Gods and Godmen of India (6 page)
An equally beautiful and popular psalm invokes God as the protector: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whom cometh thy help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber … The Lord will preserve thee from all evil; he shall preserve thy soul.”
The Muslims have their own favourite passages from the Koran. Besides the opening surah,
Al Fatihah;
the two most frequently used are the
Ayat-ul-qurse
(the throne verse) and the
Yaseen.
They can be seen on tombstones and entrances of mausoleums like the Taj Mahal.
Much the most to endow words with mysterious potency are the Hindus. The very word
mantra
implies magical power. No other religious system has an equivalent for
Om
(or
Aum):
Guru Nanak’s
ekAumkar
is derived from this. As also the tendency to pick up some scriptural texts to instill courage. Before retiring to bed for the night it is the
Kirtan Sohila.
Children are told that if they recite this they will not fear the dark and be free of nighmares.
The mantra most frequently used by Hindus is the
Gayatri.
Translated literally it is more than a hymn in praise of the Sun. But it has been invested with the magical potency of being able to sustain people in danger.
In a piece I wrote some weeks ago I mentioned a lady from Ghaziabad who claimed to have achieved miraculous results healing people with no more than by making them recite loudly
Om Arogyam.
I was flooded with letters asking me for the lady’s address. Now I have a long letter from Atul Kumar of Bharat Nagar who claims that the most potent of all is the
Mahamritunjaya
Mantra which runs as follows:
Om Trymbakam Yajaamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urvaarukamiva bandhanaam
Mrityormuksheeya Maamri taat.
(We worship the three-eyed One (Lord Siva) who is fragrant and who nourishes all beings: may He liberate me from death for the sake of Immortality, even as the cucumber is severed from its bondage (of the creeper.)
Atul Kumar assures me that the mantra is ‘life giving’; it wards off accidents, deaths from snake bite, lightening, fire etc. It can heal the sick, conquer death and grant salvation because it is Lord Siva’s mantra. If you repeat it 108 times every day, it will ensure you a long, happy and prosperous life. One essential precondition is that you must have faith.
Where can one buy faith?
11/3/90
T
wo news items in the foreign press have highlighted points of conflict between religious ritual and common sense. One comes from the city of Leicester in England. Leicester has a sizeable Muslim population with three mosques. As elsewhere in the Muslim world, the call to prayer (
Azaan
) went out five times a day, starting with the pre-dawn and ending well after children’s sleeping time. Amplifiers were fitted in minarets to make sure that the muezzins were heard all over the city. Leicester has its own civic regulations, restricting sound to 70 decibels. The amplified call to prayer was 90 decibels. Non-Muslims protested and described the imposition as a nuisance. The local council met representatives of the Muslim community and Imams of the three mosques. A compromise was arrived at. The Azaans would not exceed 70 decibels and instead of the prescribed five, were reduced to three or four, which do not disturb peoples’ sleep.
Why can’t such sensible compromises be arrived at in India? Why should gurudwaras and temples wake up people at unearthly hours of the morning through
kirtans
and chantings over loudspeakers? Why should loudspeakers be permitted for use at all-night
jagratas
and prevent others from sleeping? Catch anyone like Imam Bukhari of Delhi’s Jama Masjid agreeing to reduce the number of calls to prayer over microphones to under five, or using sound suppressors! In India whenever religious rites and commonsense are in conflict, you can be sure that the rite, however irrational and irritating will win.
The second case involves a more fundamental issue: how far can you permit a religious belief to put the life of a person in jeopardy? In this case it is a two-year-old child stricken with leukemia. Doctors were of the opinion that if she did not get a blood transfusion, she would die. Her parents rejected medical advice on the grounds that belonging to a Christian sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, they regarded blood transfusion as a sin. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a sect started by one Charles Taze Russel of Pennsylvania in the 1870s. It was originally known as the Zion’s Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. You can see their members selling literature on the streets. Russel had predicted the return of Christ. Nothing happened. Christ did not bother to return to Earth and redeem it from evil. Russel also believed that taking others’ blood into one’s body was a sin as venal as rape. So his followers who now number millions would rather die than have somebody’s blood pumped into them. They have every right to do so. But can they also impose their views on their children? Yes, say the elders of the Watch Tower Society: parents have the right to dictate to their children. No, said the High Court of London and ordered the child to be given blood transfusion. The parents abducted their two-year-old daughter from the hospital and flew to Cyprus, where they belonged. Fortunately the authorities there, agreed with the English and forced the parents to hand over the child. She received blood transfusions. And is alive. The parents are adamant however, and insist that as soon as their daughter is restored to their custody they will stop further transfusions and try alternative forms of medicine.
We have similar situations arising in our country, as for instance, when a doctor performing an operation on a Sikh, advises that he or she be shaved to avoid infection. Who then is to decide what is more important, adherence to religious belief or the life of an individual?
15/7/90
A
ll religions have a few words believed to have powerful, protective and curative potential. It is difficult to unravel the mystery behind them. In Hinduism we have the mystic syllable
Om or Aum.
It is chanted in its elongated form and believed to have the entire range of sounds in it. Intoned by itself or in combination with one of the names of God, Hari, as Hari Om, it does produce a soothing effect on jangled nerves and brings peace of mind. The Sikh equivalent
Ek Omkar
(there is one God), is derived from it, but does not enjoy the same popularity among Sikhs as does
Aum
among Hindus.
The Muslims do not have any single word to match
Aum,
but they do have some which, like
Allah-o-Akbar,
are repeated while telling the beads of a rosary. They also recite select passages of the Quran which are believed to be more powerful than others. The most frequently quoted is of course the opening lines of the holy book,
Al Fatihah:
All Praise be to Allah
1.
Lord of all the worlds
2.
Most beneficent, ever merciful
3.
King of the Day of Judgement
4.
You alone we worship, and to you alone we turn for help
5.
Guide us (O Lord) to the path that is straight
6.
The path of those you have blessed
7.
Not of those who have earned Your anger, nor those who have gone astray
(Ahmed Ali)
Next to the
Fatihah,
the second most popular verse is the
Ayat-ul-qursi
– the Throne Verse:
God: there is no god but He, the living, sustaining, ever self-subsisting.
Neither does somnolence affect Him nor sleep.
To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth; and who can intercede with Him except by His leave?
Known to Him is all that is present before men and what is hidden.
(in time past and time future),
and not even a little of His knowledge can they grasp except what He will.
His seat extends over heavens and the earth and
He tires not protecting them:
He alone is all high and supreme.
There is no compulsion in matter of faith.
Distinct is the way of guidance now from error.
He who turns away from the forces of evil and believes in God, will surely hold fast to a handle that is strong and unbreakable, for God hears all and knows everything.
(Ahmed Ali)
The
Ayat-ul-qursi
is embossed on medallions and worn by Muslim ladies attached to their necklaces. It is also the most popularly quoted verse on Muslim graves. The third in popularity are lines from
Surah Yaseen.
This
Surah
is also a favourite citation on mausoleums. On the entrance gate of the Taj Mahal, it is reproduced in full.
Amongst Hindus, the mantra regarded as the most powerful is the
Gayatri
from the
Yajur Veda.
To me it appeared as an invocation to the sun and I could not decipher any hidden meaning in it. I turned to my onetime Hindi teacher (I studied Hindi only for two years before I turned to Urdu) for an explanation. Dr Dashrath Ojha, who retired as professor of Hindi and Sanskrit of Delhi University some years ago, was kind enough to illumine my mind. I share his explanation with you. First the Mantra:
Om
Bhur bhuvah swah
tat savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimahi
dhiyo yo nah prachodayat
Literally, the mantra means:
“Let us mediate on God, His glorious attributes, who is the basis of everything in this universe as its creator, who is fit to be worshipped as omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and self-existent conscious being, who removes all ignorance and impurities from the mind and purifies and sharpens our intellect. … May God enlighten our intellects.”
Dr Ojha advises that, in order to comprehend the full meaning of the mantra, the reciter must pause at the ends of each line and let the meaning sink in.
After the incantation
Aum,
is
Bhur bhuvah swah,
meaning on earth (bhur), in the sky (bhuvah) and in the heavens above the sun (swah).
Tat
stands for God,
savitur
God as the creator and the power that sustains creation;
varenyam
indicates that God is transcendent;
bhargo
that He is the light that dispels darkness and purifies impurities;
devasya
– He is the light behind all lights and the bestower of happiness;
dhimahi
is exhortation to mediate on Him.
dhiyo
stands for intellect,
nah
for ours and
prachodayat
is the prayer that God may direct our energies towards good deeds, thoughts and conduct.
According to Pandit Ojha, the purpose of reciting the
Gayatri
Mantra is as follows:
“As this mantra invokes as integrated form of endless and beginningless God, all limitations which are normally found in the worship of a personal God or Goddess is totally absent in its goal. As such it helps to clean our mind of its impurities in totality as and when it expands in tune with the meaning of its repetition. Thus, gradually, this mantra helps us to possess an enlightened intellect. This enables us to know more and more about God in meditation and the mysteries of nature through intellect when it is directed towards objects. This also makes us maintain constant awareness of the very basis of our existence. As this mantra directs the imagination of the mind to a limitless state, it strikes the very root of our basic desires and instincts, not necessarily of this present life, but also many past lives.”
21-27/7/1989
T
here is more to silence than keeping one’s mouth shut. You have to shut out external noises as well as the tumult within you to realize what immense power it can generate. Our ancients, from the times of the Jain Tirthankars and Gautama the Buddha down to Mahatma Gandhi and Vinobha Bhave, observed periods of silence. Those who could, retreated to mountains or forests to get away from the clamour of cities; those who could not, shut themselves in their rooms and meditated.
I have yet to learn how to meditate and still the tumult in my mind. But I am fortunate enough to be able to spend long hours (sometimes days) alone with myself. I can vouch for the difference not speaking and not listening to anyone can make. There are days when I have to attend conferences, cocktail parties, receptions and make a lot of small talk. By the evening I feel done in. The days I spend in my study, reading and writing with the telephone off the hook, I do not feel tired. By the evening I am rejuvenated.