business persons of the region vis-a-vis the other deities. Gods and rather than the rule. Second, gods can depend on astrology to solve their humans are not distant from each also be vulnerable and require the help problems in the stock market. They other; human beings can, if they try of humans for fighting demons or do business to the best of their hard enough, approximate gods. They other gods. knowledge and understanding, and can even aspire to be more powerful That is, human inferiority to gods then take the help of astrologers, and venerable than gods. Tapas, is not absolute; no wide chasm tantriks and temple priests to penance of various kinds, and separates the goals and motivations negotiate terms with the gods and sometimes even the benediction of of the gods from those of goddesses. As if astrology was merely one god, wisely or foolishly given, humans.Indeed, on some planes, the another way of asking questions, can give one superhuman, godly differences between immortal humans equipped with a vague awareness that powers. First, spirituality is partly a and gods become notional. For the the answers might be known to one, gift of mortality; it is associated more classicists, this proposition is difficult but needed to be endorsed by with the mortals than with the gods, to swallow because, of the seven suprahuman specialists.9 Thus, when who are usually seen to have a streak immortals mentioned in the puranas after elaborate rituals and of hedonism. The persistent (Ashvathama, Bali, , Hanumana, consultations with astrologers, on an asceticism of Shiva is an exception , Vibhishana and ), average 80 per cent of the nearly 500 none can, except perhaps Hanumana, commercial films produced in India in ...human inferiority to gods is claim divine status.10 Perhaps it will a year routinely bomb at the box office, not absolute; no wide chasm be safer to say that there is a film producers or directors do not give continuity between the divine and the up their belief in astrology. They separates the goals and earthly, that the chasm between gods blame it on their own imperfect reading motivations of the gods from and humans in South Asia is narrow of the future and flawed ritual those of humans or shifting. At times, some gods might performances (which is another even be less effective, potent, way of acknowledging one’s or pious than humans. faulty reasoning). Presumably, Maybe that is the reason modernity will now make sure why allgiance to a deity is that psychotherapists occupy often personalised, why the space astrologers and sometimes it looks like a priests, backed by gods and bilateral contract or a secret goddesses, now do. It will be intimacy between two in many ways a less colourful unequal but sovereign cultural life, but that is a individuals. This allegiance, a different story. rather typical feature in this When gods and goddesses part of the globe, may enter human life in South Asia, manifestly have little to do they contaminate it not in the with one’s faith. Anybody way the modern, sophisticated, who knows something about urbane believer fears they the great sarod players, would do. Nor do they do so Alauddin Khan and Ali Akbar the way the rationalist thinks Khan, will also know that both the idea of God dominates the have been great devotees of lives of devotees. They enter the goddess Saraswati. Yet, human life to provide a they have also been quasihuman, sacral presence, simultaneously devout to balance the powerful forces Muslims, and proudly so. of desacralisation in human That devotion to Islam and relationships, vocations and Islamic piety does not require nature. This familiarity has bred them to reject their personal not contempt, as the Vikram goddess or isthadevi who Savarkars of the world suspect, presides over the most but a certain self-confidence Radha and by Pakistani Painter: A.R. Chugtai important area of their life,

No.99 (March-April 1997) 9 musical creativity. Alauddin Khan the Indologists have been and it may abilities. At least some British once composed a new raga called well survive its well-wishers. The more householders maintained temples in Madanmanjari. As its name indicates, continuous traditions of this their homes not because they were the raga invokes Krishna and the civilisation may reassert themselves lapsed Christians or crypto-Hindus, Vaishnava culture. When someone in our public life. A majority of people but because they were afraid of the took courage to ask the Ustad why in South Asia know how to handle local gods and the Brahmins and did he had used such a Hindu name, the the gods and goddesses, their own not want to antagonise them. It was Ustad, I am told, was surprised. ‘Is it and those of others. The gods and their idea of buying an insurance Hindu? I composed it in honour of goddesses, on the other hand, not policy in matters of the sacred. The my wife Madina Begum,’ he is only live with each other, they also apparently sharp theological supposed to have said. What looked invite us to live with their plural world. distinctions between some religions blatantly Hindu to some can look to Years ago, while studying the may, in specific cultural contexts, others a marker of Islamic devotion. psychological landscape of western observe the logic of complementary The piety of neither is disturbed. colonialism in South Asia, I checked self-organisation. While studying the some nineteenth century documents I have come to suspect that the Ramjanmabhumi movement, I found on Calcutta, because Calcutta is theistic worlds in South Asia observe a hillock at Ayodhya, venerated both where it all began. Not being a a series of principles of mediation in by the local Hindus and Muslims. The historian, many of the documents their relationships with each other. Hindus considered it to be the surprised me. For instance, the These mediations endorse continuity discarded part of the sacred scrappy details of British households and compatibility, but also a degree Gandhamadan of Ramayana, which showed that they had a large retinue of anxiety, hostility and violence, Hanumana had foolishly carried, of servants, including often a Brahmin though not perhaps distance or unable to locate the magical drug priest who did puja in the house. inexplicability. Whether the Vishalyakarani that he was told to find Many of the British houses also had protagonists are Bosnian Muslims on the hill, for the treatment of small temples which the Brahmin and Serbs in East Europe, Hutus and Lakshmana’s fatal war wounds. The retainers took care of. Apparently, Tutsis in Africa, or Hindus and Muslims associated the same hillock these householders went to Church Muslims in South Asia, familiarity can with Hazrat Shish, and considered it a on Sundays, but found nothing breed contempt and venomous, remnant of Noah’s ark, discarded of inconsistent in the puja at home.11 genocidal passions, especially in a all places at Ayodhya, after the great The standard reading, I guess, would situation of imminent massification, deluge was over. be that the Indian wives or concubines threatening to negate one’s cultural When gods and goddesses of the British in India — the Suez selfhood. invade our personal lives or enter our Canal was not yet dug and most A respected Pakistani political lives as our guests, when we give British in India had Indian spouses analyst and journalist once claimed them our personal allegiance, they — required this facility. However, in a conversation that ‘the ultimate may or may not apparently have much something else also might have been fear in many Pakistanis is that, if they to do with the generic faiths we involved. For the East India Company come too close to India, they would profess. Theologian and painter Jyoti itself owned ‘shares’ in at least two be fitted in the Hindu social order, Shahi once reported a survey carried temples. During important religious mostly in the lower orders of the caste out in Madras where, according to the festivals, the army band went and hierarchy’. India and Pakistan official census, one per cent of the played at these temples and the separated fifty years ago; there is people are Christian. The survey musketeers of the Company fired hardly any Hindu left in Pakistan. Why found that about 10 per cent of the volleys in the air to celebrate the then this anxiety? My Pakistani friend population identified Jesus Christ as occasion. In return, the Company was himself seemed perplexed, but their personal god or isthadevata. given a share of the donations made insisted that there was this lurking fear Such data warn us not to be taken in to the temple. It also seems that many in Pakistan that Hinduism was not by what some politicians acting as individual British residents in India, something outside, but also a vector vendors of piety and some experts on while they proclaimed their disbelief within. Living in two complementary ethnic violence tell us about the in the special spiritual skills of the worlds of legends, folk tales, rituals, geography of faiths. The Indic Brahmins and attacked them as marriage rites, music, crafts traditions civilisation has been around slightly charlatans, were at the same time and, even, some of the same longer than the Hindutva-wallahs and scared stiff by their possible magical superstitious fears, gods and demons

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