Gods and Godmen of India by Khushwant Singh Read Free Book Online Page A

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

Religion versus Reason
    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