Skip to main content

How Religion Kills Innocence


In Amitav Ghosh’s novel, Sea of Poppies (which I reviewed yesterday), there is a very interesting character named Paulette Lambert.  Her father is a scientist who does not believe in God and religion.  He brought up his daughter “in the innocent tranquillity of the Botanical Gardens.”  He did not allow her soul to be corrupted by religion and God.  The only altar at which she worshipped was that of Nature.  The trees were her scripture and the earth her revelation.  “She has not known anything but Love, Equality and Freedom,” her dying father tells another character from whom he seeks the favour of taking her out of the British colony.  “If she remains here, in the colonies,” he says, “most particularly in a city like this (Calcutta), where Europe hides its shame and its greed, all that awaits her is degradation: the whites of this town will tear her apart, like vultures and foxes, fighting over a corpse.  She will be an innocent thrown before the money-changers who pass themselves off as men of God...”

Mr Lambert had understood clearly that religion, god and the moral systems created by them are nothing more than structures invented by shrewd men for keeping the not-so-shrewd masses under control and also for exploiting them.  Right now in independent India, we have certain political and religious organisations which work hand in hand employing gods and religion with the same shrewd motives of manipulating people and exploiting them.  Criminals wear the garb of ascetics and organise mass murders.  They are exonerated in the courts of justice for want of evidence.  Evidences are suppressed.  Truths are fabricated.  History is rewritten.  This is what religion and gods have always been doing. 

Mr Lambert’s prediction comes true.  After his death, the nubile Paulette is adopted by Benjamin Burnham who is a crook donning religious garbs.  Mr Burnham decides to teach her the scriptures of his religion (which is the only civilised religion, according to him and the other colonisers).  But controlling his lustful desires for her becomes a bitter struggle within him.  Lust is not his only sin.  He is greedy, cruel and dishonest.  Yet he thinks he is closer to god than Paulette who is actually innocent in every way.

Mr Kendalbushe, the judge who decides to send Paulette to the Burnhams, is another person who thinks of religion as a socio-political tool.  He is shocked by Paulette’s ignorance of the scriptures.  “Miss Lambert,” he declares to the hapless girl, “your godlessness is a disgrace to the ruling race: there is many a Gentoo (Hindu) and Mom’den in this city (Calcutta), who is better informed than yourself.  You are but a step away from chanting like a Sammy and shrieking like a Sheer.”  Soon Mr Kendalbushe will propose to her though he is old enough to be her father. 

Eventually Paulette has to run away in order to save herself from such religious people.  But her innocence cannot be sustained anywhere because religion is all-pervasive.  God is omnipresent.  How can anyone save herself from such omnipotence?  She has to lose her innocence and discover the potential within her that will help her cope with various gods and their earthly demons. 

The situation never changes.  The players change.  The white man left the country.  His place is taken today by people who have replaced his God with new gods and goddesses.  But the game goes on. 

As another character in the novel says, the rulers are all the same from time of the Pharaohs and the Mongols.  It’s the same game of wielding power over others.  The only difference is that the Pharaohs and the Mongols were not hypocrites.  They didn’t pretend that they were marauding and killing for any noble cause such as god or religion.  Our leaders pretend that they are working for gods.  “It is this pretence of virtue ... that will never be forgiven by history,” says Captain Chillingworth in the novel. 

If only we understand what religions have actually done in human history... would we be able to bring back the innocence that mankind possessed before gods were invented?


Indian Bloggers




Comments

  1. Replies
    1. I too except for the plenitude of pidgin in it. What about the sequels? Did you read them? Reviews indicate they are not as good.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser