When Devotion becomes Obedience
About two years ago, I went to a local Shiva temple in Ujjain, one of the famous 84, for a family ritual. The head priest there is a friend of my brother. So we had no problem in making all the arrangements. We started the ritual, and in the middle of it, a very natural query came to my mind, "Sir, why is this shivling form cylindrical?"
"Shivling is formless. You can pray to it however you like," he answered. Diverting my question completely.
My brother signalled me later not to ask any more questions; otherwise, he'd be pissed. This was a very normal question where he could've answered anything about the dimensions of the room, the need for this shape. But he chose to redirect it in a way to make you feel inferior, asking questions.
This was one of the focal points of my life after which I began to question a lot more. And as I started to get more & more answers, it became naturally clear that this way of traditional life needs to get reformed. We are walking on a thin line with traditionalism because any mildly curious intellectual will go one of the two popular ways, closing off their mind completely to any new question or going rogue.
By the late Gupta period, a lot of organization had already taken place. The images of modern Hindu gods, specific types and shapes of lingams based on location and availability of materials had been written down, & the process of performing all types of rituals had been standardized and was condensing into their patterns. India, as we know it today, has its foundations in the same period. The oral recitations of the historical stories became common; interpolations kept increasing due to different retellings of the same story in different regions over time, as multiple authors added something about their own biases to benefit them politically/regionally in some way or the other.
The Puranic traditions had so much cultural impact that if you were merely able to listen to sermons or see some local folk theatre based on it, you'd automatically be granted a seat in heaven. Your karmic debts would be considered washed, and you'd become a sattvic.
Then came the invasions. From the infamous Ghori invasion to the onslaught that continued till the Maratha period made Vedic ritual continuity more difficult than ever. The citizenry collectively became conscious that a way was needed to keep the gods alive, the tradition ablaze in some way. Thus began the modern Bhakti movement.
मेरो तो गिरधर गोपाल, दूसरो न कोई। जाके सिर मोर मुकुट, मेरो पति सोई॥ — Meerabai
The interpolated scriptures stayed as they were till the 19th century, by which time they were starting to get printed and distributed in every home. The late revival through magazines, radio broadcasts, television, and eventually the internet made them widely accessible, but stripped off the context.
It became a ritual. To memorize them, read them to your children, meditate on them, do pujans on their specific portions for your good health & wealth.
Total devotion picked up pace and stayed mainstream for a long time, and didn't know when to stop. Something that began as a trauma response stayed on for a period longer than what it was intended for. The trouble was never about devotion becoming mainstream, but the aftereffects of which got it converted into obedience.
One could no longer question why the story was structured the way it was.
Why the killing of an animal was not a bad thing, and why was it related to a previous birth?
Why the bad things done by a hero of the story were never bad?
Why the bad things done by the villain were divine will because he was cursed in the previous birth?
Could it simply not just be bad? Why?
Why were the wrong things accepted by the gods before they decided that it was enough and we needed an avatar? Who decided it was enough and how? Were those who suffered before that moment of no consequence? Why are all the acts done by the gods so different & separate from human experiences?
If everything was a divine act, then what do I get out of it except that I'm a mere mortal and of essentially no importance?
All these questions began to be looked down upon and equated with blasphemy. It began to be considered disrespectful to the gods and the priests. Such questions, that naturally come to anyone's mind, became a red line in multiple religious settings.
"Do not ask this!"
"Do not reduce the divinity to your ordinary human understanding."
"You're a mere mortal!"
It has resulted in the formulation of a really confused ideology whose sole mission is to obey and not question. The consequences of this have been ruinous for the people and the collective consciousness of the nation that so boasts about a long history of intellectuals, philosophers, doubters and critics.
Our main culprit here is a contemporary culture of traditional religious authority that converts devotion into obedience and makes moral inquiry socially illicit.
The first casualty of this system is always a fiery young blood rather than the god.
A child is born brave, fearless, and compulsive in asking questions about random things.
"Why does this god have four hands?"
"Why do we worship a monkey god?"
"Why must I perform this ritual in exactly this way?"
"Why should I inherit a guilt, a duty, or a restriction that I never chose?"
These questions come from a mind that is awake. They are a sign that the inner light is still blooming brightly.
Whatever happens next, and how the person responds to these questions, decides their relationship with the child permanently. The best parent will either answer the question sincerely, or give up entirely and say, "I do not know, let us read together!"
This is the case with the parents who have successfully deciphered the system and know how to play. Most are either told to simply shut up, or given a social warning:
"Do not ask this in front of elders."
"Do not become one of those people."
The child is then supposed to act contradictorily throughout his entire life. He is supposed to be logical and curious about science, math, money, and health. He is also told not to come too close to critiquing his religion and must always defend it online and parrot about the grandeur of his ancestors and repeat the rituals without thinking much.
The consciously intelligent among them often see the contradiction early, leaving the religion entirely or staying with minimal involvement in every ritual, suppressing themselves.
The terminally visible category among them turns into "neo-traditional online defenders" of the faith. Their relationship with the divine is just about preservation and a need to remain within the acceptable boundaries. There should be absolutely no questioning when encountering the divine.
They are very well read in scriptures. They can quote any verse from any scriptures most of the time and defend doctrinal positions with impressive precision.
Yet they often appear constrained.
Because the divine, for them, needs to be upheld, raised, and protected from distortion instead of being approached, questioned, or experienced humanly.
A structure too rigid to maintain, a presence too light to be felt.
Every disagreement then becomes an attack on the structure. Every historical alternative becomes an attempt at demolition. Every question becomes the evidence that the questioner has failed to understand the sanctity of distance.
The person was just curious.
The defender in this way paves the way for a genuinely interested, inquisitive, and honest young man to get repulsed from the system entirely.
This is exactly how a civilization loses its strongest bulwark. Either to intellectual dishonesty, or to performative religiosity that cannot survive a sincere question.
What will replace it?
Rationalism.
A mind that is free to question, that is free to experience rain without being held by the umbrella of traditionalism.
The inherited authority has made the average person scared of asking questions, and the religious life has to stop behaving like closed clubs. Talking about a scripture should spark curiosity in the minds. The high priests and the elders should simply be able to say "I do not know" without sweating.
A sermon should be taken with caution, keeping in mind the society in which they were composed. They are not final verdicts.
A person at 25 should not realize that whatever was sold to him as a kid was a simpler version of an ideology so uniquely human and different than what he knows, because then he may turn into another one of those who simply deny the existence of other philosophies when the history of classical India has been one of philosophies that do not even agree with each other.
The civilization has seen many things; it has matured over millennia into what it has become today. Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun, but when asked hard questions whose answers may require just more than a translation and assumptions, the people in charge should be able to say that they do not know.
A priest cannot always be a walking encyclopedia; just knowing about what he is doing, why he is doing it, and the symbolism behind it might be enough to satisfy the sincere waves in the mind of a young skeptic. They do not know what caused it or whether it is evidence at all, instead of a plain metaphor.
The believer and the rationalist can exist on the same plane.
The eternal assumption that they cancel each other is but a fable, sung by those eternally asleep whose dreams are but a subset of limited interactions in the ocean of wild humans.
The believer will still go to a temple to pray, do his rituals, and come back spiritually stronger and, at the same time, stand up and question in fierce debates about the historical accuracy and the relevance of the modern interpretations.
The eternal cycle should always continue of both moving the chariot together.
The charlatans still exist, and if anything, they have only grown in numbers. The rationalists similarly need to be present and powerful enough to control them all, who achieve nothing except churning money out of believers and harming the system beyond a threshold, which then nobody will be able to fix.
If the believer-charlatan drama continues as it is for another century, the system may fracture permanently in ways that are not imaginable at present. The trajectory must be corrected before the eventual crash awaits without most even being aware of it.
The issues, however, will persist with rationalism.
For instance, whenever a rationalist questions the tiniest of things—
"Why isn't this mantra improving health?"
"Why isn't my fasting having benefits?"
"Why doesn't the god answer?"
"Is it a fake god?"
"Is the whole system fake?"
"So must it be all demolished?"
—it becomes more of a problem.
That is where the horseshoe converges.
It will be just as plain as the neo-traditionalism. There will always be problems with the systems that will be enforced in place of any populist system. But there will be better days, better things, and a promised better society.
The system will always keep evolving and building on top of the previously established and perfected systems.
Otherwise, of course, you can despair.
The wheel must keep moving.
The children must keep singing.
The civilization survives because every generation asks what the fire is about, and chooses to keep it burning.
We await that day, because that will be the day when the people take things seriously and realize they have as important a role to play as the gods of the past had in building the nation and its people.