NEW THINKING ON UTTARAKHAND AND OTHER DISASTERS In a rare moment of candour in a talk show on TV a panelist raised slowly and hesitatingly the question that I had always wanted to raise but could not find any listeners. The talk was about the disastrous events in Uttarakhand whose magnitude is still to unfold. The panelists included environmentalists who said that the tragedy was waiting to happen and dubbed it a ‘man made disaster’. The netas of all hues said that these do gooders had no idea of development .Sunita Narain the indefatigable ‘green expert’ said that what she and others of her persuasion were against was ‘rapacious development’ and not development per se. I shouted at the TV that it was not a debate between development and environment but it really was a debate between environmentally sustainable development and plunder by netas at the cost of people’s well being. Now at this point a gent from Kashmir attempted to take the debate to an entirely different direction. He started by saying what was in evidence in recent years which he termed ‘ neo-religiosity’. He said that when he was a student he used to see about 20000 pilgrims and tourists annually in Uttarakhand, with its many ancient temples. These days more than hundred times that number show up. He said what has been discussed in certain sections of the intelligentsia—that even as rural folk are less and less involved in religiosity urban folk are getting more and more involved in such outward display of ‘ religious devotion’. Temple going, ritualism ,superstitions , phenomenon of godmen,and matajis, expectation of miracles,expectation of divine intervention in such matters as accruals in bank balances, obtention of Green cards , cricket match results,a rather divine ‘match fixing’ etc are on the rise. What this implies for Uttarakhand and other temple towns is that these were designed for a small population. Today tens of thousands throng there and the infrastructure is just incapable of accommodating such humungous crowds, the numbers of which even God could not have foreseen! The man from Kashmir suggested that we restrict the number of people allowed to travel to such venues where many considerations including concern for the fragile eco-system as in Uttarakhand may not allow for expansion of facilities beyond a certain number. Now Arnab Goswami being Arnab gave this gent a dirty look and almost threateningly asked if he was suggesting a permit system .Arnab asked this question with his patented style of hardly any intention of waiting for an answer, as if to say it would be the Hindu equivalent of blasphemy to even think of this ! I second this idea as well as another idea both of which have been tried in other contexts with success. But I have some caveats. Look at the case of the Balaji temple in Pittsburgh in USA. . I have been there and can say with some confidence that many people are as satisfied with worship and even marriage ceremonies at this temple as they might have been after worship at Tirupati. In fact they actively prefer Pittsburgh , what with no pushing, screaming, bribing noise and jharghandi etc In Chennai there is a replica of the famed Sabarimala temple of Kerala and I know many who come to this temple with usual fervor as are the many who throng the ‘ original’ temple.Even cricketers and netas who seek divine intervention for godly ‘ba-izzat riha’ from the consequences of alleged or real acts of fraud seem to get the required mental closure after visits to such surrogate temples.If we can plan more such replicas of popular temples all over the country maybe we can reduce the crowds at Uttarakhand and other holy cities. Permits and quotas exist in respect of visits to some holy sites including Mansarovar .However this is the time to talk of my caveats. Once you introduce a permit system the Indian DNA takes over. Soon many of us will queue outside the homes of netas to seek their intervention to get a permit.If this is not possible then some of us will resort to gurujis and matajis, or seek a miracle for a permit or fast on a Saturday or ….. K.R.RAVI WWW.KRRAVI.COM
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 04:49:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015