Anonymous
It was a couple of days ago when my cousin and I, were going to his house. On our way there, we witnessed something so bizarre that it has troubled me ever since. It was the sight of a string of people flocked in a line, not far from his house. It wouldn’t have been such a bizarre sight if the line was leading to a bank or a post office where they’d be either waiting to deposit their currencies of denominations Rs. 500 and 1000 or get it exchanged. Nor was the line leading to an ATM, a sale at a supermarket, a fair price shop, or even a temple, where people are usually spotted waiting in large queues. Apparently, it lead to a normal looking house, which got me thinking. I asked my cousin what the reason was for people in such a large number to have been waiting in line. “To know their future and fates. It’s the house of an astrologer,” he said. Not an astronomer, mind you! But an astrologer, whose profession is to hoodwink people into believing his cosmic divination’s and false prophecies and horoscopic interpretations, which are nothing but statements of the Barnum Effect.
I found (and still do find) this troubling on many levels. As it is my fundamental duty to develop a scientific temperament according to the Constitution’s Article 51A(h), and also the spirit of inquiry and reform, I can in the following essay, express my opinions which I would like to call subjective facts. It is also in the humanistic intention that is stressed in the same article, that I object this ignorant and ancient pseudo-scientific traditional practice that has conformed our culture into being irrational, superstitious, and backward.
Contemplating on this sole troubling thought, I jot down all things related to such hogwash and hokum pseudosciences that I find both funny and intolerable. I think of the many encounters and experiences I’ve had with false prophesying godmen, or my accumulated trivia over the years from what I’ve read and heard on this subject; or the serious ramifications it has on our culture and future.
The claims are vague. Its fallacious basis, the movement of stars and heavenly bodies (real and imaginary) and its influence on human life. Ridiculous as it is today (for some at least), it wasn’t the same though four or so millennia ago. It was in Babylon where the idea was first conceived in the mind of man, that there could be systems of predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. The priestly men read the heavens and the entrails of animals, foreseeing and foretelling the fates of kings. But it was the ancient Greeks who developed this practice further and ascribed names and behaviours to planets. And thus originated, a number of belief systems that hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events or descriptions of personality in the human world. It is now, the second half of the second millennium in the Common Era. There never was a time before in the history of the world when Pseudosciences like Astrology, Feng Shui, Vastu Shastra, Numerology, and Dowsing, were more prevalent and pervasive than it is at the present time. Many pseudosciences have sprung up in this modern age of reason, having their origins in ancient tracts and works, by claiming to embrace culture and tradition by instilling fear. And helplessness to the unknowable natural order of things, creates such large-scale acceptance of mysticism.
Vastu Shastra is the traditional Hindu system of architecture which in ancient times laid the rules and principles of designs and layouts for temples, houses, gardens, towns. But it has evolved into something completely different today.Vastu has gained traction since the boom of real estate. There nearly isn’t a house or a building that isn’t built to the specifications dictated by Vastu Shastra. There have been instances where walls of the offices in Vidhana Soudha belonging to the members of the state legislature have been demolished just to suit the specifications of Vastu. Most of the buildings that are built today claim that they comply to the guidelines of Vastuas it is a requirement for buyers who believe that the layout of their houses have kitchen in the south-east corner, or a potty pot that faces south, or specifications similar to those.
As a kid, I had always enjoyed a dip in the pool of our apartment. But due to “Vastu” reasons, it was decided by the flat owners’ association that it had to be filled up and covered and leveled with dirt. Just because it was built in the “wrong corner” of the site, the children of the apartment were deprived of one of the happiest of amenities in the apartment.
Another worrisome state of affairs is that of the self-claimed and so addressed “experts” in these fields of pseudosciences propping up on news channels (especially Kannada). Televangelists, spiritual gurus, numerologists, Vastu experts, astrologers, who have so much to say for each and every incident or phenomena. Be it a crow sitting on the Chief Minister’s vehicle, or the phenomena of super-moons and eclipses. Interpreting a new meaning for natural happenings and claiming the causes to be supernatural. This to me is the epitome of ignorance. It does not matter whether the owner of a particular news channel himself believes in the sayings of the channel astrologer (who appears in every debate that covers anything from a communal riot, to aliens that visit the temple of Tirupathi, to the effects of demonetisation of Rs. 500 and 1000,which by the way hadn’t predicted) but due to the reason that every other news channel has one and for the rating points.The same can be said for the horoscope columns in newspapers and magazines.
The length people go, to stick to the advice of their astrologers; from changing names and cars and phone numbers, to wearing “lucky”stones, to sacrificing animals, to marrying banana plants. The list goes on… There are also the practices of voodoo, black magic, tarot, parrot fortune telling, Cowrie Shells (kavade) shastra, palmistry, et cetera. It is even more serious when famous people follow such beliefs and their followers in turn are influenced by them. Changing the spelling of their names in English though their names are words of the Sanskrit language, is enough to realise that it makes no sense whatsoever that it brings fortune or luck by changing it. Ministers, actors, singers like B. S. Yeddyurappa, Ajay Devgn, Sonu Niigaam respectively are examples enough for changing their names. (Sonu Niigaam changed his name back to Nigam). Even Elizabeth had an astrologer adviser, John Dee. Stars do influence our lives, but not the ones that are beyond this planet.
Lack of intellectual attitude is at times scary; and the astrologers, clinging so obstinately to anything which seems to confirm their beliefs,ignore the plethora of inconvenient facts which call their whole belief system into doubt. My advise to all the people who’ve told me things like they’ve experienced “positive vibrations” and “some unexplainable energy”, people who’ve had other worldly experiences at the time of their waking from sleep, and those who’ve had similar experiences, is this: Science, Logic and Rationality (Common Sense goes without saying).
I had this irresistible urge to shout “Astrology is nonsense” to the people standing in that line, but alas we had already passed it, before that thought hit me. My cousin refused to take me there again. And I was home before I could go there again myself. I sincerely hope that it is written in my stars that I shout those words the next time I’m there.
“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.” – Thomas Paine
Josephite Literary Review 