STATUTORY WARNING: All of the views expressed here are solely my own (of course they are, I’m not a plagiarist). I also expect that after reading this article, a lot of my friends will switch sides. But if my ‘friends’ abandon me for something like this, good for me.
Today I want to share with you indisputably the most fascinating story I’ve ever heard. Last year when I was in Delhi, I bumped into a guy during the lunch break at a seminar I was attending.
Now I have this habit, one that I love and which leaves the rest of the world divided. The habit of hounding my prey with questions, a lot of questions, hey sometimes, I start getting on my own nerves.
Anyway, so this guy happened to be my latest prey but thankfully he belonged to that part of the world that doesn’t hate me for asking so many questions. He was in fact pretty outgoing and curious himself. During our conversation, he came to know that I study Sociology and take a keen interest in society, people, customs, thoughts, beliefs and so on. He said, “then I have to tell you something. The story of my village. You probably wouldn’t ever find a village this fascinating, anywhere else in the World”. This was enough for me to make the transition into hunting mode and I unleashed a barrage of questions at him with my eyes stiller and my ears straighter than ever waiting for my prey to leave the slightest room for another question.
During the course of our conversation, I discovered that he hailed from the village of Rajhoot in Jharkhand. Rajhoot is a very tiny village just a few hundred kilometres away from the State Capital of Ranchi. The social structure and vital practices of the people of this village deserve a collective P.hD from the entire faculty at Oxford because it is just so remarkable and fascinating.
Rajhoot has a population of just over a 1000 people. The supreme authority in the village is the usual mukhiya who has a huge house at the edge of the village with dense bushes surrounding it from all sides. Just as he had reached this part of the story, I shot my first arrow: “How did he become the mukhiya?” (as I’ve always been fascinated with what factors determine the origin of a local governance structure). His answer was perhaps the most shocking answer I have ever heard during the course of my numerable hunting sprees. He said that no one in the village knows this, in fact no one in the village has even met or seen the mukhiya. Instantly, my hunter instincts went into a frenzy and my mouth was curling up for unleashing another round of venom, he noticed this and stopped me right there. He said “wait, let me explain”. He said that this is something that worries him and also others of his generation as well. But the moment they start thinking about finding out more about the mukhiya maybe by sneaking into his home or wondering about the idea of a new village chief, their parents snarl and stop them right in their tracks.
My senses were at an all-time high, I asked “WHY?”. He said that the parents tell them that their great-grand-parents knew the mukhiya and ever since then, the following generations have had to accept his supremacy. I said “Hey, your great-grand-parents are supposed to have met him? Then he must be dead by now, wont he? Wont he too have great-grand-children by now?”.
He replied, “that is something I or no one else knows”. I shot back “but why don’t you go to his home and find out?”. His expression instantly changed into one of extreme fear and he answered, whispering now (almost as if the mukhiya was right there in the seminar hall in Delhi) “that is a strict no-no in our village. In fact it is forbidden and is considered a sin to even go near his house. On many instances, children have been beaten by their parents for mistakenly wandering near his house while playing bat-ball”. I was wondering whether it was a bhoot-bangla from a Hindi movie or an actual house.
By this time, I had dug my teeth deep into my prey and was in no mood to let go. I went through everything again: “so no one of your generation or the one before yours has seen him or anyone from his house and no one is even allowed to go near his house. Hell, for all you know, he may have died without a family tens of years ago and all you’ll find there will be his skeleton. How can you people be so stupid? Okay fine, even if that is the case, then how is he the mukhiya? How does he take decisions and control the functioning of the village if no one has even seen him or if he never steps outside?”.
He answered: “Oh that! Munda ji controls that part” (now who the hell was this Mundaji?). He went on, “It is believed that Ramesh Munda’s great-grand-father used to be the Mukhiya’s right hand man and he used to consult the Mukhiya on all happenings within the village and come back to the people with the Mukhiya’s instructions. So now his great-grand-son (Ramesh Munda) takes care of all the matters of the village as his family are considered the custodians of the mukhiya’s authority. So everything that happens in the village is controlled by him and even all wrong-doings are punished according to his judgments”.
By this time, my senses were at wit’s end and I just couldn’t fathom all that was being unleashed at me. For once in my life, I hated myself for asking questions. How could people be so illogical, irrational and bloody superstitious? I scoffed at him sarcastically: “I hope this Ramesh Munda is at least visible with a human body and not some invisible bird believed to be residing on some forbidden tree”. He calmly smiled and replied “oh of course, we meet him daily and he takes care of us”.
My hunting instincts were starting to die down thanks to the sheer disbelief I was feeling at what I had just heard but I didn’t want to hurt that poor guy just because I didn’t agree with the customs of his village. I asked him what I assumed to be one last question: “Anyway, is this Mr. Munda doing a good job of running your village? No problems I hope?”. Instantly, he bowed his head down and in a matter of seconds, his eyes turned wet. I felt so guilty for maybe having asked the wrong question or unintentionally hurting him. As I was about to place my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, he replied “What can I tell you Sir? All of us are so troubled and worried. In the past one year, six women have been raped and four of them have been murdered. My wife was one of them. My kids are left without a mother now and we have to bear the stigma of a ‘rape-victim-family’. We don’t even have any money to shift outside the village to another one.” With tears in my eyes and an instant urge to help him with all I’ve got, I asked him “Didnt Mr. Munda help you and what about the culprits?”. He replied “Oh the two brothers who raped and killed my wife stay right next to us and they share a wife. Mundaji said that it is your matter and I cant do anything to help you. You help yourself”.
WHAT, WHAT, WHAT THE HELL. I stood up with the pace of a NASA Rocket and was swelling with enough rage to give birth to a gun and go to his village right then to shoot the two brothers as well as the bloody Munda guy. He noticed the wrath in my moves and placed his hand on my shoulder, asked me to sit down and said “please, don’t make this any worse for us than it already is, Mundaji is great. He has passed the right judgment. We have to obey him; his family is very close to the Mukhiya and their word is law. I have accepted what happened as a bad memory and a test for us and have decided to move on. In fact, my parents are looking for a girl for me from the neighbouring village”.
As much as I wanted to hug and kill him simultaneously, I decided it was best to leave that room right then. I barged out and was almost running for I don’t know how long, then I rushed to the first pillar that I found and lay my head to rest on it for what seemed like days. I asked myself what I will ask you now.
As the writer of this article and as someone who has either moved or bored you more than ever before, I request you to pause a bit here and think – What would you do – 1. From a third-party perspective? and 2. Putting yourself in that guy’s shoes? Please think of all possible answers and only then scroll down.
Assuming that you are a cheat like me, I’ll come up with an unimaginative remedy and insert a huge space below to make cheating a bit tougher for you:
What answers did you come up with? Let me tell you mine. At that point of time, I wanted to take a gun and shoot those two brothers, the self-proclaimed custodian of the Mukhiya – Ramesh Munda, go to the Mukhiya’s house and shoot whatever I found there (even his skeleton) and then go to each and every one of the 1000 villagers of Rajhoot and drill some sense into their dumb superstitious heads. That is what I wanted to do. If you don’t agree, you are either asleep or Gandhiji or maybe a criminal yourself (feel ashamed and go surrender to the police).
Even to this day, every single one of the details he mentioned, first the ridiculous ones, then the gory ones and then his atrociously unbelievable take on all of it, is as clear to me as if it were just yesterday that I met him. Every time I recall that strange and painful day just as I did now, I feel the same amount of anger and pain that I did then.
Now let me come to the most intriguing part of this article...
This story was just that – a story. All of this never happened. I never met anyone who told me any of this. It was all false – BIG BIG LIES. RAJHOOT village does not exist and is in fact just JHOOT. There is no ‘guy’, no mukhiya, no munda family, no rapists.....nothing. You must be feeling like how Anil Kapoor’s character must’ve felt at the end of ‘Chocolate’. Ya I know you want to kill me, but read on (kill me later).
Then why did I take the pains of imagining all of this, writing it down and taking up the past so many minutes (exactly how many depends on whether you are Wordsworth or worth any words) of your precious life? Simply to use this carefully constructed story as an analogy to explain my take on the most serious topic there is.
Imagine – the Mukhiya is God. The Munda family are self-proclaimed custodians of God (or sons of God or messiahs/prophets or saints/sadhus/mullas). And the ‘guy’, the two rapists, their shared wife and all the other 1000 odd inhabitants of Rajhoot are us – you and me –common conflicted mere mortals.
What happened? All the wrath you felt at the Mukhiya, the Mundas and the rapists is gone, right? The Mukhiya was God and the Mundas were custodians of God, so everything is forgiven, right? And the others were just us, we are born saints, washed with milk (borrowing ridiculously from a Hindi idiom), how can we ever be wrong, right?
The fact that your answer to all these “Right?”s is “yes” or not entirely “no” is reason enough for an atheist like me to think, write and propagate my beliefs.
For once in your life, let go of all our assumptions and existing beliefs about GOD and think about this neutrally (don’t worry, your parents are not quietly peeping into your computer right now, be brave).
The MUKHIYA is GOD because:
1. Just like GOD, The Mukhiya is only a ‘he’.
2. Just like GOD, no one has seen him and asking or inquiring him is a strict no-no and almost a sin.
3. Just like GOD, the whole aura surrounding the Mukhiya is described to the new generation with more ‘do-nots’ than ‘dos’/more negatives than positives/more fear than love
4. Just like GOD, although there are absolutely no signs of him, he is still considered the almighty and the supreme unquestioned (using ‘unchallenged’ here would be a far cry) authority.
5. Just like GOD, everything that happens in his village is credited to him and of course everyone is expected to conveniently credit the bad stuff to themselves and forget it as either a ‘test’ or a ‘bad memory’ and move on
RAMESH MUNDA is the self-proclaimed custodian of GOD because:
1. Again, he is a ‘he’
2. It is rumoured that centuries ago, someone from his family used to be close to the Mukhiya and conveyed his messages/commandments onto the people thereby very cleverly creating a position of authority for himself
3. Even today, based on everyone’s illusion of a Mukhiya who supposedly existed so many years ago, the self-proclaimed custodians of the Mukhiya’s authority do what they like, how they like and no one can question them
The ‘GUY’, the ‘RAPISTS’, the ‘SHARED WIFE’ and the other 1000 odd ‘INHABITANTS’ of Rajhoot are us because:
1. Most of them were again ‘he’
2. Sharing a wife gave them an obvious edge in terms of the power equation between the two genders
3. They committed crimes and made mistakes
4. Most importantly because we are stupider, superstitiouser and ridiculouser than all inhabitants of Rajhoot since we, as a collective, bear a thousand times more than them, still credit all the good to a non-existent illusionary GOD, justify all the bad as either ‘God’s will’ or ‘a test for us by GOD’ and revolve our entire lives in one way or the other around GOD and practices that seemingly appease GOD.
The main reason for which I decided to use such an analogy and de-construct the whole concept of GOD is because nonsense in our Society has reached an extent where we don’t question something the way it is. It becomes necessary to discreetly compare the existent to the imaginary and later contrast them.
Every moment of my life, the world has forced the concept of GOD onto me. This is my first public answer to all those who have. If you deserve the right to propagate your views, I too will settle for no less. And if you think I don’t, then you better close this web-page and switch to your Facebook page or your favourite porn site for no amount of arguments from my side will convince you otherwise (read my earlier ‘Kya logic hai?’ for a better understanding).
If you are still here, you are either a fellow atheist (Hello Comrade) or an open agnostic (Good, stay here, you are a potential target) or a disguised theist (Be brave yaar, the atheist community is larger than you think). There is a very limited possibility of you being a staunch theist and still being here (mainly because you are a theist and will obviously not want to be questioned or challenged for you know that you wont have good enough valid answers).
Why do I not believe in God? Simple:
1. I cant believe in something I cant see, hear, touch and most importantly - feel. Three-fourth of the people on Earth, parents and Society indoctrinating children with this concept is not a good enough reason for me to believe in something. Come on, ask yourself – had you not belonged to a strict theist family and not been forced to practice religion every single day of your precious childhood, would you still believe in God? Or would you believe as much as you do today?
2. Why does someone have to be invisible, live up in the sky, walk on water, make the dead alive and be larger than life to be God? Why cant someone in our everyday lives who we can see and feel, who loves us, helps us and is kind to us be our God? Think of all people around you. Do good people and their kind nature get the response they deserve? We don’t value everyday people who do us good even though we can see and feel their deeds, still we worship an illusion who has done nothing for us and in fact only harmed us!
3. If there is a God - why is the World what it is today? Why do most people in this World have a life that is worse than the worst? Why do most people suffer as a result of other people's doings? I am not willing to accept any stupid justifications (like the usual “God’s will”, “His test for us” or “Karma”) on this one because we wont understand this till we experience their plight. Theists will have to answer for and justify the plight of all those people.
8 years ago in Gujarat, I had seen the photo of an unborn foetus (who had been cut out of his pregnant mother’s womb with a sword) pinned to the roof of his house with a sword through his stomach just because he belonged to a certain religion. Believers should try to go and explain “the power of God/how it was a test for the unborn child and his mother/how it was God’s will/how the unborn child must have some piled up bad karma in his past life” to the dead child and his dead mother. Should I mention more examples? Because I assure you that there are crores more.
Think of the limited positives in the name of GOD, if any, that you can come up with and weigh them against all negatives in the name of GOD. And if you justify this by saying that that is man’s fault, then remember – you yourself claim that everything and everyone has been made and is controlled by God.
4. If there is a God and if this is the way he runs this world, if this is the way he ‘punishes’ us, then I considered him the most cruel phenomenon this World has ever known and would take great pleasure in punishing him the same way I would have punished the Mukhiya.
I have a long list of various atrocious negatives in each religion separately but I don’t want to go into those since my intention is not to hurt theists, but simply awaken them from their conscious slumber. Think about all religions yourself. Can you name one that is not patriarchal, that does not propagate a single entity’s power over the rest, that came up with stories that are fully believable and practical?
Now let me come to a revolutionary take on Religion and God, one that will shake the foundations of theist and atheist belief from the core, one that will provide an entirely new perspective, one you can never imagine – Karl Marx’s perspective:
“According to Karl Marx, religion is like any other social institution because it too is dependent upon the material and economic realities in a given Society...In Marx’s opinion, religion is an illusion that provides reasons and excuses to keep Society functioning just as it is. For him religion is irrational, alienating and hypocritical. Religion is irrational because it is a delusion and a worship of appearances that avoids recognizing underlying reality...It negates all that is dignified in a human being by rendering them servile and more amenable to accepting the status quo; the state of being oppressed. It is hypocritical in the sense that though it professes valuable principles, it sides with the oppressors.
Marx says that religion is meant to create illusionary fantasies for the poor and the middle classes. The poor are dominated and ruled by the ruling class, which owns the forces of production. Religion becomes the opium of the masses by making them accept their reality and stopping them from fighting against it under the pretext of ‘fate’ and waiting for illusionary happiness in their ‘next life’. Religion also makes a virtue of the sufferings produced by oppression. It is preached that those who bear the deprivations of poverty with dignity and humility will be rewarded for their virtue in afterlife, in a way making poverty more bearable...”.
WOW. If there must be a God, he should be Karl Marx. If you consider yourself mature, knowledgeable and exposed enough, then ask yourself – Is all that this man said more than a 100 years ago true or false?
Let’s move on to all possible arguments people come up with for their belief in God:
1. “I have faith in God” – Give this a thought. What you now assume to be faith, would it have even been born had you not been indoctrinated by all quarters of social life?
2. “There has to some power behind this World, someone controlling everything” – Quite apart from scientific answers and Darwin, just because you don’t have an answer to this question doesn’t mean you should credit and worship an imaginary creation
3. “When I ask myself a question, I hear an answer from within in the form of God’s voice” – Probably, a huge reality hasn’t dawned on you so far. Dont worry, I don’t blame you, it is a pretty complicated reality. Let me give you some breaking news. You have something called a heart and a brain in your body which are supposed to think and feel. They are what guide you through life and they are what give you all the answers you are looking for.
4. “Whenever I’ve asked something from God, I’ve got it” – By that logic, Santa Claus should be God you selfish excuse of a human being
5. “I am spiritual but not religious” – A fashion statement these days, very common amongst today’s elite Youth. Oh and remember, if you claim to be spiritual and not religious, then you don’t believe in God, you just believe in the human spirit as against material possessions.
6. “Because everyone says so” – May your God help you
7. All the rest, in my opinion, are either fundamentalist beyond repair or closet atheists – To the former – You might want to run for the post of Indian Prime Minister. To the latter - Stand up for what you believe in. If you feel something is wrong, speak up for it. Try to voice your opinions to your friends and you’ll be surprised to know how many agree with you. They too are scared of their parents and of Society just like you. Give them a voice, your voice.
In my opinion, everyone needs faith (and I think this and also propaganda by capitalist forces is why this lie has attained the kind of global reach that it has). Everyone needs something on the basis of which you can survive. Someone/thing you can talk to and hear the answers you want to hear. Something that doesn’t fight/answer back. In the end, everyone is on their own and its survival of the fittest, its always good to have a silent imaginary companion. Everyone can and should have it. Sometimes in a creation we name God, at other times in love, family or friends. At times, even inanimate objects like teddy bears etc become great friends. But that’s all. Claiming us to be subordinated to that imaginary silent human creation and crediting it for all the good and justifying the bad makes me say this: Either there is no God and if there is - I refuse to believe/follow God and have a serious problem with God.
I’ve often wondered that in a World that is as obsessed with God and does all that it does for God, how can you expect any logic, any good or any hope?
“God helps those who help themselves” could quite possibly be the creation of a brilliant but careful atheist who meant to say “God wont do anything, help yourself”. Think about it.
