Understanding the Godmen syndrome

It is true that Hinduism has survived centuries of invasions to throw enough evidence of its strength however, PK has indeed highlighted one of the rare weaknesses of Hinduism for which Hindus very easily fall for Godmen. While in other religions, the final word is awaited only from their well identified and organized places of worships, Hindus are quite unorganized in this regard. In all other religions only the pre-identified religious heads are in a position to use or misuse their status, but in Hinduism anyone can occupy the place of religious authority. This unorganized character of Hinduism allows its followers to look, on their own, for the one who can directly address to their problems/doubts. Godmen look to fill up this void existing in this peculiar religious set up of Hinduism. As a natural consequence to this, many genuine thinkers and several ace social reformists of Hinduism have often been historically pushed to the place of Godmen/God while on the other hand some cunningly exploit this weakness of the Hinduism to fool their gullible followers. The scope of having acceptability of a Godman has helped Hinduism to carry out several great reforms successfully. Therefore while asking the followers to test the genuineness of their respective Godmen must be encouraged but forcing them against having Godmen altogether will make this great Hinduism also as narrow and as rigid as other monolithic beliefs like Islam, Christian and Communism.

In addition to above, it seems to me that this 'weakness' of Hinduism is directly linked with a typical Hindu outlook wherein they can see God literally in everything – sun, moon, earth, mountain, animals, trees, stones and idols. Hindus can worship anything and therefore anyone who is able to win their heart easily become yet another object of their faith and worship. It is exactly this attitude of Hindus that make them bow even before the tokens and emblems of other faiths and religions - with highest respect and that too as almost in a reflexive manner. Developing respect for other religions comes almost natural to Hindus. It is no nonsense that while even neighbouring countries with identical background as ours chose to become non-secular state in their complete senses, Hindustan preferred 'secularism' by heart. This idol-worshipping attitude that makes Hindus prone to falling prey to even those Godmen who try to take undue advantage of their honest beliefs – also help them in becoming 'true seculars'. While there is indeed a need to caution gullible Hindus to test a person completely before accepting him/her as a Godman, it is even more important to ensure that idol-worshipping is neither underestimated and nor ridiculed ever as it helps in producing truly 'secular' persons in abundance to keep the secular character intact of this country.

PK - pure entertainment or hidden intentions?

Both OMG and PK deals with the same subject and both of them intend to convey similar messages but their treatments are entirely different. OMG was a constructive criticism but PK is out and out a destructive and derogatory in nature. In OMG, the storyteller very intelligently pits God Himself against the Godmen and God wins convincingly – fair enough. While OMG forcefully placed the point of view of non-believers, with that it also encouraged believers to go for introspection.

I just saw a panel discussion on IBN7 where everyone argued that Hinduism is so great, so tolerant, it has such a rich history of reforms and unmatched treasure of philosophy that extends much beyond any set of narrow rituals that those who are asking for a ban on the film actually do not understand Hinduism. What hurts hard is actually this – that the opposition for the film is being sought on a ground that film ‘intentionally’ refrains from conveying about Hinduism. Hinduism is equated with idol-worshiping and following Godmen only. While following mindlessly a book and its interpreters may be others’ approach but certainly not of Hindus. Very cleverly, on this ground Hinduism is ridiculed excessively as compared to other religions. The rich Vedic philosophy of life that extends beyond idols and the attention that even ‘atheism’ has received in our ancient culture of Hinduism has been completely ignored ‘intentionally’. The film puts monolithic ‘religions’ and our plural ‘culture’ on the same line – and that is what hurts those who believe in plurality. The stupidity in the treatment would become obvious when someone would ask us to avoid meeting a doctor just because a few of the doctors are caught in criminal acts. Will it be acceptable to ask people to do research themselves and invent medicines instead of going to a doctor and giving him a chance to victimize you?

There is nothing wrong till the film is taken purely for its entertainment value but when the support is given for the message that the film intends to spread then Hinduism would certainly find itself at a great disadvantage in this film. That the average film-goers in India is not as aware of our rich cultural heritage as those who are against it – thanks to our ‘secular’ approach – it only works against Hinduism. That a Hindu needs to go to a far off temple to seek solution of his problem is not universally acceptable in Hinduism and was only an advice by a Godmen, but one needs to go to Haj to book a place in heaven - is a religiously accepted norm in Islam. It was also strange to witness an unrealistic open atmosphere in a Pakistan embassy for an Indian girl. To prove a point the film goes on to show even a secular India in a poor light as compared to an out and out Islamic and terrorist state of Pakistan – and this alone raises many questions on the honesty of the filmmakers.

Just as ‘3 Idiots’ worked wonders in disorienting students and encouraged them to take studies non-seriously, this film also has similar targets against Hinduism. I just wish that the success of this film (unlike 3 Idiots) does not get translated in spreading its message against Hinduism and gets confined only against ‘dishonest’ Godmen.

A Last chance for Development

The undeniable success of Modi in putting the issue of development right at the centre of all discussions in this country is lauded even by his adversaries. The country has got after a long time a leader who undoubtedly is able to generate positive energy and hope among the general mass. It goes to his credit entirely that he could generate positivity in majority of Indians who were feeling dejected, demoralized and were facing a bleaker future ahead. Continuous discoveries of cases of corruption, each followed by another bigger one, was breeding unrest among us and an impression that the then government was unable to take measures to arrest this dangerous trend was only blowing our woos and despondency to dangerous proportions.

Recently this newly discovered energy that was able to unite our country across all perceivable internal boundaries and reservations has started showing some real signs of strain. Modi had urged us to put all other issues on the backburner to ensure that India is placed on the right track of development. The opposition like behavior of a few outfits of RSS and BJP needs to show some maturity and restraints after they have acquired a status wherein now they are seen as having a say in the government. Before it reaches a disturbing level Modi needs to arrest the trend at once otherwise his herculean effort may meet a Kejriwali-fate. The failure of Kejriwal in controlling his own urge to behave as opposition leader had started the trend of his downfall and a similar display by those 'friendly' outfits that are perceived as favorable to the present government may do the same for Modi this time.

History and time is however is on the side of Modi. Just the way he had handled these elements in his own state he needs to repeat his performance at the centre and show that he can control this undesirable trend of some of his 'sympathizer' outfits without them feeling insinuated. If true secularism means an attitude where "India comes first" then true nationalists must give up all of their other concerns to pave a way for the real and possibly the last chance to put this country on the development track.

Brahminic way of Left-thinkers

Secularism as a tool for conflict resolution

Hinduism is known to have successfully able to resolve many of its ancient conflicts amicably by reciprocating favourably to several social-reforming movements. However, conflict of Hinduism with some of the recent singular beliefs and religions like Islam and Christian that came from outside this country are showing no signs of getting resolved. This is understandable as these religions have been inherently opposed to the idea of coexistence of multi-faith and have invariably fallen way short of responding adequately to the one sided willingness of Hindus to show respect towards their beliefs. To tackle this deadlock a new 'belief' emerged in the name of 'secularism' and started gaining ground. The idea of 'secularism' that primarily got spread within Hindus has failed miserably by now to deliver any satisfactory result in this regard. The failure of 'Indian secularism' thus far can be explained with the realization that its approach is biased heavily against Hinduism and asks Hindus to offer a solution by shrugging off their belief in 'multi-faith'. More than three-quarters of a century has been spent on this effort that has resulted in building an army of Left-leaning thinkers who primary focused their attention to somehow force the society to compromise on its Hindu-identity in order to make way for a one-sided solution.

Emergence of left-thinkers as new Brahmins

The leftists' prescription for the still unresolved conflict of Hinduism with the recent singular-beliefs has been to convert the multi-faith 'Hindu' culture into a community having 'no-faith' outlook. They are well aware of the fact that there is hardly any scope of spreading 'atheism' in the hard-liner singular beliefs but at the same time they were hopeful of a positive result among the overwhelmingly large section of Hindus who are known to have a non-rigid attitude towards their faith. At this point the left-thinkers miscalculated the hidden strength behind the apparently vulnerable look of Hindus. The left-thinkers had obviously erred in their expectation that 'atheism' would counter 'Hinduism', which would in turn create a stage for promotion of 'communism' - as this strategy has failed to deliver the desired results for them. The primary reason for the failure was that 'atheism' and 'communism' are actually akin to narrow singular-beliefs and therefore could not attract the large-hearted Hindus who could never compromise on their unwavering faith in the 'multi-religion' Hindu-approach. To get the Hindus rid of their 'multi-faith' belief the left thinkers tried to counter the rich haul of ancient Hindu texts by devoting enormous time in painstaking efforts to develop a huge treasure of anti-Hindu reading material. With the financial and logistical state support they engaged themselves in fancy research ideas and developed an intellectual army to attack Hinduism. They pointed out several inadequacies, flaws, shortcomings and fished out presence of some unforgivable derogatory remarks in the ancient Brahminical texts in particular and then (mis)used them to create an anti-Hindu brand of 'intellectuals'. Texts like 'manusmriti' that had lost all relevance in modern India were utilized by this brigade of pseudo-intellectuals to spread anti-Hindu feeling in the name of 'secularism'. In this immaculately executed exercise they erred in identifying Hinduism with Brahminism. They also wrongly considered the lower caste Hindus and Hindu-women to be potentially vulnerable section of Hindu society and thought that they would be able to evoke an anti-Hindu upsurge among them. Unfortunately for them those sections were actually the real strength of Hinduism. Their blunder instead worked as a favourable catalyst for the nationalist forces who had identified this strength of Hinduism and had started putting all its attention on building up a vision to develop Hinduism by spreading the lower caste vision of Hindus.

Remained oblivious to all these essential aspects of Hinduism, Left-thinkers emerged as the new Brahmins of modern India. They overlooked the enormous strength with which the Hindu-mass believed in their 'multi-faith' approach and tried imposing their 'red' agenda by attacking 'Brahminism' to denounce 'Hinduism'. Just like Brahmins the 'Left' with the help of the ruling class thought that with the power of their acquired knowledge, developed this time with the help of their 'imported' and 'self-accumulated' left-literature, they would be able to establish their supremacy. With this they hoped of dislodging Hindu-thinking out of the Hindu-minds. They hoped that this would give them a perfect ground to rule the class and mass of India. The contemporary arrogance of Left-thinkers almost matches with what once Brahmins exhibited after acquiring knowledge. Hindu-mass comprising largely of the lower castes could never identify their Hinduism with Brahminism. While Brahminism probably remained close only to the fringe upper caste section of Hindus the lower castes happily kept following their reflexive multi-faith approach towards life. Hinduism, much to everyone's surprise, has survived not because of the upper castes but has actually survived despite them. Historically, all the pluralism and multi-faithism that Hinduism boasts off are courtesy these large hearted and peace loving, uncelebrated and semi-discarded lower caste Hindus. Even in the past, while upper castes kept fighting over narrow faiths and pseudo-singular beliefs the lower castes kept enforcing peaceful solutions with their natural instinctive belief in the approach of 'multi-faith'. When upper castes were fighting over supremacy of Shiva and Vishnu, establishing the validity of Dwait and Adwait principles, lower caste Hindus provided the solution by worshipping both the idols and respecting both the contradicting theories. When there was a war waged for and against spreading beliefs of Buddhism, Aryasamaj and many other such reformist thoughts they got finally resolved when only this section of Hindus showed the way of respecting each others' beliefs with exemplary ease without a sign of unease or contradiction. Recently the useless furore created by the same class of Hindus over worshipping Sai-Baba in Hindu temples has further exposed them in this regard as Sai-Baba has already been being worshipped in many temples by a reasonable section of the middle, lower and lower-middle class Hindus. It is remarkable to notice that the lower caste Hindus have always remained indifferent to the intellectual debates in which the 'well read' Hindus (read upper castes and especially Brahmins) engaged themselves and instead kept on resolving all issues of conflicts successfully using their inherent pluralistic attitude towards life. The credit for survival of Hinduism can not be attributed to the so called learned, intellectual, knowledgeable and enlightened section of Hindus but only to the lower caste 'experienced' Hindu inhabitants.

Alas, to the utter disappointment of leftists, their mammoth post-colonial efforts are failing to yield the result as envisaged by them.

Unfolding the Hindu-puzzle

Just as it is intriguing to find out who are Hindus it is all the more puzzling to find out the reasons how Hindus survived the onslaught of invasions and conversions for centuries together. To uncover the mystery the more you would read the ancient Hindu-texts chances are that the more you will be left perplexed. Ironically, after reading many of the ancient Hindu-texts one is left wondering at the failure to get a valid and understandable reason for the lower castes Hindu-majority to still identify themselves as Hindus. The manner in which they have been treated in the past and to an unreasonable extent are still being treated by the upper castes Hindus - defies all logic for them to call themselves as Hindus. To me, it is only because our ancient texts are heavily biased with the upper castes' viewpoints whereas the puzzle gets unfolded only when Hinduism is explored from the often overlooked perspective of the lower caste Hindus.

Horror Serial continues

(Published in the Millennium Post in the December 11 issue that can be visited using the following link http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=88295 )

Yet another gruesome incident and yet another exposure of bundle of serious lapses by some government and a private agency but followed again by yet another series of avoidable attempts to score intellectual (read political) brownie points on this shameless incident. The media must avoid their temptation of (mis)using these horrifying incidents to settle scores with the “parental” mindset who starts advising the victim and also stay away from encouraging the overtly “unrealistic and confused” freedom activists who resort to defying even genuine concerns and expect the system to take care of the entire responsibility.

This incident does have a similarity with the last December's event in the sense that the victim in this case too had taken enough precautions normally expected from an aware working girl. The lapse in this case was clearly committed by the taxi service who had not observed the prescribed checks and the police who gave the serial offender a “character certificate” that eventually helped him in getting this job. While in the earlier incident the girl was with her male friend looking for a public transport, this time the victim had chosen a 'reputed' taxi service to get back her home. In both the cases the culprits were nabbed promptly by the police thanks to the media hype on the incident. It is also a fact that all the culprits of the last incident (except the one who took shelter under a serious flaw in our law) have been convicted by now.

Besides the ritual bashing of the government and the police after such incidents what goes missing generally is proposing innovative ideas, suggesting proper planning and enforcing their timely execution. Instead of beating drums and shouting slogans asking why the incident happened, it would serve our purpose in much better way if we suggest an effective strategy and ask these (ir)responsible agencies that why have they not been implementing these proposals in a time bound manner. Having more women in the police and creation of a section fully devoted to act on issues related to victimization of women are a few of such steps that should be put in place in a time bound manner. Provision for free mobile applications to raise alarm and alert patrolling are other valid expectations. And of course all these efforts will not have the desired effect if the rate of conviction does not improve and are not delivered fast. With all these in place, we can expect that similar crimes by 'unknown' criminals would be effectively controlled. Similar crimes however, by males who are 'known' to the victims can be tackled primarily through social activism and of course by educating everyone of us on 'moral values' for respecting a NO at any cost.

Indian Education - a fresh approach

The present education system – an assessment

The present Indian education is designed to produce persons with

• Good mathematical skills.
• Good instruction-following capacities.
• Average analytical skills.
• Not so inspiring writing abilities.
• Poor reading habits.
• Hopeless self learning attitudes.
• Poor citizen habits.
• Missing national pride.
• Individualistic outlook.
• Missing concern for the society.
• Flawed attitude towards opposite sex.
• No idea of the law of land.
• No idea of financial discipline.

The system is apparently fighting to survive the pressure of dealing with unmanageable number of candidates right from the beginning. Our education system has become an instrument primarily to provide some mechanical way to shortlist candidates. To select candidates for any avenue, students are therefore judged more on their reproducing abilities and less on their understanding capabilities. Interest in a discipline and passion towards a skill are often sacrificed and the candidates are expected to discover and even generate these qualities within themselves after they get selected.

This has forced our education system to get built up apparently on a flawed premise that an academician or a researcher is suited best for any kind of profession. With this basic premise our education attempts to produce only academicians. And only during this process students keep on shifting to other avenues at some stage or the other out of frustration from the mainstream education to learn skills that are required to earn a living.

Examination side-effects

The education system has got evolved in such a manner that understanding a problem, innovative thinking and failed attempts go hopelessly unevaluated and hence get discouraged in the present system. On the other hand, mere having Information about solutions or an attitude for mindlessly following a beaten path and only successful attempts most often get rewarded in the present system.

That one will be able to get a profession of one's own interest depends completely on the reproducing ability of a person. And the system thus encourages students to fool others through rote-learning. Only rote learners are sure of getting 'success' in this system. In our society, 'Success' is a name given to the event of getting into your choice of profession. Ironically in our country it is another bitter truth that the 'choice' is always guided by the expected financial returns from the profession and not driven by any passion for that profession.

Our education system fails to realize that if someone has understood a topic/concept then that never means that the same person will also be able to reproduce the same. To be able to reproduce the same one needs to waste valuable time in revisiting the same again and again. Unfortunately even those who have not understood can reproduce the same through rote learning. Too much importance on examination-results forces even innovative thinkers and visionaries to waste their time in preparing them for useless reproduction.

Misplaced sense of achievement

Another serious fall out of the present system is that a degree is invariably mistaken as an ultimate achievement and a final license to get (not earn) money. To get into a system that would fetch them a 'financially relevant and socially respectable' job, students often get exhausted while handling the cut-throat competitions and consider their job as already over once they get placed in a desired environment. They then expect the government to start paying him/her for this 'false' sense of achievement.

Our society has an enviable (unreasonably skewed) liking for only a few types of professions. These professions come with a deadly combination of high returns with astonishingly lesser challenges. Beginning from the colonial era these jobs have continued to evolve as offering more and more of these attractive features. People find those select jobs so glamorous and paying that the entire society runs after only those selected few professions. We acquire degrees and percentages only to get hold of one of these jobs. However the anti-climax is that we consider acquiring degrees as the end of the purpose to get education and a government officer's job ('corruption' renders the returns entirely de-linked from any pressure to perform) epitomizes the sense of getting rewarded in return of education.

The main problem of our education system is therefore that our society considers only a handful of the 'jobs' as 'financially relevant and socially respectable' options. This is exactly the reason that our society looks up to getting a job only as a doctor, engineer, manager, officer, administrator, academicians. There is an urgent need to expand this base. Jobs associated with several other kinds of skills should also be made financially relevant and hence socially respectable. In our society the difference between the social status of a pathological technicians, a nurse and a doctor is unreasonably enormous; difference between a construction worker, a labor contractor, a junior engineer and an engineer is unreasonably huge; difference between a car mechanic, a technician and an automobile engineer is too large to be justified; difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer is completely unjustified; difference between a University professor and a school teacher is not understandable; difference between the status of a plumber and a civil engineer is outrageously huge; difference between a hotel waiter and a hotel manager is inexplicably large. This brazen attitude stems from our age-old disrespect towards dignity of work. It is true that this change is not easy to affect but the absence of effort in this direction has already magnified the problem to an extent that an avoidable 'reservation race' has found its relevance in the system.

The way ahead

Let us try to move inch by inch towards a state wherein financial considerations will take a back seat in favor of an inherent interest in a profession. When a student can take up a profession out of his own personal interest in the same and not because the skill can provide an unreasonably better financial status and a respectable lifestyle – then only we will be somewhere near to our destination.

As long as these differences would stay in our society the mad rush to get into those few professions would continue. And as long as the rush would continue the method of examination to shortlist the unmanageably long list of candidates in a blind and mechanical manner will find no alternative. And as long as this examination system will exist no innovation can be nurtured or encouraged in this process.

Education should aim at producing persons with

• Good reading, writing, analyzing and debating abilities.
• Necessary sensibilities.
• Some job fetching skills/attitudes.
• Attitude of a self-learner.
• Concern towards society.
• Knowledge of law of the land.
• Temperament of observing rules.
• Courage to point out deficiency and injustice.
• Having national pride.
• Vision of an innovator.

Conclusion

Education means development and it must be provided to all without exception.

Primary education should aim primarily on building values and personality development,

Secondary education should be utilized to help students identify their interest/inclination and

Higher education should be aimed at building those skills.

To achieve this we need to dump two avoidable misconceptions that obstruct our march towards achieving this:

• We must be realistic and never think of de-linking Higher education from jobs/profession.
• And secondly, we also must stop daydreaming that the government will be able to provide Higher education to all without the help of private investment.

The government should focus on framing policies to encourage private players to help in enlarging the set of 'financially relevant and socially respected' professions by modernizing more and more job-providing avenues/skills.

Scope and Hope

The numbers are so large that there is no other way but to depend heavily on internet-based education. Uploading of skill-training demonstrations by real professionals should be encouraged and must be given utmost priority. Computers and automation by machines should be encouraged in those skills that are hitherto not financially paying to make them financially attractive. Use of automatic machines in furniture industries, washing and cleaning industries, repairing industries, construction industries and waste-management industries can do wonders in making them of some financial worth. Use of computerized approach in hair-designing, jewellery designing and fashion designing can make them attractive too. Besides these, imparting the attitude required on the issues of Sexual Harassment, Gender sensitization, Driving rules, Anti-drug laws, developing a balanced understanding on the other sex, issues of national pride, national concerns on population, poverty and environment should also find desired attention in the nursery and primary education curricula.