Valson Thampu

Surely, no one can say that Keralites lack religiosity. Rather, we suffer from its excess. Why do we, for all our ponderous piety continue to degenerate as a people in this, our ‘God’s-own-land’?

The plight of Kerala cannot be understood without understanding the religiosity in vogue here. Contrary to what we are told, it is not the spirit of navodhanam, or reformation, but of crude, superstitious religiosity that drives the culture of the state. To see this clearly, consider just this one thing: navodhanam has made little dent on the dominance of superstitious ritualism in religion, which should have been its core agenda.

The use of rituals is to influence God in one’s favour so as to secure unmerited blessings. Presumably, rtual-offerings keep us in the good books of God and their neglect incurs divine disfavour. In this sense, ritualism runs counter to work-culture. Work is the practical medium of human welfare. Ritualism is the alternative shortcut. So, it stands to logic that ritualism runs counter to work-culture. The bane of India in general and of Kerala in particular is that we lack a healthy work culture. This perpetuates the gulf between our promise and performance as a people. Keralites excel in work anywhere outside their state. But, within Kerala, they languish under a spell of negativity to work.

The operative inclination here is to survive -if possible thrive- without having to work, as also in the ritualistic outlook. Religion is assumed to be the one-stop shop-all hypermarket of profit and privilege. As often quoted from the scripture, the grace of God is sufficient for us. So, why work?

If you don’t want to work, or work hard, and still wish to prosper there is a way for it: thrive on the work of others. It is easy to see that this is the dominant pattern in Kerala. It was this, for instance, that made Kerala a ‘money-order economy’. In economic terms, Kerala has been for decades more a part of the Middle East than of India. As many households as could manage it, sent at least one member abroad and lived off their income remitted home, month after month. This effected a divorce between the Kerala way of life and the need to work. One could live on the income generated by another working, and working very hard, overseas. Much social prestige came to be attached to this parasitical way of life. No one paid heed to the social and human devastation this implied.

As of now a major source of revenue for the Kerala exchequer are lottery and imported liquor. To both, work is peripheral. In the case of lottery, money is made of the money of the people, playing up their covetousness. After all, what you lose is Rs. 500. But, what you could gain, if you are lucky, is Rs. 25 crores! So, luck, neither work nor character, is destiny. In the case of liquor, it is imported. So, ‘work’, if it is involved, is work in stacking and selling. The buyers will find the money for it somehow. You can push up the excise through the roof. People will continue to buy. At least the minions of the money-order economy will not feel the pinch. The rest will find it by any means, including crime.

Lenin explained the cleverness of lottery as follows. Suppose you have a cow that could fetch you 10 roubles. You want to sell it. If you are smart you will not take it to the cattle market. You will announce a lottery, with your cow as the prize. Suppose 5000 people buy your tickets, each costing 1/10th of a rouble. So, you earn 500 roubles for a cow that would have fetched you only 10 roubles. For the 4999 ticiet-buyers, the loss is negligible. In the case of regular lotteries, they can nurse the hope that ‘they’ll have better luck next time’. In the case of a one-off lottery, they’ll console themselves, ‘after all, just a few kopeks’. You, the cow-seller, are richer by 500 roubles, or 490 extra roubles. The point here that your gain has no reference to work.

All this is fine and familiar. But what is not realised is that this is also the essence of ritualistic and superstition-ridden religiosity. Jesus Christ contrasted adults with children. To him, no one who does not ‘turn back and become like children’ will enter the Kingdom of God. What did he mean?

Adults are utilitarian. They do everything for what they can get out of it. A utilitarian person does nothing for its own sake. Yet, if we examine the sweep of life, all ‘higher’ things are non-utilitarian. What is the utilitarian benefit of philosophy, or art? Or, of the way of Jesus? This does not mean that they are useless. They have a higher use, provided we have the interests that match them. ‘Cast not your pearls,’ Jesus said, ‘before swine’. Why not? Swine have no use for pearls. But that doesn’t mean that pearls have no value. It only means that a swine cannot lift itself to the level where pearls are valuable.

The problem with our utilitarian outlook is that it imprisons us in the immediate and the instrumental. For utilitarian Christians like us, God can only be an instrument. What does not have a practical, material gain will not appeal to us. Contrary-wise, anything and everything that promises even a semblance of utilitarian advantage gets us interested. Arguably, this is the dominant feature of our religiosity. People make a bee-live before ‘miracle-healers’ not because they believe in them, but because they are utilitarian in their religiosity.

The root of this aberration lies in ritualism. Rituals are man-devised means by which God is sought to be manipulated for gaining unmerited gains and advantages. Loving God for his own sake is not the hallmark of ritualism. Ritualistic piety borders on the magical, both being human stratagems to secured undeserved advantages. It is assumed, for instance, that if a ‘man of prayer’ is made to pray over an examinee student, he or she will blessed with extraordinary results. In the SNDP variant of this, pens blessed ‘for Rs 50’ –available in the Varkala Ashram- are supposed to enable students to write their examinations better. So long as such superstitious assumptions hold the field, the discipline of being steadfast in studies throughout the academic year will not appeal to anyone.

Kerala has little to do with God. It is burdened with religious and secular ritualism, which belongs to the sphere of magic. Spirituality is not magic, but logic; even if it is the sort of logic that ‘surpasses human understanding’