The problem with humans is that though they’re slowly evolving, their subconscious as well as conscious resistance to this evolution is so overwhelming that devolution eclipses this evolution. - Richard Dawkins
Recently, we all read in newspapers and saw on different news channels that absconding rape-accused “godman” Nityanand had the chutzpah, nay gall, to send his ambassador Vijayapriya to the UN. This utter rascal claimed to have created the United States of Kailasa somewhere near Ecuador. That he succeeded in deceiving even the UN and sent his emissary underlines human gullibility. By the way, this woman Vijayapriya has a Master's degree in Microbiology from a reputable university in Canada and she speaks fluent English and French. We say in Urdu, Kabul mein kya gadhe nahin hote? (Metaphorically it means, fools are everywhere). Fools and morons are indeed everywhere.
One can understand when less educated and ill-exposed people are drawn to such frauds but when “educated” people succumb to the tricks and blandishments of these swamis, the question arises: Where have we gone wrong? Now sociologists and behavioural psychologists have begun to believe that this is more than a phenomenon of blind religious belief and widespread credulity.
Let’s analyse this. You may have noticed that all these rapist swamis have more female followers and devotees than male followers. Whether it’s Ram-Rahim or Nityanand, despite being confirmed rapists, they have a never-ending queue of female followers who are totally devoted to these creepy characters. This Nityanand also has a battery of committed female followers who have got his name tattooed on their bodies and they proudly flaunt that! All these women are quite educated and well-placed, yet the dubious reputation of these men hasn't deterred them. This is really bizarre and pretty inexplicable.
Very recently, Bombay witnessed a sea of blind followers making a beeline for darshan of an unmitigated fraud like Bageshwar Dham Baba. Once again, women outnumbered men. According to the now defunct Hindi film magazine, Madhuri (1977), nearly 90% of women from the Hindi belt watched a movie called Jai Santoshi Maa. This deity was nowhere in the pristine Hindu pantheon but was incorporated into it only four decades ago, thanks to her female devotees! Now even “educated” women from northern India fast on Fridays to please this new Devi. How will you explain this phenomenon?
Meera Kosambi, a world famous sociologist, studied this phenomenon years ago. She observed that women had an in-built fondness for esoteric mumbo-jumbo and their sense of spirituality was warped. This is not a gender-biased study because the researcher herself was a woman and her predecessor, the redoubtable Iravati Karve, believed to be the first female sociologist in India, also observed the same on this issue. Here I must mention that these two highly learned and erudite women were agnostics, nay, almost atheists. By the way, sociologist Neera Desai also believed that women were more gullible and superstitious than men in terms of religious beliefs and idiosyncrasies.
They believed that women’s ingrained credulous nature makes them follow these babas. There's no denying the fact that women are always into all rote religious activities like fasting, praying and worshipping. Men also have become like them but they're still not as credulous as women have always been in terms of religion, god and a whole rigmarole of beliefs.
These spiritual thugs know this fact very well. So, their natural target is women. They sweep gullible women off their feet with their spiritual inanities. Women tend to go into a dazed and deluded state of alternative reality much faster than men. This was proven by C G Jung and Sigmund Freud. And when women and even men are into a deluded state of spirituality and god-consciousness, the acts and antics of these babas seem highly exalted to them. In other words, women get spiritually drugged rather easily. And when the brain is under a religious spell, rationality vanishes.
You, therefore, see a sea of people following these scoundrels and dancing to their tunes. Here we must use our power of reasoning and scientific temperament. But hardly anyone does so. Nowadays, we're getting more and more inclined towards religion, babas and instant mental peace. When the general spirit is conducive to this type of grovelling and irrational religiosity, it’s easier for all people to fall into the trap of these swamis and babas.
We all have a birthright to believe in all sorts of stupidity but we must stop when this stupidity assumes moronic and morbid proportions. Unless we collectively use our rationality, people like Nityanand will have a rollicking existence in their concocted countries surrounded by imbeciles. Finally, to quote Ayan Hirsi Ali, “Much more important than one's faith in god and religion is the belief in one's power of reasoning. Apply it to be a free individual.” Alas, who applies it? We all seem to be happily fettered and unwilling to be emancipated.
Sumit Paul is a regular contributor to the world’s premier publications and portals in several languages
