Skip to main content

Small Gods

 


“Do you know who my Jesus is? He is money. Jesus is money. Do you want money? Send your bank account number to …”

Frenzied people take out their smartphones and…

Brother Raunaq Mathew holds them in thrall. He is one of the many new gen religious cult leaders in Kerala today. There are many like him now. Their only motive is making money. Make money by the Holy Spirit or by the unholy apps.

I am astounded by the number of followers that these frauds gather even in Kerala. Kerala claims to be the land of enlightened people; Prabuddha Keralam is what it calls itself. But I find the people here as beguiled as those anywhere else in India.

Long ago Swami Vivekananda [whom Prime Minister Modi once called Vivek Munda] called Kerala a lunatic asylum because of the inhuman casteism that prevailed in the state. Kerala was rather quick to cure itself of that lunacy. But soon other lunacies replaced it. The latest is a bunch of Christian cults.

Pastor M A Varughese is an icon among these frauds. He tells his followers that he does not require their alms. He is not a beggar, he says. He is a God’s representative. Shouldn’t you give your all to God? “When I took over a church in 1983, the offertory received was Rs 7.45,” he told a gathering of his followers recently. He went on to tell the idiotic followers that today he receives so much money by offertory that his five counting machines cannot manage it. The point he wanted to make was that the followers should not donate small amounts. “Give clean big notes.” After all, Modi ji has given us Rs2000-bills. “My counting machine says that we don’t need alms,” Pastor Varughese declared to his followers arrogantly.

Why do people choose to deceive themselves?

My understanding is that people want to experience a feeling of belonging. Most of us love to belong to a group which will ensure our safety one way or another. Bags of rice to start with. That is what the Sangh Parivar alleges, at least. It’s much more than that, I’m sure. A sense of belonging which you get when you throw a few Rs-2000 notes into the offertory is quite exquisite, especially when your generosity is watched and appreciated by a sizeable number of people.

If religion meant more than the small pleasures like the sense of belonging, ours would have been quite a nice place. Small gods are good enough for us, I guess.

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJanuary 25, 2022 at 6:10 PM

    Hari Om
    I too question the constant request for funds (however it is begged - or ordered); I have seen the ostentatiousness of 'giving' and the fretting of those who have not the funds, yet give still... that which is sought is free - for all who are open to receiving it. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 25, 2022 at 8:55 PM

      Indeed, grace is free. But that's just what the believers don't want, it seems.

      Delete

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
47 comments
Read more

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...
8 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...
12 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more