Shopping for divine
oozing complacency, lolled on bolsters. He was certain of winning, he told us, because his record was so impressive, but a few ignorant voters still didn’t have the ability to appreciate his tremendous sacrifices for them. These uneducated yokels danced to the tune of some feudal fellow nearby. “This Thakur Sahib should have been abolished when Indira Gandhi did away with rajas and maharajas!” he declared.
“We’ve just come from there,” my friend burst out before I knew what was happening. “Thakur Sahib had invited us to lunch. He told us how much he admires you. In fact, he wants to support you and is waiting for you to ask him!” Though initially taken aback by my companion’s bare-faced lies, I was still young enough to think it fun to politician to make tomorrow’s edition. My friend spoke with equal urgency. Our jobs depended on being on our way. Guru Maharaj and Doctor Sahib agreed at last but not before forcing mounds of sweets and samosas on us. We were safe we reckoned so long as Guru Maharaj was with us. The cat would be out of the bag only when he reached that crumbling palace and confronted the Thakur. What happened I don’t know. We were over the state border before nightfall.
Guru Maharaj did not make Doctor Sahib crawl on all fours, walk through flames or run naked after bulls like some astrologers but his power was obvious. Godmen loom large in all Indian elections, recalling Churchill’s warning about the return of superstition after independence. Dhirendra Brahmachari was much in evidence in Rae Bareli during Indira Gandhi’s comeback. Tamil and Maharashtrian politicians frankly seek divine intercession. West Bengal’s Marxists quietly sneak off to the Kali Bari to propitiate the goddess before a contest. Someone who telephoned Bengal’s card-holding Communist advocate-general was told the master was at his pujas. I remember the Revolutionary Socialist Party’s Jatin Chakravarty, the Left Front government’s public works minister, saying after the Moscow Olympics that the way the skies cleared just before the inaugural was nothing short of god’s miracle. He added hastily, “as those who believe in god would say.”
A Singaporean friend maintains that so many of the world’s financial analysts are Indian because analysis is like astrology. It’s a profession that can’t go wrong. There’s always an explanation. A man whose horoscope was studded with “good health” labels and nary a word about illness complained to his astrologer when he did fall ill. Unperturbed, the astrologer explained that good health can only follow bad health. That’s what Macbeth meant by paltering in a double sense. It brings solace to the multitude. No wonder newspapers took not the least notice of two Press Commissions urging them to ban astrological forecasts to strengthen society’s scientific temper. That was Nehruvian modernity. Gandhi understood Indians better.
The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author