Gods and Godmen of India Read Free Page B

of all, ambitious unscrupulous politicians. Indira Gandhi had her Anandamayi Ma and Dhirendra Brahmachari. In later life she also had havans performed in secret to ward off evil. President Shankar Dayal Sharma was indiscriminate in his worship of gods and godmen. So was Narasimha Rao who, besides the Sai Baba, touched the feet of racketeer Chandraswamy. Deve Gowda is also a firm believer in astrology. So is Jayalalitha. Retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Bhagwati is chairman of the Sai Baba Trust. Amongst the Baba’s many eminent disciples is my friend Nani Palkhivala. Are they nuts? Or am I?
    Jayakrishna Sahu, an advocate in Orissa, writes in the recent issue of Indian Skeptic of his dismay at the alarming increase in the number of “fake swamis, sadhus, babas and gurus”. He goes on to say “the growth rate of crime and corruption is directly proportional to the rise in the number of such frauds and charlatans.” Strong words to which I subscribe.
    The greatest godman buster of our times was the late A.T. Kovoor. He not only demonstrated that all the so-called miracles were no more than magicians’ tricks, he had the courage to say that belief in God had no bearing on human character. He wrote, “Morals are and have always been independent of religion. If there are no independent moral standards, religions turn themselves meaningless. How do we know God is great unless we know what is God?
    “The question is not whether there is God or not. What worries us more is the blind belief in godmen. In the name of God they are cheating the people. God, if there is one, himself did not create wrist watches, gold chains or rings. Yet, the godmen claim they create these things and fool people.”
    On the stage Kovoor performed every one of the ‘miracles’ performed by self-styled godmen in saffron robes. It was to no avail. Stupid people are impervious to reason. And now we have the craze for Vastu as asinine as any of the irrational junk to clutter our minds. But not all is lost. We have in India a growing number of rationalists who have rejected all beliefs in the occult and the unprovable. They have branches in all the States. If you want to read about their activities, get a copy of Indian Skeptic published in Tamil Nadu.
    25/7/98

Encyclopaedia of God
    R ight From the time life began on earth people have been asking themselves who or what made us, what was his, her or its purpose, where do we go, when do we die? Nobody has yet been able to give satisfactory answers to these questions. All we have are assertions about a God who one fine day decided to create life, gave different creatures different names, different spans of life and then made them disappear forever.
    At first, they conjectured that elements that created life – the sun, rain, earth and air – were their creators and worthy of worship. Some time later people thought there must be hundreds of thousands of creators who looked after different aspects of life. Others argued there should be one creator. They called it God. Still later came philosophers and prophets.
    In West Asia we had Zoroaster, Abraham and Moses, Jesus Christ and Mohammed. Their followers banded themselves into separate groups and sought to impose their views on others. In India we had Mahavir and Gautama the Buddha. Neither really accepted the existence of a God but laid down norms of social behaviour and acquired large followings. Their predominance was challenged by Adi Shankara who was able to re-establish Hindu predominance.
    In India the inroads made by non-Indian religions like Christianity and Islam posed serious challenges to the caste-ossified Hindu society. These challenges were met in battlefields as well as in attempts to come to an understanding between each other. From the Hindu side they were the Bhaktas (notably Kabir and Nanak), from the Muslim side Sufis, notably Farid, Muenuddin and Nizamuddin of the Chishtia order. The process of coming to an understanding