A Chance Remark

Chance remarks have a tendency to deflect one’s thoughts tangentially. It was thus that when we were returning home the other day my mind wandered off into the question of religious rituals.

The chance remark that occasioned this was my sister-in-law wishing our Muslim driver ‘Naya saal mubarak’ or something like that. The fact is you never say anything in Hindi or Urdu to a Tamil-born and –bred Muslim because these simple folks are happy knowing and speaking only Tamil. So the driver asked what she said and she replied that she was wishing him a happy new year because the calendar said it was the Muslim New Year. He was genuinely puzzled and asked what she meant. I interjected, “Today is the first day of Moharram”. He replied, “Oh. Moharram is just the name of a month, like Chithirai, Vaikasi in Tamil.” I said since Moharram is the first month in the Muslim calendar that made it the New Year Day for him.

Our Muslim Driver is a patient and voluble man. So he explained that the first of Moharram is just like any other day to him. The tenth of Moharram is a day of fasting (he used the word the Tamil word ‘nonbu’ and since during Ramzan the same word was used on TV, I presume he meant fasting) and Muhammad Nabi once asked his followers to observe the ninth day too if he were alive the following year but he had died before that day rolled around. Nevertheless, some people observe the ninth too. But then there are some Muslims who go around beating themselves bloody during Moharram which was against anything prescribed by the Koran. Wasn’t that only the Shias, I asked. “Yes, the Shias; they are mourning the death in battle of Muhammad Nabi’s grandson Hussain. But there is no sanction in Islam for doing such things. In fact, the only two things we need to observe are Bakr-Id and Ramzan. This business of Milad-I-Nabi, the Prophet’s birthday. Muhammad Nabi himself never celebrated it and the Koran or any other books (I presume he meant the Sunnah and the Hadith here) don’t sanction it. If anything, we need to spend the day in prayer and contemplation. But folks here in Madras go to the beach and set off fireworks. This is all against Islam,” he said.

This sounded like the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam so I asked him if he had been to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. He said, “No. Never been outside India. There are no good Muslims 20 miles outside Mecca. Near the Holy City, people follow Islam as it is meant to be followed. But the Saudis and others are corrupters of Islam. Why, all Indians were Hindus. Some were so poor they didn’t even have a change of clothing. These folks came over and gave them clothes and converted them to Islam. Very few Muslims follow the Koran properly.” Remembering Bina Shah’s article on the celebration of Bakr-Id in Pakistan, I said, “In Pakistan it seems people spend money they don’t have buying and sacrificing goats on Bakr-Id.” Our Muslim Driver was emphatic, “The sacrifice is called for only if you have the money. Otherwise, simply spend the day in prayer and contemplation. Those Pakistanis. Troublemakers. They are not good Muslims anyway. Good thing they went their own way.” Having reached home, we all got out and went inside.

I reflected on what the driver said. The simplicity of Islam was appealing to me. Even though Ramzan might be rather hard on one, the rest of the year was generally easy. Compare this to the Catholics. On almost every feast day, in Italy, Spain and Latin America, they take out the Virgin Mary and Jesus in procession. At least the Protestants reformed Christianity out of a lot of these crazy observances and made it into a respectable religion. When the people of the Protestant nations such as America or England visit Catholic countries, they now view the processions as quaint; after all there is no public display of blood and gore, human or animal, so it is okay to indulge the simple-minded Catholics in their processionals. As the driver said, the Shias were bringing a bad name to Islam with their public self-flagellations. If Muslims followed the Koran to the letter, maybe they will have a better public image, I thought. Even the Haj is treated by the Western press as an acceptable religious pilgrimage and the death of 18 pilgrims during the rush to stone Satan this year is considered just an unfortunate accident.

I thought about the strange behavior of the so-called Hindus of Tamil Nadu. About 8 months ago, I read about a village where throughout the year, people do not fry any food in oil. On a certain feast day, one old woman is chosen to make ‘vadai’ (the stuff you use to make ‘dahi bada’) except that she is not allowed to use a slotted spoon to gather the vadai’s that are cooking in the oil. She reaches into the boiling oil with her bare hand and picks up the cooked vadai’s. The ‘miracle’ is that her hand remains un-scorched by the hot oil and this is taken as proof that the village goddess is pleased with the offerings that day. The village then goes back to another year of not eating fried food.

Then there is the case of a village near Madurai where children are buried in sand. Every couple of years, the villagers gather their youngest children and, during a festival to the local goddess bury the children in sand for 30-60 seconds. This year, there was a doctor present to provide first aid, as if brain damage sustained after 15 seconds of oxygen deprivation can be reversed. The claim is that they have done this for several years and no child has suffered any serious damage. Unfortunately, the damage this year was borne by a minister in the state government who was attending the festival. He might not have known about the practice of burying children and attended the festival because he was invited by the locals, yet his supposed participation in a barbaric ritual resulted in demands for his resignation and after a day he threw in the towel and resigned. The state government has since issued an order prohibiting the practice

About two weeks back, there was a hue and cry about a festival in Poochiyur (Insectville) near Peria Naicken Palayam in Coimbatore District where the priest walked wearing sandals with nails sticking through the bottom on the backs of women lying face down on the floor. This was taken to be an infringement on the human rights of women. The suggestion was made that women could be paralyzed if the nails hit the spinal cord. A demand was made that the state should ban this practice too and the government required an explanation from the temple authorities. The authorities replied that it was voluntary on the part of the women who had taken the vow to be walked on by the priest and, no, it wasn’t meant to humiliate the women nor was it an infringement of their human rights, and so far none had been injured in the last several years.

Some five days ago, at some temple in Tamil Nadu the devotees offered blood sacrifices by biting into the neck veins of chickens and goats. The newspaper that reported this sick event had a color photo on the front page of the revolting spectacle. So far there has been no protest from the SPCA and the incident likely has not reached the ears of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. So you can be sure that this festival will continue in all its gruesomeness well into the future.

It just occurred to me that I, as a practicing Hindu, hadn’t heard of such weird practices let alone participate in such activities. The proliferation of Tamil newspapers and magazines means that such weird practices are now reported by journals wanting to fill up pages and purely local events that never would be known 5 miles from their locale are now known throughout Tamil Nadu. Of course the events get even wider publicity when the more sensational stories are carried by the English press.

Thinking further, I realized that these so-called Hindus continue with their tribal practices merely because Hinduism has been a tolerant religion. If the Hindus who came south had forced the Tamils to give up these village gods and goddesses and imposed Siva, Vishnu and their consorts as the sole objects of worship, these things wouldn’t happen. Hindus just go to the temple when they feel like, pray to the idol and return home. The presence of the idol is merely an idiosyncrasy of the religion. Periodically, the idols are taken out in procession; if Catholics can do it, so can the Hindus. The more abhorrent practices such as sati have long been abolished and Hinduism will be viewed as a modern religion with some quaintness. Instead, these so-called Hindus of Tamil Nadu continue weird practices that bring disrepute to the religion.

It is unfortunate that the laws of India define anyone who is not a Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi, Muslim or Christian to be a Hindu. Thus, the weirder section of Tamil Nadu is classified as Hindu by default. I am sure there are equally weird practices in other parts of the country but then I just don’t hear about them as much. North Indian readers of Chowk are likely to come up with weird practices from their part of India and I am sure the Telugus, Malayalis and Kannadigas of the south also have similar stories to tell. If you consider these weirdos to be outside the pale of Hinduism, then the percentage of Hindus is certain to drop considerably from the current 84% of the population.

Just as I was musing along these lines, ‘The Hindu’ published an article in the Op-Ed pages by one MSS Pandian. You can read it in full at http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/03/09/stories/200303 0901590900.htm
Mr. Pandian claimed that the government and society were trying to impose brahminical Hinduism as the definitive religion of the people and implied that activities such as burying the children or walking on the backs of women with nailed sandals are the right of those folks who want to practice them. The article contained the usual lunatic ravings of a man who has been raised on the anti-Aryan rhetoric of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – the Dravidian Progressive Party. I don’t know what is so progressive about burying children in sand and anyway the DMK was the first one to call the practice a superstition and to demand the resignation of the minister but these seemed to be lost on Mr. Pandian. It was more important for Mr. Pandian to rave about the so-called brahminical domination of Hinduism than to be rational. My personal opinion is that these idiots could do pretty much what they want so long as they don’t drag the fair name of Hinduism into it. Let them marry their first cousins, let them pray to small-pox and movie actresses (is there a difference?), let them deify political leaders and make their tombs into places of pilgrimage, let them immolate themselves upon the death of such leaders, let them chop off their little fingers on their leaders’ birthdays (as someone did on Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s birthday last week), let them outdo each other in weirdness but for Heaven’s sake, let us not call these people Hindus. Let us grant them their wish to be free of brahminical Hinduism by calling them by their tribal names or anything else; anything except the appellation Hindu.

It occurred to me that the mistake was not in not granting Dalits the right of entry into Hindu temples. (In actuality, it is the Brahmin Rajaji who led the efforts to open temples to Untouchables in Tamil Nadu and CP Ramaswamy Iyer who did the same as Dewan in the princely state of Travancore-Cochin. It is the mid- to- lower-castes who are still trying to keep Dalits out of temples in Tamil Nadu through threats, intimidation and physical violence despite laws against it). The mistake was in granting the right of temple entry to Chettiars, Mudaliars, Kallans, Naidus, Naickers, Thevars and a whole host of other castes who revert to their weird behavior once they are out of public sight. The brahminical temples should have kept out all so that the rest would classify themselves as non-Hindus. These folks want one foot in the temples to Siva, Vishnu, Parvathi and Lakshmi and another in the temples to small-pox or Ayyanar, sometimes with a toe in the direction of the temple to Khushbhoo. They want the respectability seemingly conferred by associating with the High Religion of Brahminical Hinduism while wanting the immunities traditionally granted by bloody sacrifices to Mariamman or Karuppannasamy.

In unconscious irony, ‘The Hindu’ had published the same day on the front page a story about the practice of dedicating small girls to a temple near Vellore. It seems that the temple has nearly 80 girls of various ages dedicated to it and these girls are now public property in every sense of the term. Andhra goddess Yellamma’s cousin seems to be in residence near Vellore demanding child prostitutes. Another classic Dravidian tradition that, had it been reported before he wrote his article, would likely have met with the approval of Mr. Pandian.

Last night, two Muslim gentleman, acquaintances of my brother, stopped by. They had come back from the Haj and presented a bottle of Zam Zam water and a tray of Arabian dates. Today, my sister-in-law offered some of the water to our Muslim driver. He flatly refused to accept it saying that the Arabs do everything such as bathing in that water and so there is nothing holy about it. My sister-in-law pointed out that the Ganges is insulted in worse ways by Hindus but still the water of the Ganges is considered holy. This had no effect on the driver whose further efforts at explaining his stand were hotly rejected by my sister-in-law, much to my amusement, as those of a person of insufficient faith. I felt the driver was being extremely consistent. After all, when he was offered the day off yesterday for the 10th of Moharram, he refused and showed up as usual in the morning.

This morning, there was the consecration ceremony at a Ganesh temple. About a thousand persons had gathered near the temple by 6:30 in the morning and at the appointed time of 6:45, the priests poured water on the brass ‘kalasas’ on top of the tower concluding the ceremony and sprinkled some of the holy water on the people assembled at the ground level and showered flower petals on them. People went into the temple after that and offered prayers to the Elephant-headed god. Prasad in the form of ‘laddu’ was distributed to devotees and an hour later most people had left the temple and gone on their way. The only sacrifices were offerings of rice, bananas and ghee into the sacrificial fire. No chickens were exsanguinated, no goats had their throats cut, nobody pierced their tongues with tiny lances or carried a ‘kavati’ on their shoulders. In fact, any modern person would have been struck at the orderly behavior of the crowd at the brahminical ceremony; the ceremony had all the characteristics of quaintness without any of those of weirdness. It felt good to be a Hindu.