WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2024
PETER RONALD DESOUZA
Conversations with God:
Pray, do not mock Digambar Kamat for his conversation with God. His conversation belongs to an old scriptural and literary tradition where a leader, plagued by doubt, goes to God and asks for guidance on what is to be done? Charmed by such earnestness God answers sometimes more directly sometimes cryptically, requiring careful interpretation by scholars of the divine literature. This is what we now need to do with Digambar’s conversation.
The great revealed religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have many such conversations of religious leaders with God. In Judaism, for example, we can recall the well-known story of Samuel who, on hearing God’s voice, responds that His servant is listening. God then tells him that punishment will befall the house of Eli for its repeated inequities. In Christianity, the famous conversation on the road to Damascus between Paul and God has become the basis of Western philosophy’s thinking about epiphany. Paul, as a result, converts from being a persecutor of Christians to becoming one of its greatest defenders. Similarly, in Islam the conversation between Ibrahim and God where God asks him to sacrifice his son Ishmael. As he prepares to do so, God, relenting, offers a sheep for slaughter instead.
At the legendary Oracle of Delphi, to the God Apollo, in Euripides’ play ‘Ion’, Queen Creusa asks the Oracle why she is not blessed with a son from her husband King Xuthus who later also asks the same question. Apollo cryptically replies that the person who the King meets when he leaves the temple will be his son. Xuthus meets Ion as he leaves and accepts him as his son. Ion is actually the son of Creusa born out of rape by Apollo. The God remains silent on this one.
Let us not, therefore, ridicule Digambar’s conversation with God. He may not be Samuel, Paul, Ibrahim or Xuthus but he is our own Digambar which, in Jainism, means ‘sky clad’. Because he is ‘sky-clad’, transparent, we must, therefore, seek not to doubt him but instead interpret this conversation with God. Since such conversations in the history of religions have produced deep theology perhaps Digambar’s conversation with God can contribute to our own thinking about democratic politics in Goa.
Interpreting God’s answer:
As reported in the press, troubled by the oath he had taken before God in Temples, Churches and Dargahs, ‘not to defect from the Congress to the BJP after the February 2022 Assembly elections’, Digambar went back to God to ask for guidance. ‘What should I do?’ It is not clear if the basis of his doubt was because he was unsure how best to serve the people of Goa, or whether it was out of fear of prosecution by the investigating agencies, that he asked God this question. We do not need to get distracted by these minor doubts. It is enough for us to accept that Digambar asked God for guidance.
What is alone significant is God’s reply. According to Digambar, God told him to ‘Do what is best for you’. This is very telling. God did not say do what is best for the people, or what is best for Goa, or even what is best for India, but only what is best for you. God threw the question back to Digambar. God asked him to put his personal ethics, his commitment to his Margao electorate who had given his Congress 13,345 votes against 5,785 for the BJP, his status as an ex-Congress CM, his understanding of what democratic commitment in a parliamentary system requires him to do, his hope of how he will want to be remembered, all important aspects of a person’s being, into a box. God asked him to build a frame of all these aspects, a decision matrix, from which he could derive an answer. Digambar did this and he broke his vow.
God gave him a clear answer. God was telling Goans that democracy belongs to the citizens and that God has no role to play. It is useless to perform Yagnas, or prayer vigils, or fasts, for better politics. Prayers do not help. That was God’s cryptic answer to Digambar. Democracy belongs to the people. God has no place in it. Different communities may invoke God but that is only to make them feel better. God’s will, God’s punishment, God’s desire, are all meaningless. God will not intervene. The people alone must decide.
Digambar’s interpretation:
Digambar followed God’ instruction. He felt his earlier oath had become irrelevant. Switching parties, abandoning manifestoes, ignoring electoral mandates, changing vocabulary from secularism to majoritarianism, are of no consequence. If he believed that through this shift, from Congress to the BJP, he could serve the people better, then defect he must. Oaths taken have meaning only in the great Indian epics which are only dharmic models to be guided by not follow. Bhima took the oath that he would drink the blood of Dushasana for outraging Draupadi’s modesty. He did much to the horror of his brothers. Draupadi also took an oath not to tie her hair till Dushasana was killed. She kept it. In the Mahabharata everyone, without exception, who made a vow, kept it.
Digambar broke his oath. Since the BJP knows its Bharatiya Parampara, how does it explain its campaign to get the Congress MLAs to break their oath? Since, however, the message of this article is not about oaths, or Bharatiya Parampara, or defections, but about God’s clear advice that the people of Goa alone must decide. Keep God out of it.
(Peter Ronald deSouza is the DD Kosambi Visiting Professor at Goa University. Views are personal)
