate aim of attaining one’s own nirvana, but so little of the altruistic spirit that cares, first, for others.

The holy men of India, therefore, remain untainted by physical contact with human misery. Has one ever heard of any Indian guru or godman attending to lepers himself? Baba Amte still does it, even as old age catches up with him. And for that reason he would never qualify as a religious seer. In the final stages of life we are supposed to withdraw and retire to some secluded spot for meditation. Or start a new personalised cult. Community service earns no credits in the salvation curriculum.

So, even when the religious leaders of all persuasions argue about the Babri Masjid-Ram Temple imbroglio, not one of them talks about building a hospital or an orphanage on the disputed site. Service may be a higher form of godliness than ritual, prayer, worship, meditation or pilgrimage. But in our individualistic and self-centred order, it finds no takers. That is why the further one is away from established religion and its practices, the closer one may actually be to God. In the final analysis the atheist who will not appease God through prayers and rituals, but who will instead answer his own conscience will be the one closest to Him.

But the atheist, being who he is, will still question belief in the existence of God. When he asks for explanations for a host of unaccounted events, we ascribe them to ‘God’s will’. In fact Voltaire was right when he said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." It also tells us what God really is. He is a collective noun for all the answers we do not have. As and when we get some answers, godhood gets reduced to that extent. Prof Stephen Hawking, the brilliant but physically handicapped physicist, believes that given time we will get even the answers about the universe that elude us today. But how many people really want to know when even the answers we already have are disregarded in deference to a blind faith in the common cover for our ignorance?

Take deification of planetary bodies, for example. For ages, they were considered manifestations of divinity. But now we know that they are nothing more than masses of rocks, congealed lava and a variety of gases. No right-thinking person should now hold them in reverence. Why do women still look at the moon to break the karva chauth fast when they should know that the only organic matter on the earth’s satatllite is the waste left behind by the Apollo astronauts? Why should one drop a few coins in canisters held out by rogues at traffic lights to appease Shani (Saturn) when we know what the planet and its swirling rings consist of? Why should Christians still worship the Shroud of Turin, the garment with which Christ’s body is supposed to have been covered after the crucifixion, when carbon dating tests have proved that it is less than 800 years old?

Hawking said, "God is a metaphor for the laws of nature." Even though he suffers from a serious physical disability, he knows that God cannot help him or operate outside those laws. That is why he is using them, as they are understood by science today, to invent devices that help him overcome his handicap.

He was in India a few years ago when the Kumbh was on, yet he would never had thought of a dip at the Sangam in Allahabad as a cure for his affliction. But not everybody is a Stephen Hawking. Most of those who took the plunge would have believed seriously that it would, irrespective of nature’s rules, help them acquire whatever they pined for, or even wash away their sins.

This faith in the supernatural, that somehow it delivers, is common to all creeds. From believing that vibhuti can be ‘materialised’ out of nothing to a conviction that, some years ago, Ganesha idols actually drank milk, most people still feel that nature can be bypassed. When the second event happened, a neighbour invited me to see the milk-drinking phenomenon actually take place in her house. Sure enough the white liquid was disappearing from a spoon that touched the idol. Milk flowing down a milk-washed object did create the illusion that the Lord was ingesting it through the mouth. But once I placed my hand on the idol, the liquid could be seen to be trickling down on it, outside the stone figure. Even Ganesha is not above nature’s law of flow of liquids through capillary action.

There is a widespread belief that the Lord is in a position to grant protection or forgiveness irrespective of the conduct of the believer. Every religion prescribes rituals to appease Him. The devotee’s credentials and conduct are not as important as his blind faith in the deity of his choice. Once He or She was appeased even the likes of Hrinyakashyap could get an extended lease on life.

Acceptance of each other’s flaws seems to be part of a cosy arrangement between deities and their worshippers. Perfect Gods would demand perfect conduct. Creating man in his own image was one of God’s masterstrokes.