Last month more than 100 people died in a stampede in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The dead when alive were devotees. They went to the Ratangarh temple on the occasion of the Durga Puja, one of the important Hindu festivals. The dead mostly included women, children and old men. 30 children died. Seven years ago stampede had taken place in the same place, but no lessons were drawn.
It does not need any hard evidence to point out that most of the people who died were poor. For thousands of devotees, there were only one sub-inspector and nine constables to maintain law and order. The top officials of the district were busy in elections, or were simply careless. Had the Chief Minister of the state, forget Chief Minister, had a senior bureaucrat of the state been visiting the temple, the law and order could have been better maintained, perhaps the stampede could have been avoided. Perhaps religious festivals should be graced by the so called elite people so that lives of the poor people could be saved!!
I am particularly sad for the children who died. Perhaps they could have preferred to play in their house yards than visiting temples where most of them could little understand what is going on. These children died, and with them a portion of future India is lost. The tradition of visiting temples on religious occasions might be a good thing as it might bring solace to mind and heart, but if stampede and death would be the consequence then I would prefer to worship my God in my house than visiting to a temple and get killed. I remember reading news that one family who went to a religious place to celebrate the birthday of their only son lost all lives in a road accident on return. Perhaps we need better roads, better law and order, and better discipline before visiting temples and offering prayers.
The excessive reliance on tradition may not be always helpful. There needs to be a distinction between superstition and tradition. As I interpret theology, God does not demand that one must go to temple to reach Him. There is God in human being and when the human being realizes God in him and identifies him with Him, then there is realization of God and liberation, for that it is not necessary to go to temple. Swami Vivekananda, one of the great religious and social reformers of India, argued that it is better to play football than to read Gita. He was at remorse at the poverty of India, the malnutrition affecting her children. He argued, with which I agree, that without a healthy body and mind, an individual can not be true follower of God. An emaciated body will devote most time thinking about food than God. And a corrupt mind can never lead us to God even if we sit and stand 24/7 before the statue of God in the most famous temple.
Marx is right when he argued religion is the opium of the masses. It teaches subservience and fatalism. I know that this is a negative aspect of religion. In its positive aspect, religion has many utilities both for peace of mind and for spiritual progress. Let me talk about this negative dimension. Fatalism induces in the recalcitrant a sense of apathy towards affairs of life as he believes that the God will do everything for him. This enabled the colonial powers to easily dominate the God-believing people as fatalism induces in them the belief that it is what God wants. I read somewhere that when Abdali attacked India, he had an easy run in some places in killing people as many of them under the spell of the Bhakti movement did not counter the attack. If that is religion, then I would better disavow it.
A religion devoid of courage, vigor, devoid of life and dynamism, devoid of progress and adaptation, is no religion as such but a dying creed. At least that is not Hinduism. Perhaps decay has gripped the religion. Particularly in the context of Hindu religion, there are no stalwarts in the image of Shankara or Ramanuja or Swami Vivekananda or Sri Aurobindo who can guide the practitioners of the religion. Now-a-days in India we have a lot of talk about religion, but not for internal illumination but external embellishment. It is no surprise that the so called God-men and God-women are morally corrupt. External preaching without internal purity has almost created a miasma over the true tenets of the religion. The old ritual persists but the spirit has seemed to evaporate.
I am not at all amused with the death of the innocent on the bridge over the Sindh river last month. Though the religion occasion coincided with my birthday, I felt helpless as on such an occasion I heard people dying. Goddess Durga, whose temple the pilgrims thronged must have not desired such a scene. Though it would be both futile and irrational to study the mind of the Goddess, but if we apply the human reasoning it would be appropriate to say that the Goddess, whom we worship as mother, must not rejoice at the death of her children.
The basic tenet of Hindu religion is perhaps best captured by the 15th century Gujarati philosopher, Narsinh Mehta, who sang, ‘the devotee is he who understands and cares for other’s pain’ (Vaishnava Jana to tene kahiye jo pir parai jaane re). If service is one pillar, then sacrifice is certainly the other. But service and sacrifice demand courage and preparedness. A person who is filled with vices can neither perform service nor sacrifice. And the vices can be individual as well as collective. When a religion is gripped by the vices with majority of the practitioners believing that religion is just a ritual, and nothing more, then there is no end to perdition not after this life but in this life.
Some people believe that if a person dies on an auspicious religion occasion, then he directly goes to heaven. Perhaps this belief persists in other religions. I strongly disapprove such a belief. Such a belief justifies all kinds of death on these occasions, including the stampede that took place in Madhya Pradesh last month. I would rather let the people stay at home and pray from there rather than letting them to become victims of a poorly organized festival, irresponsible administration, and deadly rumors.
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