Morality of ill fate-ism

Last week someone said to me, "my left eye is blinking, must be something bad is going to happen". "No uncle! It's evening time, it going to be very good news soon.", uncle seriously got confused and tried to innocently memorize this new unknown factor. In India, we Indians believe in several such indicative ritualisms verbally passed on from generation to generation, for example, if a cat cut across our way, it's bad; eating sweet curd before leaving for examination or any important work would be good; no non-veg food during the Navratri festival; having have sneezed at odd counts; to talk interrupt someone when he is leaving the house, so on and so forth. There are countless sayings and all are unique as per the region and the culture to which one belongs.

We have often denied to not pluck the leaves of the neem tree, else it will bring misfortune and that it has a lady ghost habitating in it. It although seems to be a good way of preventing the common people from harming the tree and in turn conserving it. The result is clear, we have many and many such sites in this over-populated highly dense country where we find centuries-old trees and the local people, more often the tribal areas are worshiping their local gods there (check- Sacred groves). During the 19th century British incursions into the forest areas where tribals would reside, was one major cause of resistance as pristine forests were cut in large numbers, hurting people's core religious beliefs and destroying forests.

In today's world, more led by easy information on the internet and the exchange of ideas from across various cultures and traditions, the reaction of the people towards these norms is noteworthy. Can we say that people have gotten confused with the excessive loads of information? A local custom is meant for the local people and it extinguishes its vitality outside the region. I recently came across an article in the newspaper Sunday magazine of The Hindu, where the mosquito terrorism on the South Indian tropical city of Chennai was answerably suggested for women to wear Sari! Not only that, contrary to the feminist movement based on liberal views of the contemporary times, writer suggested wearing long sleeves and cover faces with a veil. There are ideas that the origination of burkha, wore by the Muslim women, is delegated to the dusty arid lands of the Middle east. There are frequent storms and not just women, even men would veil their faces. As the religion got exported to other countries, we may have swallowed the values without the fine tunings. It has to be looked scientifically at how women and men dress up in the tropics or in the temperate. Similarly, in the colder regions of western countries, people ought to drink alcohol. Don't we know that stagnant rivers and lakes are exhausted with the dumping of used flowers and other materials? Again, how the Sati Practice in India became a ritual that people would themselves push the alive women against her wish to a burning pyre! That's a making of a so-called holy ritual.

In the present milieu, there are increasing calls by the political groups to look back and feel proud about the ancient root. The followers, often the common people, dealing with the more urgent problems led by poverty, unemployment and hunger are easily diverted to it. It is highly questionable of the term with the use of 'modern times' of the 21st century referred to. Are we really fine-tuning our belief system? Are we blindly following the old practices fast becoming irrelevant? Thus, are we really modern?

Another take is the morality attached with the crowd management with ideas that are psuedo in character. Should we tackle the problem in truly awaring the masses with the scientific alignment? Is it not a more long-term solution? Today, we may no longer say that 'let's not eat non-veg food' during the Navratri since we could process the food hygienically even at prevailing high-temperature conditions, although it would take just an equal amount of water to process it as it would before. Also, the festivals are also a way to compel citizens to eat vegetarian with these old sayings. We now know that eating nonvegetarian is more energy inefficient and emit much more greenhouse gases leading to global warming. Again, festivals like Durga pooja continue to motivate a large number of women to be strong and fight for their rights. Aren't they?