Rahul Jayaram is a teacher and writer who believes we are living through the apocalypse
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Addressing a gathering days after the Hathras stampede, Uttar Pradesh Governor and former Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, said, “You know that an incident occurred in Hathras recently. People lost their lives; I pray for the departed souls. When someone says, ‘Have my ‘charanraj’ and touch it to your head, all your pain and difficulties will go away’, does that actually happen? Display of blind faith and speaking such things to followers is a crime. I believe that they should be punished for it. We are making an effort to free people from blind faith.” She questioned and condemned her faith’s most disagreeable facets. From a veteran figure of the Hindu right, it was unexpected. Not many followed suit.
Since the inhuman but human-made catastrophe, much of the national conversation has veered to the customary and dismal law-and-order situation in Hathras and in UP. Hathras is already infamous for the gangrape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in 2020, a case in which the police coerced her resisting family and cremated the victim’s body. Even as it was about law-and-order, with the knowledge we have, it’s difficult to unsee the stampede as a socio-religious calamity. Anandiben was speaking to that. Refraining from blaming others, it was rather unlike a former hardline politician to seek internal reflection in Hindu behaviours. But I wish she had protracted her assessment further: What were Hindus getting so wrong that people swamped to a Bhole Baba? And, if Anandiben could pronounce it, what about other more vaunted custodians of Hinduism?
As later shoe-leather reportage attested, Hathras is abysmal on most human development indices. It demonstrated yet again the everyday nightmare called UP. Yet UP exists as is, as if nothing happened, and no matter what dreadful events occur in it, no one can do anything about it. After the shock, Yogi Adityanath has clamoured for pinning the perpetrators and allowing investigators freedom, teeth, latitude. Further, experts, lawyers, administrators and the commentariat mouthed on about urgently strengthening anti-superstition laws to preclude charlatan godmen from exploiting the harrowed, raddled masses of everyday India. It’s where they’re wrong.
Law-and-order provides a partial, misleading perception. The real query is over the reign of godmen and gurus in organised Hinduism. What are the socioeconomic factors that gave rise to a Bhole Baba? Shouldn’t Hindu leaders from everywhere call for introspection on such a human-made religious tragedy? Days after, UP permitted the kanwar yatra to happen. Its implicit communalisation triggered further mayhem. Really, shouldn’t it have been called off? How could it continue after Hathras?
In the past few years, the Roman Catholic Church in the West has apologised for abuses that took place in churches in Europe and elsewhere. The Church wanted to be seen to be gesturing towards accountability. It was analysing its character; looking within. The Hathras case is different, of course. But should Hindu religious and spiritual leadership not account for what happened? Isn’t Hathras a failure that Hinduism and its followers must reckon with?
It was a time when its spiritual leaders should have implored the faithful to reflect, to mourn, to listen. One expected serious leadership from an overly religious country. The seers and pontiffs of several Hindu congregations and sects and mutts have said precious little over the current condition of Hinduism that has propelled godmen and godwomen. It’s not healthy for a great religion. Religious people of several faiths have often questioned the limits of reason and rationality. It’s time to put some reason into faith now. And for this to transpire, Hindu leaders must take up cudgels to clean up the faith.