A constellation of godmen

 

I have been waiting for someone in authority to say this. Now the Indian-born Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has said it. Giving the Har Gobind Khorana lecture at Punjab University on January 6, the current President of the UK’s Royal Society (a group of the world’s most distinguished scientists) has condemned homeopathy and astrology as bogus and pointed out that India is the only country in the world where the Constitution urges the promotion of a scientific temper.

My concern in this article is more with astrology because of the aggressive, almost obscene way in which it is being promoted by TV and newspapers in the country.

These babas greet you from your TV sets early in the morning, some sporting long hair, some with no hair but they all think you are hare-brained. These astrologers and fortune-tellers who appear on almost every TV channel several times a day have a single point agenda: they threaten with dire forebodings (Shani is vakri, Rahu has an evil eye), cajole (we’ll take care of you), and lure the gullible into meeting them one on one.

Total mumbo-jumbo in the form of predictions is propagated every day by the channels. No newspaper can survive without carrying astrological predictions because many readers start their day by reading what the stars have in store for them.  It doesn’t occur to them to wonder why – without even going into the debate about whether astrology is a science - no two predictions of the same Sun Sign in two newspapers are ever the same?

It reminds me of that Bollywood number:“Na koi garantiyan na koi warrantiyan.” Except for one notable exception.  A baba by the name of Acharya Indu Prakash gives a ‘99 per cent guarantee’, a clever trick because anyone who complains will be among the one per cent. I have not heard of any Consumer Forum offering compensation for misleading predictions because there is no guarantee in the first place.

Generalizations like “Virgos will go abroad” or “Leos will get a promotion” or the more sinister ones such as “Aquarians are advised not to invest in property today” or “A member of female species will create a rift between husband and wife” are an affront to the common sense of the common man. These godmen are virtually conmen who are spreading superstitions that in turn feed off the fear psychoses and guilt complexes of the gullible.

‘Secular’ India has always had plenty of godmen setting the agenda for the country. Names like Dhirendra Brahmachari (yoga mentor to Indira Gandhi) and Chandraswami (spiritual advisor to Narasimha Rao and others) spring up like ghosts from the past. They enjoyed access to the inner circle of the most powerful in the land. Today, almost all powerful netas and industrialists have their own private gurus and some of them are truly bizarre, such as the baba who refused to come down from a tree. Even when the highest in the land went to seek his blessings, they received it in the form of the ‘kick’ from his feet on the head.

 

Why does the media promote superstition?

But personal belief is one thing. My worry as a media person is that these pied pipers are spreading superstition by exploiting the vulnerabilities of viewers. Most of these programmes such as ‘Kismat Konnection’, ‘Aapke Tare’, ‘Astro Uncle’, ‘Jiyo Shaan Se’ and ‘Tension Mat le Yaar’ appear on Tez TV (TV Today Network). ‘Grahon Ka Khel’, ‘Bhavishyavani’, ‘Aaj Good Luck’, ‘Lal Kitab’ and ‘Family Guru’ appear on India TV while ‘Kalchakra’ and ‘Nirmal Durbar’ appear on News 24.

The Government on its part does issue statutory advisories as a matter of formality. In 2011, the National Broadcasting Association issued a directive to its members on reportage that spreads superstition, occultism and blind belief.

“It has come to the notice of the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (“Authority”) that some member news channels are carrying reports on matters propagating, promoting and advocating superstition, occultism and blind belief. Such reportage often purports to even distort purely scientific phenomena on baseless and often factually incorrect material and information. Such reportage is not “newsworthy”. In addition such reportage does harm and tends to create a fear psychosis among uninformed viewers. The impression gathered is that such reportage is usually to garner higher TRPs. The Authority expects the member broadcasters to voluntarily improve broadcasting standards by desisting from airing such reports.”

 

 

 

The courts are chary of getting involved

The courts have not been much help either. In 2014, an NGO called Sai Lok Kalyan Sanstha  filed a petition in the Delhi High Court to get these programmmes banned but the division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R. S. Endlaw refused to intervene, saying that it was not in its domain to prescribe what the programming code should be. 

More significantly, the judges said: “Astrology is a subject being taught in the universities and is not confined to India alone. In fact, the most popular international publication on 'forecast' is of a foreign author named Linda Goodman.”

It judges said that the petitioner had to either approach the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Advertising Standards Council of India, the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council, or the authorized officer under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act for the redressal of his grievance. 

It is not surprising that more and more religious channels are coming up by the day. One of them was recently showing a ‘Graduate Temple’ in Bikaner which grants the wishes of students who visit it before taking their exams. For those who really understand and practise astrology and have been matching kundalis as a hobby, the crass commercialisation of these programmes is painful.

“I am very shocked to find that these so-called godmen have become marketeers trying to sell their products, be it stones or lockets or telling people to buy gold or clothes on a particular day.  Even retired film stars have joined them,” says Dr Anuradha Misra, Principal in a college in Bhopal.

What about young Indians who constitute 54 per cent of India’s population? Do they start their day by watching Rahu Kaal or Disha Shool? Says Deepshikha Singh, 27, who works with an NGO for destitute children and women: “I don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo being shown on TV as if these babas have a cure for every evil in society. I have spent three years working with girls who have undergone the worst that can happen to a girl child. I wish there really was a solution to their problems.”

 

Psychological frailty is the culprit   

Talking about this phenomenon, well-known psychiatrist Dr Aruna Broota says, “Those who are affected or taken in by such astrologers have weak ego strength meaning thereby that they have a suggestible personality. A numerologist even suggested to me to change the spelling of my name but I told him to get out of my life because I do not believe in magic but hard work.”

She said that tantriks were doing lot of damage to society in India and gullible women have been known to lose all their jewellery to them. Citing her own example, she said:  “About 15 years back one such tantrik tried to force me to perform a puja and when I refused he threatened to get me killed. I told him that when my time came no one could save me. Meanwhile, I was not scared of any mafia.”  

She said it was normal for the film fraternity to adopt weird names on the advice of numerologists due to their insecurities. But she found it particularly dismaying to find even Amitabh Bachchan wearing two or three rings on TV shows. “After all he is an icon,” she says.

The Congress government in Karnataka has taken a lead by passing an Anti- Superstition Law and has also banned astrology-based TV shows recently, even though Chief Minister Siddaramaiah admitted that his own family watches them. But then Siddaramaiah is the man who, at the height of the beef controversy, publicly stated that he had no problem in consuming beef because it was his personal choice.

One cannot expect the Centre to bring about a similar Anti-Superstition Bill because it is comprised of personalities like Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and L. K. Advani who made a hue and cry about the relocation of the statue of Dhari Devi in Uttarakhand and blamed this action for the devastating floods in the state.

True, they were in the Opposition at the time but even so their remarks show that they are catering to the same constituency and to the same school of thinking as the godmen.