By Sumanta Banerjee
“Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and sleep o’nights”
Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar
Two recent events which have caught media headlines deserve close examination. THE TIMES OF INDIA of February 17, 2025 on its first page carried two reports side by side. The first on the left described how eighteen pilgrims died in a stampede in New Delhi Railway Station while scrambling for seats in trains in their eagerness to reach Prayagraj (once known as Allahabad) to attend the Maha Kumbh and take a dip in the holy Ganga. The second report highlighted the plight of Indians who sneaked their way into the US illegally in their greed for dollars and were now being deported back to India, shackled in chains and handcuffs. These two spectacles sum up the nature of the present psyche which controls the attitude and behavior of our people. The psyche is made up of an amoral and irresponsible religious frenzy among Indians living here on the one hand, and financial greed of Indians looking for fortunes abroad on the other. Both the impulses are motivated by what they believe will bring salvation to them in their respective spheres of operation.
The religious sphere
To take up the first case of the stampede in the New Delhi railway station, which followed soon after a larger stampede at the Prayagraj site of the Maha Kumbh itself that claimed more lives, it exemplifies the typical outbursts of fanatical worshipping of deities by their devotees even at the risk of losing their lives. There had been numerous cases in the past of similar killings in stampedes at religious gatherings. This raises a fundamental question that goes beyond the immediate case of accidents at the Kumbh Mela.
While a worried administration is trying to institute better safety measures like crowd control to avoid such calamities in future, it is yet to tackle the problem at the source – the popular motivation that drives thousands to travel to these pilgrimage spots to seek blessings from their deities. Both the administration and civil society groups, while respecting the religious faith of these people, should try to disabuse them of blind trust in attaining salvation only through joining such suffocating mass gatherings, and persuade them instead to practice their religion and follow the rituals within the precincts of their homes and local temples.
They should also warn these pilgrims about the health hazards that they face when following traditional collective rituals like dips in the Triveni Sangam during the Maha Kumbh. For instance, it has now been exposed that the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, considered holy by these pilgrims who took bath on that occasion, contain “untreated sewage and human and animal excreta”, according to the findings of the CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board). Dermatologists in a hospital in Ranchi are treating devotees who have returned from the Maha Kumbh with skin ailments like severe itching and rashes. In view of these findings, civil society groups should organize health camps at these pilgrimage sites, and caution pilgrims before they drink these river waters, which they worship as holy.
Further, it is also necessary to draw the attention of these pilgrims to the numerous cases of traffic accidents that kill devotees both on their way to, and their way back from the pilgrimage spots, which are their destinations for seeking blessings. The latest such case is the death of four pilgrims who after `purifying’ themselves by bathing at the Maha Kumbh, started their return journey on the night of February 23 when their SUV collided with a truck in Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. Social activists from civil society groups can approach the survivors and pose the questions: “Why couldn’t your deities save your dear and near ones, even when they were travelling to pay respects to those deities ? Why do you still trust your deities who are betraying you ? ” When talking to them, they can remind them of these words of frustration and despair uttered by Manju Kushwaha, wife of Manoj, who lost his life in the stampede of pilgrims going to Maha Kumbh at the New Delhi railway station on February 15. Describing Manoj’s devotion, she said: “He was very religious. He used to chant Hanuman Chalisa every morning. On the day of the incident also, he prayed, but Hanumanji didn’t save his life.” (Re: Her interview with The Wire, February 19, 2025).
Such efforts by social activists to rouse the inquiring spirit of the devotees should not be denounced as anti-religious. They are in conformity with the fundamental duty laid down by our Constitution which enjoins us to “develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.”
The socio-political sphere
When we turn to the secular sphere of public rallies and gatherings which are organized to welcome some celebrities from the political or film world or other, we witness the same mass frenzy of worshiping these figures (their images re-invigorated by the media) in public gatherings that often result in stampedes – ending up in deaths like on a recent occasion of public welcome to a popular film star in Hyderabad. I keep remembering the lines composed by the early 20th century English-Irish poet W.B. Yeats: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity.” (The Second Coming). Doesn’t this verse sum up the present situation in our country ?
Such manifestations of popular `passionate intensity’ are not confined within the borders of India. Many among these Indians are driven by the same unbridled excitement to rush to the US, their new pilgrimage where they furiously compete to gain blessings from their new deity of wealth in Washington. Once reaching the shores of their dreamland of dollars (mainly through the donkey route charted out by dubious travel agents), the Hindu immigrants among them abandon Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth whom they used to worship in their homeland, and replace her with US President Trump. But their new deity Trump has also disappointed them as evident from his eviction of illegal Indian immigrants, who are arriving in India shackled in chains. Their dream of acquiring dollars is thus dashed forever. What is even worse, now they have to pay back the money which they took as loan from creditors to cover their journey to the US dreamland.
When searching for the material motivations that led these Indians to the US, we find an irrational craze among them that incapacitated their ability to judge the possible consequences. This is parallel to the blind faith in deities among devotees at pilgrimages which disables their thinking power to prevent stampedes and deaths – the price which they pay for their ill-judgment. Similarly, the Indian returnees from the US are now paying the price for their blind faith in the dollar empire which has disappointed them. They are scrambling to collect money to pay back those from whom they borrowed money to pay the agents who duped them into undertaking that perilous journey.
Will these disenchanted Indian returnees (shall we call them ex-morons ?) try to disabuse their successors – another new generation of Indians who are dreaming of making fortunes in the US, and prevent them from repeating their moronic misadventure ?
The Political Godman
Let us now turn our attention to the political godman under whose blessings these aberrations are taking place. Narendra Modi’s popularity among the vast masses is an outburst of imbecility of these morons who keep on putting trust in him, despite repeated betrayals. They prefer to ignore their own domestic immediate economic problems, and instead go all ga ga over Modi’s efforts to morph himself into an upmarket brand as Vishwa Guru in the global political scenario. Dressed in a well fashioned political attire designed by the domestic media, Modi prances around on the ramps of the global political fashion shows, like the G-20 summit in Brazil in 2024 and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) meetings. But in his domestic backyard at home, the economy is fast declining, with rising unemployment, inflation and marginalization of vast sections of the population which are struggling for access to economic opportunities, housing facilities, health care and education. Modi’s political bombast of India becoming a bullet train is in sharp contrast with the slow speed of the bullock cart at which the country is moving under his regime. The paradox reminds me of an old Bengali saying that targets bumptious characters who parade their eloquence while hiding their incompetence – Mathaye ghomta, ponde nangta (They cover their heads under expensive veils, but keep their backsides naked).
Yet, Modi is assured of a continuing support from a crowd of sycophants, charlatans, a bemused looking audience, and a naïve electorate which is put in a bubble of promises of prosperity during elections. His monthly speech Maan-ki-Baat is pure drivel, but is lapped up by listeners as a voice from God ! While the wider public are taken in by his claim that he is a non-biological personality born from God’s sperm, even the educated elite believe that he is endowed with an MA degree in Entire Political Science from the Gujarat University – a dubious-sounding course of studies that is found in no other respectable academic institutions. Attempts to inquire into the authenticity of Modi’s educational qualification have been stymied by the administration.
In his well-planned scheme of projecting himself as a savior, Modi has recruited a bunch of mercenaries in the media, mainly the television channels, who propagate that there are order and design in Modi’s policies which might be adversely affecting the people now, but would be beneficial for them in future. Known as the Godimedia, they come up with catchy slogans in support of Modi’s promises.
Going back to my initial attempt to unravel the Indian psyche, with which I began, I can only end up with the desperate query – when will our people unmoor themselves from the bog of violent religious frenzy, casteist discrimination and political manipulation, which has been created by the BJP ? Do we have to wait for another new generation of social reformers (like those in the nineteenth century) to come up and help our people to revive their thinking powers and rescue them from the socio-political morass into which they are submerging themselves as morons ?
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
27 February 2025
Source: countercurrents.org