Skip to main content

Temples and Tragedies


Long ago, when our ancestors descended from the tree and started walking on the earth, we allowed religion to hijack everything from our entertainment to our morality, from our pains and joys to our gods and devils.  When the immensity of the cosmic mystery overwhelmed those primitive creatures, it was understandable that they sought solace in superstitions and rituals.  Today, when science has broken through most of the mysteries, revealing the principles of gravitation and quantum mechanics, unseating gods from their celestial thrones, replacing heaven and hell with black holes and stellar bodies, why does religion continue to inflict us with tragedies?

For details: The Hindu
The latest tragedy in a Kerala temple, like most other such tragedies in places of worship, is a man-made one.  The organisers and operators of the fireworks display flung all norms to the cosmic winds for the sake of enhancing the impressiveness of the show.  It’s a kind of competition.  Our temple festival must be more ostentatious than the festival of all other religious institutions in the neighbourhood.  The grander the display, the greater the religion!

We have to liberate ourselves from our snobbery first of all if such tragedies are to be avoided.  Not only firework displays, but also religious processions, conventions and a lot of other means are employed to show off that one’s own religion is capable of making more noise than the neighbour’s.  The greater the noise and grander the display, the more attractive is the religion!  In other words, religion is not really about religion but about our pretentiousness and its satellite vices.

Secondly, we have to liberate our gods from their bondage in our temples, churches and other such places.  When the gods are gone, perhaps we will learn to look within.  And discover the delights of simple humaneness which doesn’t need temples and fireworks.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Shrinidhi HandeApril 11, 2016 at 8:45 AM

    very unfortunate incident..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 10:18 AM

      Undoubtedly. So many lives lost. So many wounded seriously. Houses destroyed.

      Delete
  2. Kishor KApril 11, 2016 at 8:47 AM

    If the God is omnipresent, why look in temples? Never understood the concept, really.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 10:22 AM

      That's just the question. And the answer is that people are not looking for god really. It's about a lot of other things: social celebration, display of superiority, psychological comforts...

      Delete
  3. IndraniApril 11, 2016 at 10:13 AM

    Very tragic... some the pics were tear jerking ones. Hope they get well and recover from this trauma soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 10:23 AM

      In addition, I also hope that people learn the necessary lessons so that tragedy won't be repeated.

      Delete
  4. Amit AgarwalApril 11, 2016 at 11:44 AM

    Tragic indeed!
    'We have to liberate ourselves and our gods'..so wise and true!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 1:31 PM

      Evolution is a painfully slow process, Amit ji. Mutual liberation is possible only through mutation.

      Delete
  5. BikramApril 11, 2016 at 1:51 PM

    TOTALLY with you on LIBERATE OUR GODs.. yes we need to I think its time we the people did something too ..

    it is a tragedy such a incident happened..

    Bikram's

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 2:29 PM

      I'm happy to find more and more people who think like me. I used to wonder whether I was an odd man out.

      Delete
    2. BikramApril 11, 2016 at 4:14 PM

      No you are not, I am of the beleif that if we take religion out , people all over will be much more happier .. but then thats me ..

      Bikram's

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 5:52 PM

      Let our tribe increase, Bikram. Actually religion owes its popularity to herd mentality mostly. If the herd thinks secularism is superior to religionism we will be lucky.

      Delete
  6. Manisha SharmaApril 11, 2016 at 2:23 PM

    When the roof of the Puttingal Devi temple fell down, hundreds of people died, hundreds of people were injured, but in this all, where was God? Did he die under that roof, was he injured in that chaos or did he ran away?
    Did anyone try to find where God was?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 2:31 PM

      Your comment reminds me of what Albert Camus said when he saw a car run over a child, "Look, the heavens are silent!"

      Delete
  7. Ravish ManiApril 11, 2016 at 6:33 PM

    Yes, liberation is the only solution.

    ReplyDelete
  8. RakeshApril 11, 2016 at 6:42 PM

    I won't call it tragic or unfortunate. It's plain damned stupid! Brought on by bloody hypocrites! If it weren't for the lost lives, I'd have said that they were served right. But, do you think that they are going to learn from it? Of course not! There will be a bit of brouhaha, a few crocodile tears and everyone will gear up for a similar function on a grander stage. Bloody idiots!

    Only the Almighty will know when are we going to grow up! :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 7:04 PM

      They won't learn, no doubt. People never learn the real lessons.

      Delete
  9. HemaApril 11, 2016 at 9:46 PM

    I really agree with your last paragraph, 'to liberate' our gods from bondage. What a tragic incident!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 12, 2016 at 6:02 AM

      Just imagine how helpless god must have felt sitting imprisoned in that temple while the tragedy unfolded.

      Delete
  10. Shesha ChaturvediApril 12, 2016 at 12:12 AM

    90% of the man made calamities are due to the disturbances by religious zealots. What a pathetic state that people somewhere follow similar teachings and talk about same similar God who has made everything on earth and then he fights over what exactly His real name is... He just can't stand others with different opinion... Tragedy across the Globe, religion today is everything what is wasn't meant to be!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 12, 2016 at 6:05 AM

      Religion is the greatest cause of hatred, strife, violence, calamities... It's high time that mankind delivered itself from the nemesis called religion.

      Delete
  11. Vinay NagarajuApril 12, 2016 at 3:28 PM

    I like the coinage liberating our god Matheikal, it is such a shame that religion has become a matter of a societal pride than a personal thing. Kinda defeating the whole purpose of religion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 13, 2016 at 6:03 AM

      The purpose has been defeated already in various forms. What good does religion do today? I wonder.

      Delete
  12. CifarApril 12, 2016 at 4:19 PM

    this festival happened because temple authorities neglected denial of permissions backing by some political masters which didn't bother to hurt religious sentiments in election time but are cool now to gain from this tragedy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 13, 2016 at 6:05 AM

      The election plays a vital role, you're right. Mr Modi and Mr Gandhi rushed to the spot because of the election.

      Delete
  13. KalpanaApril 17, 2016 at 8:04 PM

    This was so sad, such a waste of life and all because of a lack of regard for safety.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some
8 comments
Read more