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.