Sujit De
Kudos to Jesuin George Fernandes for his article, “2 different ways to looking at things” (Herald, Other Voices, June 10). It is a shame that no government in our country is eager to help people discharge their fundamental constitutional duty “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;” as enshrined in the Article 51A (h) of our Constitution. Even the government of Kerala had meekly submitted to age-old prejudices of prohibiting women of menstruating age to go on pilgrimage.
Our political parties are going soft towards regressive prejudices or sometimes even using such myths in their favour as they think those nonsense stuffs will give them vote-bank dividend. It is an irony that when Raja Rammohan Roy had successfully guided even a reluctant foreign company (East India) to the path of reform in eighteen century India, Davolkar and the likes could not take democratic governments of free India in twenty first century from the narrow lane which is potholed with myths, superstitions and prejudices to the constitutional highway of scientific temper.
Some years ago, there was mass hysteria when the idols of Lord Ganesha started sucking milk in many parts of our country. Some regressive forces tried to siphon off whatever scientific temper we had at our disposal with such siphoning trick. Now, even a High Court judge can give a statement to the effect that a peahen drinks peacock’s tears to get a peachick!
There is no wonder why advertisements are successfully make us sport as many gems as possible on our fingers and even pack a large quantity of them up in an amulet. Given advertisements for controlling others are mushrooming day by day, they must have been doing a brisk trade. This means that the umpteenth number of our brothers and sisters are being slow poisoned in the name of black magic!
Word has it that some couples are now preferring a Caesarean to normal delivery and specifying the time of incision so that the baby can come out at the auspicious time that has been predicted by their astrologer! If such illogical propaganda in favour of ludicrous myths, superstitions and prejudices is being allowed to be filled the media and thereafter the mind space, then a time is bound to come when we start committing suicides at an auspicious time and place to make ourselves heavenward bound!
