Maani's Musings

FLOGGING AN (ALMOST) DEAD HORSE

2011-08-10T00:36:00.000-07:00

The Chief Editor of Sneha Sandesham is a diehard Knaist. This word does not exist; I just made it up. It has a nice ring to (it as it can be bracketed with such sophisticated words as Marxist, Capitalist, and Existentialist. I suppose we can define Knaist as someone who believes in the myths and traditions of the members of the Knanaya community. However, like the typical Kerala Marxist who in public embraces socialism but in private is a hard-line capitalist, one may be a staunch Knaist, but may have children who are only fractionally Knas since they married outside the community. We cannot blame the diehard Knaist for the ‘betrayal’ of their children.

Like all senior citizens, I do tend to wander off as I muse. It could be due to the fast depletion in brain cells as one ages. At times, I go back to Africa; at other times, I like to dabble in philosophical or educational issues. Whenever this happens, our Chief Editor, being a diehard Knaist, gently prods me back to the straight but narrow path of Knaism. Our last telephone conversation went something like this:

Chief Editor (CE): Your article on Patrick Mphephu, the black Venda king, was OK. But remember, Sneha Sandesham is a publication mainly aimed at the Knanaya community. So, Maani, see if you can discuss some Knanaya issues that can help improve the lot of our Knanaya brothers and sisters.

Maani (M): Alright. If you recall, I have mused on a number of issues pertaining to our community: the practice of endogamy, alcoholism among our members, scandalous extravagance in our marriage celebrations and perunnals, weak leadership on the side of the hierarchy, sycophantic attitude of the little lambs, feudalistic practices still prevalent among the clergy, little or no effort to look at the problems of the aged left to their own devices for survival by their non-resident children, family problems among NRIs, defence of the indefensible in the Abhaya case, etc. To keep raking up these issues repeatedly is like “flogging a dead horse”.

CE: Ha! Ha! Ha! (Peals of laughter heard on the other side of the line for a minute). Maani, I really like the expression. But I don’t think the ‘horse’ is dead; I can see some faint movement. Maybe, you should change the expression to “flogging an almost dead horse”.

M: True. In the last issue of Sneha Sandesham there was the article written anonymously by some disgruntled youth about neglect of the Malabar region by the Knanaya leadership. Going by the large number of.......... (dashes), referring I presume to rogue priests, it appeared to me to be more about the immorality among the Knanaya clergy. By ‘immorality’ I don’t mean only sexual as we, the little lambs, have been repeatedly told; it includes all the cardinal sins, starting with avarice and greed.

CE: There certainly is life in the ‘horse.’ Recently there was the shameful news of a Knanaya priest who was about to be arrested and put in jail in US for paedophilia.

M: I too heard about it. When I talked to a relative who was on a short visit home from US, he told me that the man received some inside info and left in a huff. And you know what? He is not an ordinary priest; he is a Monsignor!

CE: Well, well, well. Monsignors are a breed apart. Haven’t you heard of another Monsignor in the US who is keeping ready a bishop’s red skullcap, staff and his very own mitre with the image of Knai Thoma painted on it hoping to be made the bishop of the Knanaya diocese of USA in the near future? The man seems to be stooping to such low levels to achieve his aim that he has become an embarrassment to the Knanaya community there.

M: BTW, have you seen the email in an American Knanaya Google group wherein an appeal has been made to the Knanaya makkal in the medical profession, particularly to those in the field of psychology/psychiatry for help in treating this Monsignor to get rid of his delusions?

CE: I have. The flavour of the season among Knanaya priests in America seems to be buying/building churches.

M: This must be a big money making scam by priests. As you rightly stated in your open letter to Rev. Mutholam, the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ was delivered from a mountain top, not a gilded church pulpit. Do you know that the ‘beatitudes’ were not addressed to the world at large, but to the Qumran community who called themselves ‘poor’. It does not make sense for Jesus to ‘bless the poor in spirit,’ meaning spiritually poor, since they could not have inherited the kingdom of heaven. The inheritors were people ‘rich’ in spirit. The Sermon on the Mount is not a collection of ‘blessings,’ as taught by the Catholic Church; they should rather be viewed as a series of recruiting slogans to sign up to the Essene Sect to which, it appears, Jesus belonged.

CE: So dear Maani, we should all try to make a collective effort to get the ‘horse’ to its feet. At the moment it is full of sores lying on its stinking dung.

M: Few will contest that Knanaya belief in the ‘purity of blood’ is a myth. Can you imagine a situation wherein for more than sixteen centuries no adulteration took place? But then, one can use this myth as a unifying force. There are millions around the world who still believe in the literal creation of the universe in 7 days. My complaint is that we don’t have strong leaders either among the clergy or laity with a vision to take us forward.

CE: True. Most of the recent economic prosperity of our community members is not because of but in spite of the so called Knanaya leadership. It is the result of individual and family sacrifices. Once signs of economic success appear, the powers that be fly down with their begging mitres in the name of building churches, ‘education fund,’ and so on.

M: The current Knanaya Catholic Congress President is planning a whirlwind tour of US (I am reminded of Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire) to mobilise funds for ‘endogamic’ business ventures. Following on the success of the Malabar migration, it is proposed that we encourage our people to migrate to African and South American countries where large tracts of land are available for agriculture. I am thinking of going to South America. It would be great fun to laze around on the Copacabana beaches and watch salsa dancing in the nightclubs and take part in the Brazil carnivals. Want to join?

CE: Why don’t you go first and scout the place for me. In the meantime, let me go back to flogging the dead ‘horse’.

M: The almost dead ‘horse’.

CE: Can I expect something on Knanaya issues soon?

M: Will try and get back at the earliest.

CE: Bye for now.

M: Bye and take care.

THE KING AND I

2011-07-04T23:07:00.001-07:00

My daily exercise regimen consists of a couple of hours of brisk walk in the evenings. Most days I walk alone along the rural by-lanes of semi-urban Adichira, near Kottayam. This is also the time for reflection and reminiscence. Often I ruminate on my time and life in Africa.

I left for Zambia with my family in 1979. As the Zambian economy went from bad to worse, my wife and I managed to get jobs in South Africa and moved there in 1984. We were both posted to Dimani Secondary School in Thohoyandou, the capital of the ‘Republic of Venda’.

A brief outline of South African history might be useful to a better understanding of what follows. Before the arrival of white man, Africans lived in tribal groups under different kings. In Southern Africa there lived tribes such as Zulu, Venda, Khosa, Shangaan, Kwa Ndebele etc. Each major tribe was ruled by a king with the help of chiefs who lorded over the clans under them. Fights and wars were common between tribes. The conquering tribe would kill all the men and take away the women and children and make them wives and slaves.

Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu

In 1652, Jan Van Riebeeck, an employ of Dutch East India Company, came to Cape Town and established a settlement there. On realising that the country was good for farming, more people migrated from Europe. In the course of the next 200 years the whites managed to grab the more fertile lands of the region using their monopoly of guns and exploiting the jealousy and rivalry among tribal kings.

With the country under their control, the white rulers brought in the idea of ‘separate development’ known as apartheid. The local blacks were forcefully herded, according to tribal affiliation, into large tribal enclaves called homelands that were arid and fit only for cattle farming. Later, some of these homelands were declared ‘independent countries’ and others ‘self-governing territories’. Thus, there came into existence four ‘independent’ countries, Venda, Ciskei, Transkei and Bophuthatswana, all recognised as ‘Republics’ by South Africa and Rhodesia (current Zimbabwe), but none else in the rest of the world. All these ‘countries’ had their own Presidents, ministers, parliaments, passports, postal stamps etc.

Venda snake dance

The President of the ‘Republic of Venda’ was Patrick Ramaano Mphephu, formerly the king and Paramount Chief (Chief of chiefs) of the Venda tribe. His official residence, the parliament, and the various ministries were all a stone throw away from where we lived in Thohoyandou. However, he normally stayed in a large housing complex about 30km away in Makhado which was the capital of his original ‘kingdom’.

President Patrick Ramaano Mphephu of Venda

A few houses further down the road, there lived an eccentric old man, Mr Maniatshe, with whom I became quite friendly. A very intelligent man, he was a friend of the President. His small yard was full of banana plants. From morning till night he would be transplanting banana saplings into any space available. So much so, his yard looked like a banana forest! Six months after I started living there, Maniatshe came to my house early one morning. He told me that the tradition of the tribe dictated that all new comers to the area should visit the President (in effect their king) with some suitable gifts. This had two purposes: one, to pay your respects and acknowledge him as your king and two, to request his protection.

Maniatshe managed to get an appointment for us with the king. So, early one morning, I packed my family into our brand new Toyota Corolla and took Maniatshe along to show us the way. In the boot I loaded a crate of 24 ‘Long Toms’, Mphephu’s favourite brand of beer. Maniatshe brought along a dozen or so banana saplings from his garden. The road in those days was full of boulders, the size of my head, and my heart sank as I drove over the 30 km stretch of gravel road to the President’s residential complex. It consisted of a large number of rondavals (round huts) where servants, dependents, relatives and wives of the president (there were 29 at that time) lived. According to Maniatshe, every night the President would go round the complex with a big cane. If he heard couples quarrelling he would just enter and physically beat the husband and wife with his big cane until they promised to behave.

Rondavals

The President received us in his simply furnished drawing room. He sat behind a plain wooden table on an equally plain wooden chair. After the preliminary greetings, the two old men started talking in the local language. Then the President turned to us and asked about our well-being, whether we were happy here etc. He was delighted with our gifts. After an hour of talk, I expressed my desire to leave since I had noticed a large crowd waiting outside to see the President. He asked us to spend more time with him, since ‘these people are all here to trouble me with their silly problems’. He told his senior wife Doris to bring some tea for us. After spending another hour with him, we took leave. Before we left, the President gave me his personal telephone number and told me to call him directly if anybody ever troubled us. Maniatshe later told me as we drove back that the news about our visit would be all over the small country within the next 48 hours and no one would dare touch us – if one even tried, he would be found dead at the bottom of the nearby ravine! No questions asked!

As we came out of his room, I saw the ministers of Education and Internal Affairs outside patiently waiting their turn. Tradition dictated that people entered his room on their knees and when coming out they walked backwards, since no one was to show his or her backside to him.

My daughter had during the past 6 months become conversant in the local language, Tshivenda. She later summarised for me what the President told Maniatshe. He had told him that he was so happy that this ‘Indian family’ had been the first to come and see him to pay their respects and to ask for his protection.

Mphephu’s death was tragic. He was poisoned by one of his close confidants. Though rushed to Pretoria for treatment, Patrick Ramaano Mphephu, the President-for-life of Venda, died on April 17, 1988 at the relatively young age of 63.

There was a public funeral service attended by all the dignitaries and most of the people of the tiny country. The actual burial was done secretly, attended by a handful of his closest. It is customary for the Venda people to bury their dead with blankets, rice and other necessities so as not to suffer cold and hunger in the next life. Rumour that went around at that time spoke of an additional custom in the case of the king: a man had to be buried alive with him to be his servant in the next life; hence the secrecy.

May the two rest in peace!!

[Published in the July 2011 issue of Snehasandesham]

KNANAYA INTELLIGENTSIA

2011-06-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

Recently, the conversation during the weekend ‘happy hour’ (the hour that I spend on Saturday evenings with close friends discussing sundry issues over a couple of drinks) turned to the intellectuals of the Knanaya community.

Happy hour

None of us know for certain the real intentions of Kinayi Thoma in undertaking the long and hazardous journey to Kerala. If he had come purely for trading purposes, he would not bring along women and children on that dangerous trip. They were probably running away from some unpleasant or dangerous situation. These days there is a twist to the ‘trading’ tale: they came to evangelize the Kerala heathens with trade on the side for sustenance.

The level of intelligence required for evangelization is minimal. All that is needed is to memorize parts of the bible and speak fluently and convincingly in a loud voice. Sprinkle in a few threats of the hellish fire and brimstone and the everlasting joys of heaven. As far as trade in those days was concerned, it required a different set of skills, though nothing fancy. You buy cardamom at Re 2/ton and sell it at Re 3/-

Knanaya farmer in the 50’s

In the 1950’s when I was growing up, most members of the Knanaya community eked out a living from agriculture, something that did not require great intelligence. The recent spurt in income thanks to the Knanaya youth taking up professions in nursing, information technology and business administration does not seem to have brought about a corresponding rise in the intellectual levels of its members.

That probably could be the reason one of my drinking buddies during that ‘happy hour’ made the rather startling statement: “Knanaya intelligentsia is an oxymoron”.

An oxymoron is a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous and seemingly self-contradictory effect. E.g. extremely average, objective opinion, original copy.

Here is the first stanza of a poem I found on the internet, in which every line is an example of an oxymoron:

One fine day in the middle of the night,

Two dead boys got up to fight,

Back to back they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other.

The rest of the group, all Knas, arrogantly assuming to be part of the intelligentsia, became very emotional and strongly objected to that statement. We told him in no uncertain terms that there exists in the Knanaya community an elite group of intellectuals. He told us to mull over the issue once the whisky fumes have evaporated from our heads.

Next morning as I nursed my hangover with a cup of strong black coffee, my mind went back to the previous evening’s discussion. Knanaya intellectual: is there a contradiction in terms? Who are the inventors, the creators, the thinkers, the artists, the writers of the community? Where are our Aristotles, the Ciceros, the Augustines, and the Einsteins? Do we have any media that encourage critical and creative thinking?

When I lived and worked in South Africa, the non-African foreign teachers would constantly refer to African children as ‘brain dead’, ‘stupid’ and ‘good-for-nothing’. As I studied the history of their colonization and delved deeper into their backgrounds, I realized that children of all races and castes are similar in intellectual capacities. It is the way humans are nurtured that determines what they become in life. South African blacks were repeatedly told by their white masters that they have been created as inferior humans by God Himself (some bible passages would be quoted out of context to this effect), that they have no aptitude for Math and Science and that they are fit only to ‘heave wood and draw water’. Through repetition and indoctrination, the African totally internalized this idea and behaved accordingly.

A similar situation is happening to the Knanaya community. From 1911, for one hundred years, its spiritual leadership has been indoctrinating its members and turning them into meek robotic lambs. The irrational fear of God and of hell and of eternal damnation is the tool used for this purpose. Any criticism of the clergy ipso facto rains down God’s curses by the bucket-load. Selective examples of accidental misfortunes befalling individuals are highlighted to demonstrate God’s anger for pointing out the wrong doings of priests and bishops.

The feudalistic set up from which the hierarchy refuses to budge has also helped. Knowledge is power, so keep the lambs in ignorance. So much so, this subservient and slavish mentality has become part of the Knanaya genes and seems to be passed down from generation to generation.

A former Knanaya Catholic Youth League president recently stated in an interview that he is not prepared to publish anything against the community, even though it may be true! This is the type of slavish leadership that is proactively promoted by the hierarchy and its sycophantic lay leadership.

The only official publication of the community is nothing but an avenue for singing the praises of the hierarchy, the clergy and their hangers on. In this less than mediocre publication there are negative comments aplenty about the government but not a word of self-criticism. It seems obsessed primarily with the twin issues of ‘drinking’ and ‘minority rights’.

This is in contrast to the rest of the country, where media is playing a great role as watch dogs and keepers of the society’s conscience. It enlightens the common man of his rights, helps widens his knowledge horizons, and exposes the corruption and mismanagement in society.

Omar Khayyam

The current prosperity of the community is leading its members to a hedonist lifestyle. As Omar Khayyam said, most of our brethren live for the moment.

O cleric, we are more active than you,
even so drunk, we are more attentive than you,
You drink the blood of men, we drink the blood of grapes [wine],
Be fair, which one of us is more bloodthirsty?

Drunkenness has become a cancer. The community is shrinking with many youngsters expelled for marrying outside the community. Time is not far off when this community is going to implode. Visionaries are lacking in the current leadership which is unable to see beyond the dollar notes dangling in front of its nose.

The need of the hour is for a few good members with vision, dedication and love for the community to come together to give the community intellectual leadership. It must help rediscover the humanizing vocation of the intellectual. It must use the power of thought to free the members from their irrational fears and to resolve the dichotomy between the spiritual dictatorship and the oppression of the little lambs. In this way it can lead the members in their attempts at regaining their lost humanity.

The only way to resolve this dichotomy is through education. Education can create awareness leading to praxis – reflection followed by action. Media in all its forms – print and electronic, audio and visual – is a powerful tool in this educative process. It becomes incumbent on the capable members of the community to take the initiate to develop a critical media that helps liberate the little lambs from the mental slavery that it is in now. The alternative is their continued meaningless, drink-induced existence, leading to the community’s disintegration and to its ultimate demise.

And of course ‘Knanaya Intelligentsia” will continue to remain an oxymoron.

[Published in the November issue of Snehasandesham]

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITS SHEEP

2011-06-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” - George Orwell

There is a reason for Catholics all over the world to be referred to as sheep. In the context of his times, Jesus began to be referred to as the Shepherd and his followers sheep or little lambs. He himself used the simile of the shepherd and his flock in his talks to the uneducated Jewish masses to make them understand Yahweh's love for His Chosen People. Times have changed; still the terminology continues to be in use. The reason these days seems quite different: it is the continued sheepish behaviour exhibited by the majority of Catholics.

A few weeks back, a ‘sheepish’ incident took place in my neighbourhood. My neighbour had tied a goat to a stake in an empty plot next door. Its little lamb was left loose to roam free. Somehow, the mother goat got untangled, and seeing the grass greener on the other side, climbed on to the wall and jumped into the next yard. Unfortunately, it landed in a well close to the wall, and its kid, with its sheepish brain, jumped right after its mother as well. The deathly bleating caught the neighbours'’ attention and both were pulled out to safety.

I must confess that till recently I too was one of the sheep. In fact, the years I spent as a seminarian made me one par excellence. It takes years of self-debriefing to change that mind-set. After retiring, with time becoming a luxury, I began to read up on the history of the Catholic Church – from its birth after the death of Jesus to its current state. It came as a big shock, brought up as I was on a diet of absolutely certain ‘dogmatic beliefs’, to learn: that the present Church was founded not by Jesus, but by St. Paul; that the original Church led by James, the real brother of Jesus (not cousin as claimed by Catholic Church to defend Mary’s virginity) died a natural death after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A D; that there are three gods in One and one God in three; that Jesus’ virgin birth, his Resurrection, his Ascension, Mary’s physical Assumption, wine and bread turning into human blood and flesh and a host of such physical impossibilities are all copied from ancient myths, rituals and practices; that the Catholic Church is a big multinational establishment sailing on feudalistic lines in a sea of democratic practices. What baffled me was the ability of this Church to fool so many people for so long and still continue to do so!

As I delved deeper into the subject, I realised that the sheepish ‘blindly-follow-the-leader’ attitude of the vast majority of Catholics has been intentionally developed and purposefully instilled using a number of tactics. Fear stands out: fear of God’s anger, fear of priestly ‘curses’, fear of the unknowability of life after death, fear of the everlasting tortures of hell. Another useful technique is to present to the faithful myths and lies as truths. Repeat a lie million times and it becomes an eternal truth. The mother of all investment frauds is perpetuated by the Catholic Church: become its member, choose pain over pleasure and you will enjoy everlasting happiness after you die in a fantasy place called paradise.

A third technique is based on the dictum ‘knowledge is power’; if you keep the lambs in ignorance, you can keep them under control. One of the means used to oppose Luther, Calvin & Co was book censorship. In 1559 Pope Paul IV issued the first list of forbidden books, the Index Expurgatorius which included works by the humanist Erasmus, scientists Copernicus and Galileo as well as the Qur'an. In 1571 a Congregation of the Index was established to control and update the list. Canon Law now required the imprimatur (let it be published) and nihil obstat (nothing prohibited) to be printed on books allowed to be read by Catholics. This practice is still prevalent.

Galileo explains his discoveries to the Pope.

In 1521, William Tyndale, a brilliant protestant priest and linguist who could speak eight languages fluently, began translating the Bible into English. However, the Vatican did not want a wide readership of the New Testament. Access to the bible was reserved for the clergy, who could then interpret its message to suit the interests of Rome. In such circumstances, the translation of the Bible into English would be dangerous. Tyndale became a marked man; he was caught, tried as a heretic and garrotted by King Henry VIII at the behest of Rome.

A far more vicious and psychologically harmful technique used by the Church since its infant days to keep the little lambs under control has been to link ‘sex’ with ‘guilt’. Saul of Tarsus and Augustine of Hippo have been the two main proponents in the development and spread of this technique.

Based on the philosophy of Plato, Saul (canonized as St. Paul by voice vote) built his theology around an essentially dualistic view of the cosmos in which the earthly was denigrated in favour of the heavenly. Those who denied the body and lived a celibate life, placing emphasis on the higher spiritual things ‘above’, were viewed as holy and free from the taint of the lower material world ‘below’ (asceticism). He advocated celibacy as a higher spiritual way, though he did not absolutely forbid sex. According to Paul, marriage was an antidote for the spiritually weak who might be tempted toward sexual immorality.

Paul’s ideas were taken up by Augustine (354-430) of Hippo. In his youth he had led a life of debauchery. After his conversion to Christianity in 386, he developed a deep loathing and distrust of sex. His experience of sex was confined to illicit loves which left in his conscience a strong sense of guilt and misery. Extrapolating, he concluded that all sex, even in marriage, is wicked and sinful. He came to believe that God had condemned humankind to eternal damnation because of Adam’s ‘original sin’. This ‘inherited sin’ was passed down through ‘concupiscence’, the desire to take pleasure in sex rather than in God. Because we are born as sexual beings, we are sinners who deserve to burn in hell, and if we want to go to heaven, we must have sex only for procreation - and even then, God forbid, we should enjoy it. The man should embrace his wife as though she were a statue and the woman should recite: “I am not doing it for my pleasure but to give God a son.”

All this led to the elevation of virginity to the highest level of spirituality. For him the ideal marriage would be between two virgins. The institution of marriage was downgraded, since virginity was the ideal. This mode of thinking led him to conclude that the minister at the altar should also be celibate.

Augustine’s teachings were held as the basis of sexual morality for the next 1600 years. It is only recently that some form of recognition has been accorded to marriage as a loving union of two individuals. To the old genital approach to sexuality, the Catholic Church has added elements of mutual love and mutual aid; still the primary end of marriage is procreation.

There you have it. If you are nonsexual, you are spiritual!!! The consequences of this anti-natural mode of thinking, not found in the teachings of Jesus, but borrowed from Greek Philosophers, had wide ranging and dire consequences for the lives of Christians for centuries and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In the name of God, the belief that sex is dirty has perpetrated rampant cruelty, bigotry, and timidity; it has created religious sexual abuse in homes and in churches; it has generated intense shame about our bodies and desires; and it has fuelled the belief that parts of our bodies are dirty, fostering hatred of and confusion about pleasure.

Monasteries and religious congregations were founded on the idea that virginity and chastity were most pleasing in the eyes of Jesus and God. Priests and nuns took the vow of chastity, having been brainwashed during years of formation that the chaste life is a short cut to heavenly bliss. The Catholic Church stands accused of the psychological damage suffered by many in religious life forced to live against nature and for the guilt complex created in the consciences of little lambs in obeying dogmas based on outmoded moral philosophies of ancient men who were products of completely different social systems.

[Published in the January 2011 issue of Snehasandesham]

@unknown

BRIDE OF CHRIST – PART 2

2011-06-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

In part-1 I mused on the startling results of a survey conducted by the Catholic weekly Sathyadeepam among nuns. It revealed that behind the apparently happy exterior, there is a lot of discontentment floating around in convents. The root cause of this state of affairs can primarily be traced to the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that every nun professes. These vows are the pillars on which ascetic monasticism, the idea that full spirituality is best achieved by renouncing the world and its pleasures, is built. The vow of poverty compels the religious to detach herself from all material possessions; the vow of chastity forces her to kill off all the natural God-given physical urges that are part of His grand plan for the continuation of the human race; and the vow of obedience demands the individual to blindly subject herself to other people’s will turning her into part-zombie, part-robot.

Vow of obedience

The origin of ascetic monasticism goes back to the third and fourth centuries. There were many reasons for this idea to flourish at that time. Apostle Paul made Jesus a ‘salvation god’ on the lines of Osiris, the Egyptian god and believed in the fallen nature of man.

Osiris

He turned Christianity into a ‘salvation religion’. Like Plato, whose ideas he freely borrowed, he also believed that every human was composed of an immortal soul imprisoned in a physical and mortal body. Salvation can only be achieved through a proactive suppression of the body for the sake of the soul.

Augustine of Hippo

These ideas were supported and improved upon by Augustine of Hippo (354-430). In his effort to explain evil in this world, he invented ‘original sin’. The debauchery of his youth created such a guilty conscience in him that he declared sex the root of all evil. Only married couples should be allowed to engage in this ‘dirty act’. It should be done purely for procreation and not recreation. This mode of thought added to the prestige of chastity.

During its infancy, Christianity was unwilling to accept the practices of Rome. Many became martyrs for their faith. However, with the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 312 AD Christianity came into favour. The martyrdoms stopped. Christians had to invent new ways of suffering for the sake of salvation. Since the physical body was regarded as the root of all temptations, it had to be brought under control through voluntary physical deprivations and sufferings. The lack of opportunities for martyrdom and the need for controlling the physical urges of the body so as to save the soul led to the idea of monasticism. Hence the hair-shirts, the flagellations, the fasts, the bare-foot walking, the nightlong vigils and the blind obedience that was quite common in monasteries and convents until recently.

Self-flagellation

But times have changed. The last two centuries have seen a surge in secular thinking. Belief is giving way to reason. There is a realization that the promise of a heaven after death is the biggest investment fraud committed by two of the more popular religions: Christianity and Islam. At least, there are 72 virgins catering to the martyr in the Islamic paradise whereas the good Catholic can only expect to join a choir in heaven.

Angelic choir in heaven

It is against modern day thinking on human rights to make people enter into a contract to live a life of poverty, chastity and obedience till death. It reminds one of bonded labour that is still extant in certain parts of rural India. When a nun takes the vow of obedience she literally pawns her life to her superiors and to the Church hierarchy. The argument that she takes her vows only after she turns 18 is tenuous. It is well known that her indoctrination and spiritual hallucinations start much earlier, often as a preteen.

The vow of poverty is a double edged sword. One requirement prior to profession is the renunciation of all rights to inheritance. This is one of the reasons for relatives to encourage girls to become nuns. It saves the family the trouble of raising her dowry. Some senior nuns are of the opinion that poverty and the guarantee of a secure life are the motivating factors for many undeserving candidates now-a-days to enter the convent. Many among them turn out to be trouble makers.

The fact that the nun is forced to give away her rights to inheritance prior to her profession discourages any thought of leaving the convent. As an ex-nun, she has nothing in her name for survival. The perception that those who leave are perverts unable to control their sexual urges and/or rebellious brats is spread among the little lambs by convent authorities in connivance with the hierarchy. The unhappy nun is forced to continue in the convent against her will for fear of shame and unacceptability by her family and relatives. As per canon law 503 (a) those who leave the convent cannot claim anything for the services done there. Like used curry leaves, they are unceremoniously thrown out. With their prime past in most cases, marriage prospects are dim. Should one be surprised when reports of suicide in convents appear in the media? And are all deaths reported natural?

The vow of chastity goes against human nature itself. It is the cause of many of the problems the church finds itself in. “The devil never harmed the church so much as when the church herself adopted the vow of celibacy.” (Peter Comestor). The belief that when she becomes a nun, she also becomes the ‘bride of Christ’ is instilled in the young woman. Many in their teenage naivety take this twisted compensatory theology to heart and fantasize about their ‘first night’ with Jesus, as Sr. Jesme recalls in her autobiography Amen. The convent becomes the bridal chamber. After all, Jesus the groom is a handsome young man of thirty three, something that enhances the intensity of her fantasies. Some saints (e.g. Theresa of Avila) have taken this intense love for Jesus to the erotic level. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as ‘erotomanic delusion’, a disorder in which someone claims that a famous person is married to or is in love with her.

Theresa of Avila

Has anyone the right to deprive individual freedom in the name of obedience to ‘God’s will’ expressed through one’s superiors and the hierarchy? ‘God’s will’ is another fraudulent idea perpetuated on the little lambs to keep them in line. It has been observed that those engaging in continuous prayer, meditation and fasting in an effort to suppress their natural urges tend to develop neurotic problems. When such individuals are in charge, their administrative style often becomes neurotic as well and hence unbearable. However, under the vow of obedience, little can be done. Anyone who criticizes the rules and policies of convent authorities is accused of madness and confined to a mental asylum or they are ‘character-assassinated’. Surely, this is inhuman.

Mental asylum inmate

The empire building and the power seeking that the Catholic Church began after the conversion of Emperor Constantine continue today with much greater vigour than ever. These days it is run on the lines of a multi-national company. But unlike other multi-national companies, the Church, headed by a self-proclaimed infallible pope, continues to be feudal and dictatorial in its ways. A Global religious empire has been created. Religious congregations are part of the global religious colonization in the name of God. Its members, especially nuns, are forced to lifelong servitude bordering on bonded labour to maintain and support this establishment.

It is high time enlightened Catholics give a sympathetic hearing to the problems of our sisters and expose their exploitation in the name of religion/love of God/everlasting happiness in heaven/etc./etc.

[Published in the March 2011 issue of Snehasandesham]

BRIDES OF CHRIST

2011-06-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

Part - 1

The person I admire most in this world is a Catholic nun – Mother Theresa. Her dedication to bring succour to the poorest of the poor is without parallel.

As a Catholic child growing up in rural Kaipuzha, my life was influenced by the good nuns, be it in the catechism class or at school. Nuns are sometimes referred to as ‘brides of Christ’ since they are spiritually married to Christ at the time of their religious profession.

As the vagaries of life forced me into the big bad world, I became more and more aware of the excellent work done by the different congregations of nuns. They run orphanages, hospitals and educational institutions; they take care of the handicapped, the abandoned, the sick, the dying. In South Africa where one person in three is a victim of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, I have seen nuns cleaning, feeding and being there even when their near and dear ones have abandoned them. The sight is so heart-renting, the stench so unbearable and deaths so frequent that one sister told me: “James sir, we cannot work like this for more than six months; we need to go away from this environment for the next six months to get our sanity back.”

There is no doubt that nuns all over are a force for good in the world. The question is: what goes on in the hearts and minds these individuals who always wear a happy-go-lucky attitude on their veils? Is this a mask to hide the rumblings of a storm within? Does the look of contentment exist within the high walls of the convent?

Up until recently, the little lambs in the Catholic Church were not privy to life within convents. There is very little in Malayalam literature dealing with the inner workings of a nun’s mind; much less regarding what goes on within the four walls of a convent. Joseph Mattom (Lokam, Pisasu,Sareeram) and Pathrose Ayyaneth (Thiruseshippu, Yahoodayude Paramparyam) are two authors who did make the effort. In some sense it was Sr. Abhaya’s murder that changed the status quo. The door was slightly opened with the publication of the details of her murder investigations. What the lambs saw within was not very edifying. These negative perceptions were confirmed by personal evidence when Sr. Jesme brought out her sensational autobiography Amen. An avalanche of skeletons fell out of convent cupboards. More than the salacious details, what shocked me was her revelation about efforts made by her own sisters and superiors to silence her by shutting her up in a mental asylum!

From last year, following the publication of Amen, Joseph Pulikkunnel through his monthly Hosanna has tried to delve deep into the matter. He has brought to public discourse the various dimensions of the life of a nun both as an individual and as a member of a community: their recruitment, formation, perpetual vows, their community life, and life as an ex-nun.

Why should the little lambs be interested in nuns of all people? Some would like to leave them alone to sort out their problems, whether they are personal or social, private or public. However, the fact remains that they are our daughters and sisters and nieces and aunts and above all, members of the Catholic community. What happens to them impacts us in one way or another.

A little digression at this point might spice up the discussion. One title in Ayyaneth’s short story collection Yahoodayude Paramparyam (Tradition of Judah) is Deiva vili (vocation/God’s call). Prasad, a government contractor, and George, a Math teacher, meet up in a bar after a long gap. Over a couple of drinks they update the events in their lives after they left college. George is the protagonist with a more colourful life. As a bachelor working in a rural school, he accidently comes across the beautiful seventeen year old Selinamma bathing semi-nude in a small pond. He falls madly in love with her and asks her father for her hand in marriage. Selinamma, mesmerized as she is with the lives of nuns in the convent hostel where she boarded as a student, refuses. Instead, she insists on becoming a nun. Her Deiva vili came on a Good Friday during the Way of the Cross when she felt she heard Jesus pleading for help in carrying his cross. George in course of time gets over his disappointment and marries Nazeema, a colleague. But Selinamma has not disappeared from his life.

She becomes Sr. Paul.

A few years down the line people wake up one morning to the tragic news that young Sr. Paul has died of a heart attack. But George tells Prasad that it was a suicide. He is sure, since he received a letter from Sr. Paul written a day before her death. She tells him that by the time he receives her letter, she would have escaped from this world. She is certain she is going neither to heaven nor to hell; she does not believe in heaven or hell or that she has a soul. It is a disbelief that has come quite late in her life.

As a seventeen year old, she was caught up in the emotional whirlpool of religious madness. But as she tried to get closer to God as a nun, her religious fervor turned cold and she became an atheist.

She falls in love with Dr Latif, a surgeon in the hospital where she works as a nurse. Latif wants her to convert to Islam, an act that would totally shatter her God-fearing Catholic family. So, if she cannot marry and find happiness with Latif, it is meaningless to live life in a state of hypocrisy. The only option left is take her own life. She asks George for forgiveness for refusing his marriage proposal, suffering as she was at that time from an intense bout of spiritual madness.

The story ends with George stating that he has not gone to church after this incident. He is not willing to face Jesus who is locked up in the tabernacle.

The above story may be a figment of the author’s fertile imagination. One must remember that imagination is a faculty that takes its raw materials from reality. The fact, however, is that there have been at least 14 cases of suicides by nuns in the recent past. The sceptic might argue that this is a reflection of what is happening in society at large. But society at large does not live in such close relationship with God as those in a convent. Contentment and happiness is assumed to be natural by-products of this closeness. So what went wrong?

According to a survey conducted by the weekly Sathyadeepam among nuns, it was found that 25% of them are discontent. The actual figure may be 75% if we are to believe ex-nun Prof Dr Regina Valiaveettil. According to her, the convent environment is short on mutual love and care and long on legalese. What are the root causes of this dissatisfaction?

An understanding of the historical rationale of ascetic monasticism is of help in analysing the problems faced by modern day nuns living in high-walled communities. Monasticism is an idea that full spirituality is best achieved by renouncing the world and its pleasures. This renouncement implies the three ‘evangelical counsels’ of poverty, chastity and obedience. One must detach oneself from all material possessions, abstain from sexual emotions, relations, and acts, and subdue one’s will through obedience. These three ‘counsels’ are now taken as vows for life by the religious including nuns at the time of their profession.

It is easy to trace some of the problems faced by nuns these days to the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that they profess for life. Others can be traced to the rules and regulations by which they are to live as a group under one roof. Still others are due to loss of faith in general, the rapid secularization in thinking, the emphasis on individuality and the value system taking a nose-dive towards pure utilitarianism. I hope to muse on these problems in the next issue.

[Published in the February issue of Snehasandesham]

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND KNANAYA COMMUNITY

2011-06-04T08:49:00.001-07:00

A few weeks back, a friend from UK described to me the case of a Knanaya gentleman there who has been arrested for wife battery! He also told me of rumours floating around in the rarefied British air of more such individuals cooling their heels behind bars. Mention was also made about research done into family problems among Malayalee Christian families in the UK. The findings are startling – incidents of domestic violence are much more pronounced among Knanaya families than among non-knanaya families. He asked me whether I have any thoughts on this issue.

I replied that I can only speculate, an attempt that will be totally subjective. My focus here is on domestic violence that often follow marriages of convenience. This happens everywhere, but a few incidences of this type stand out like a sore thumb in the extremely small Knanaya communities in the UK and elsewhere.

Domestic violence is a worldwide phenomenon. Social, political and religious groups that are male dominated appear to be the biggest culprits in this regard. I spent twenty five years living among blacks in South Africa. I have seen for myself the total dominance of the male and the consequent violence against women. The physical abuse starts in primary school. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ is one dictum that is followed to the letter. It is not uncommon to see women in the Emergency Room of a hospital with eyeball pierced with a screwdriver or jaw cracked from violent beatings. One of the reasons for the fast spread of Aids in that country is that women have no say in the matter of condom usage.

With few exceptions, Muslim families are male dominated. The Talibans of Afghanistan have taken female oppression to a new low. Judaism too was male dominated. Their Yahweh was an angry revengeful male God. Christianity had its origins in Jewish traditions and hence male superiority was a given. St. Paul urges wives to obey their husbands, since the husband is the head of the family. This instruction is repeated in all Christian marriage rituals to this day.

Knanaya boys and girls grow up imbibing Christian traditions of male dominance. Added to this is a social environment that favours the male at the expense of the female. It is the male who carries the family name; he is the one to look after the parents in their old age. Girls get married off and are often a burden since a fat dowry has to be found. Up until about thirty years back, the well-off minority of the community was proud to be part of the feudalistic system that was prevalent at the time; the vast majority was poor and survived on subsistence farming and were dependent on the well-off minority. The education of girls was secondary.

The feudalistic attitudes prevalent among the elite made many of their sons complacent. It made them believe the party would last forever. The poor on the other hand were looking for a way out of their miserable existence. The oil boom in the Gulf was a turning point. There followed unprecedented developmental activities in all areas. One key area was the medical field. Nurses were in great demand. The salaries were unbelievable compared to the pittance that their sisters earned in India. Knanaya parents realized the economic potential and began to encourage their daughters to take up nursing as a profession. Within a few years the trickle of nurses to the Gulf became a torrent. That era also saw great demand for nurses in the US and Europe, particularly Germany. Recently Britain joined the bandwagon, the attraction being ease of language.

In due course, problems began to emerge. Girls who migrated in their early 20’s soon came of marriageable age. But parents put off their marriage as long as they could, since they did not want to lose their ‘cash-cows’ (literally). Parents of both boys and girls took this as opportunities – the girls to marry into families of higher ‘status’ and the unemployed/able boys finding marriage to a nurse the rosy road to paradise.

Here we have the root causes of some of the future problems. In any Indian family, the male is normally dominant but the woman wears the pant if she is the main source of income. This is not generally true in the more liberated western societies where male and female roles are not clear-cut and compartmentalised. In the case of the Indian family in UK and elsewhere, where the wife is the prime earner, male dominance can and do give way to female dominance. With little or no worthwhile qualifications or language skills to grab well-paying jobs, husbands end up not working or working for the minimum wage while the wife brings home the bacon. There is a role-reversal. The husband ends up doing the ‘woman’s work’ at home – cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, driving the children to school etc.

Many women develop a superior complex, while the egos of their husbands take a beating, unable to adjust to this role-reversal. Then a kind of vicious circle starts – after dropping children off to school, the man left alone to his devices helps himself to a couple of drinks to drown his bruised ego. In time this becomes a daylong affair. The humiliation is complete if he has to ‘beg’ his wife for money for his drinks. A bruised ego drowned in alcohol is a sure recipe for domestic violence.

There is an unmentionable angle often whispered sotto voce that intensifies the viciousness of the circle. Alcoholism has an effect on male potency. Alcohol in combination with inferiority complex can be disastrous in the privacy of the bedroom. Some women are tempted to look elsewhere for comfort adding fuel to the fire.

What factors have led to this situation? Community’s strict endogamous tradition? Arranged marriages? Get-rich-quick greed? Lack of a sense of dignity of labour? Lack of understanding of what family life is? Lack of parental guidance? Still extant chauvinistic attitude and strict division of labour at home? Our alcoholic gene? Lack of creative pursuits? It could be a combination of one or more of the above in various proportions.

What can be done to help troubled families? Someone suggested that priests, nuns along with the hierarchy should get involved in counselling. But, what kind of counselling can come out of individuals who are supposed to be ‘virgins’, who have never changed a diaper in their lives, who don’t spend 3 consecutive sleepless nights caring for a sick child, (they can do it for one night of ‘adoration’ at most), who do not know what it means to live with an abusive partner 24/7. What the community leadership can do is to encourage through scholarship or other means suitable laymen, preferably married, to become family counsellors to help couples in trouble. The hierarchy with its priests and nuns can themselves give up their feudalistic attitude and become more democratic in their thinking and actions. They can (using the various resources available, from pulpits to personal contacts) spread the message of dignity of labour, sharing of responsibilities at home, need to adapt to new circumstances etc. The three-day ‘thamasha’ called ‘marriage preparation course’ is just that, a thamasha, part of the hierarchy’s game-plan to keep the little lambs under control.

It might be a good idea during this Centenary Year to formulate some concrete plans to help troubled families and to follow up with time-bound actions. Let us not be just content to beat our drums and make the proverbial cacophony passing it off as celebration.

[Published in the April 2011 issue of Snehasandesham]

MY AFRICAN ‘VISION’

2011-06-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

I fell into a reminiscing mood about my life in South Africa the other evening during ‘happy hour’ (the time when I enjoy my weekly ration of drinks). Pliny’s (23-79 AD) observation on Africa was spot on: ‘Ex Africa semper aliquid novi - Africa will always bring something new.

During the latter part of my life there, I lived in a town called Louis Trichardt in the Northern part of the country but worked at the University of Venda situated about 65 km away in Thohoyandou (meaning Head of the Elephant) which was the ‘Capital’ of ‘The Republic of Venda’.

This was a ‘Country’ recognised as such only by itself and apartheid South Africa. For the rest of the world it was simply a ‘homeland’ into which the white settlers had herded the black masses after having stolen all their fertile land.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once jokingly said: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” Earlier, I had spent two years in the parish house of a mission station as a tenant after the priests had left to live in the house attached to the new church. This mission compound, like the Vatican City State in Italy, was in South Africa while all around it was the ‘Republic of Venda’ with the national highway in front belonging to South Africa.

It took about 55 minutes to travel to work on the excellent road built by the Apartheid regime. The first 50km of the journey was one of the most scenic drives in Southern Africa. All along were large fruit and vegetable farms dotted with pockets of forests on undulating hills. The last section of the journey was through the ‘homeland’ of Venda. Here, both sides of the highway were dotted with densely populated villages where people lived on subsistence farming and remittances sent by relatives working in the big cities.

Along this stretch of the highway there is a place called Luwamondo. One day, as I drove to work, I see a small grass-thatched shed on a large plot. In two weeks’ time I see a group of people singing, dancing and praying there. On enquiry I learn that a fellow by name George Musondo has established a church called the “Church of the Tabernacle”. Musondo was a lecturer at a teacher training college. Realising that he would not make much headway financially as a lecturer, he decided to change profession to a more lucrative one – that of selling God. He called himself Pastor Musondo and got all his relatives and friends to gather at this place to dance and pray accompanied by loud African drums. In the ‘Republic of Venda’, all land belongs to the Chiefs. If you need some land for grazing your cattle or for starting a school or for building a church or for constructing your own house, all you need to do is to go to your Chief and present him a goat along with a crate of beer. A little money in addition would make things easier. These are not considered bribes as such. It is a kind of recognition of him as your Chief or boss. He is happy; you are happy. You get what you want and he gets his ego boost.

In course of time the shed changed to a large hall. A few years down the line it became a huge pilgrim centre with a large private school established within the compound. I was told that the members of the church contributed 10% of their gross salary for the upkeep of the pastor and the church. Musondo’s daughter, who was my student in the posh private school where I taught part-time, was chauffer driven in a very expensive car. All his sons turned out to be wealthy businessmen.

As I recalled these events of my African life, I asked myself what would have happened if I had resigned my job at the university and started a church to be called “Church of Heavenly Feast”. I do not have the gift of the gab; but that can easily be developed – look at politicians and priests. As I fantasised about the opulence in which I could have lived, I think I dozed off.

In my sleep I had a vision. It could have been caused by mixing drinking with reading about visions, those of St. Paul on the way to Damascus, Mohammed in the cave, Moses on the mountain in the burning bush etc. and reminiscing about my time in Africa.

In this vision, I am standing on top of a mountain. I see the outline of a figure on a flying saucer approaching me. Did he look at me closely, I wonder. Then ‘it’ disappears along an elliptical orbit. After a while, ‘it’ comes back. It passes me a second time. This figure again stares at me. The third time ‘it’ comes around, ‘it’ slows down and stops in front of me. “I am the Master and Lord of the Universe. Go down on your knees, bow your head and sing my praises. Bring all your relatives and friends here so they can worship me as I pass by. Those who praise and adore me, I shall make them wealthy and powerful against their enemies. After death, I shall carry you on my flying saucer to a paradise on the other side of the mountain where all kinds of sensual pleasures await you. You will have the tastiest of foods and the choicest of drinks. Everything will be totally digested so that there is no need for toilets in my paradise. Men and women can freely mix and enjoy but no woman will fall pregnant and suffer pangs of childbirth. There is no ageing. Now kneel down and adore me.” I do as he commands. On looking up, the flying saucer has disappeared.

I rush back home. I talk to the people about my vision. In time I convince them to come to the top of the mountain. I make them bow down and adore this ‘Almighty’ as He passes over us in His flying saucer. The word spreads and the hope of a paradise where all sensual pleasures are available makes millions of converts. Prancing around in fancy yellow attire with a hat in the shape of a flying saucer, I make myself the Infallible Supremo of the newly founded “Church of the Flying Saucer” and build an empire that spreads its tentacles to all corners of the globe. Many educational and charitable institutions are started under its aegis. All buildings are constructed in the shape of flying saucers. Members must contribute 10% of their GROSS income for the upkeep of the Supremo and the running of the institution. Donations too are welcome. The Supremo is not answerable or accountable to anyone regarding this money except to himself and to the Almighty in the flying saucer. In gratitude, statues of flying saucers are constructed everywhere; men are encouraged to style their hair in the shape of flying saucers and women told to wear flying saucer pendants.

After death, I am carried off on a flying saucer to the paradise on the other side. As I lay under the cool shade of the jacaranda tree by the smooth stream savouring a generous glass of Rémy Martin, served by nubiles in the altogether, I am suddenly awakened by a slap on my face. On looking up I see my little grandson Ryan who after trying to wake me up, slapped me as a last resort, since I was not responding to his yells!

DUST THOU ART, AND UNTO DUST THOU SHALT RETURN ( Genesis 3:18)

2011-06-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

Of late, I have become a fan of Malayalam novelist Pathrose Ayyaneth. In the 50’s and 60’s, when the Catholic Church was at the glorious zenith of its feudal power and conservatism, he dared to expose its all-pervasive double standards, immorality and hypocrisy. In spite of Church’s efforts to harass and socially ostracize Ayyaneth, there are still many who admire his courage to take on the all powerful and almighty Church.

One of his books that I looked forward to reading was Manushiya nee mannakunnu (man, you are dust). This novel has been considered one of the more controversial of his works.

The back cover gives a micro synopsis of the book: ‘Father John bent down to gather a handful of the freshly dug earth. He then threw it over the dead body and prayed in an emotionally choked voice: thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return. This novel is the sad and painful story of a seventeen year old girl returning to dust and a priest who wept as he threw that handful of dirt over her.’

In his brief introduction, Ayyaneth says that this is the tale of a naively simple man who had to suffer with Christ on Golgotha for having accepted, in a moment of weakness, the priestly cassock. The subplot is woven around a wealthy Catholic who managed to buy heaven at a price far below its market rate.

Here is the story in brief. John comes from a poor family. He falls in love with his classmate. The girl’s father opposes the relationship. She is married off to another man. John sulks for a few days falling into a kind of mild depression. In this state of mind he applies to the bishop for admission to the seminary. He is accepted. In the minor seminary he is raped by the Rector - an incident that leaves him psychologically shaken.

After ordination he is sent to a rural parish. There, Father John first falls in love with the melodious voice of seventeen year old Ammini and later with the girl herself. Ammini is the love child of the previous parish priest and a nun; she is being brought up by Varkychettan, the bachelor sacristan. Father John, unable to control his natural urges, makes midnight trysts with Ammini who soon finds herself pregnant. He vacillates between leaving the priesthood to marry Ammini and continuing in his calling. The former is an extremely difficult decision: it will bring shame to his family, the parish, the bishop and the clergy. Besides, he has no skills to earn a livelihood. The latter decision is even more difficult – his conscience keeps nagging him. In the end, he obtains a bottle of ‘medicine’ from a backyard abortionist and tricks his teenage lover into drinking it. She bleeds to death. As parish priest he is forced to officiate over her burial service.

The villain of the piece is Anthappan Muthalali. He owns all the rubber plantations in the area. Outwardly, he is a front-row mass attendant, prays loudly, confesses regularly and above all contributes generously to all the pet projects of the bishop. In gratitude the bishop has recommended and obtained for him the Church honour of “Chevalier”. Privately, he is a hardened criminal, wife-beater, womanizer and murderer. He is poisoned by his own daughter whom he has been sexually abusing for years.

By way of appreciation I would like to highlight and comment on certain issues raised by the author through his characters.

There is great sympathy for Father John who became a priest more by force of circumstances than by choice. The novel is an indictment of the Catholic Church’s strict rule of priestly celibacy. It is purely for administrative efficiency as well as for not losing church property to children of married priests that the celibacy rule was enforced from around the 10^th century. There is not a single sentence in the bible that priests should not be married – in fact, most of the apostles were married. The irony is that the church which vehemently claims homosexual acts and use of condoms to prevent AIDS to be against nature, is forcing priests to go against their very nature by not marrying and playing their role in the propagation of the human race.

The indoctrination during a priest’s seminary life is geared to turn him into a clog in the feudalistic church machine. ‘First obey, then question’ is the old style seminary discipline.

There is little or no difference between a seminary and a prison. Both are under the spotlight 24/7. Chances of committing sin by both sets of inmates are limited. However, once the individual is out, his morality often takes on the character of the bull in a China shop.

Nature in its mysterious ways has endowed all creatures with certain urges and tendencies for continuation of the species. In humans these urges of the flesh cannot be totally annihilated; they can be subdued and sublimated by brainwashing individuals in falsehoods based on out-dated ancient philosophical thinking: the virgin and the chaste are superior to the married; heaven awaits the pure of heart, etc. Once outside the walls of the seminary, these urges come back with a vengeance. The priestly class itself has prompted and manipulated the little lambs to place them on a high pedestal; so much so, to abandon the priesthood in response to one’s natural urges is considered extremely shameful. The perception that a priest or nun in a family raises its status is a myth that has been assiduously cultivated by the clergy themselves as part of their strategy of clinging to this artificially created high status.

The Church’s double standard in treating the faithful is clearly brought out by the honourable way it treats a hardened criminal like Anthappan Muthalali. The financially well-off who contribute generously to church coffers are held in high esteem by the Church. Their antecedents are irrelevant. Look around and one can observe many such Anthappan Muthalalis hobnobbing with the hierarchy.

A man’s basic nature does not change by the laying of hands or by wearing a cassock or when a priest is made bishop. Humans long for love, including the physical. Take the case of former bishop John Thattumkal of Cochin Diocese who has been kicked upstairs to Vatican. In 2008, under the pretext of adoption, he kept a 26-year old woman in his ‘palace’. ‘This relation is giving me spiritual refreshment’, he was quoted as saying. The priests of his diocese, however, felt that the ‘refreshment’ was more physical than spiritual.

“To love someone is nothing, to be loved by someone is something, but to be loved by the one you love is everything”

[Published in the June 2011 issue of Snehasandesham]

RESTARTING MUSINGS AFTER A BREAK!

2011-06-01T10:29:00.001-07:00

Dear Readers

Here I am back with some of my musings.

Maani

FLEETING MEMORIES OF A SHORT-LIVED VOCATION

2010-09-26T01:41:00.000-07:00

PART I - PARADISE GAINED

I grew up in the 1950s in the rural environments of Kaipuzha in Central Kerala. Our days were spent in activities revolving around the school, the church and the paddy fields. Unlike today when our lives are saturated with all things western – clothes, food, music, gadgets etc., western influence was only beginning to seep in. One of the first symbols of western lifestyle that crept into our lives in those days was ‘bread’; yes, the same bread that is sine qua non of our daily diet these days. We recited the Lord’s Prayer many times during the day in which we asked God to “give us this day our daily bread”. However, this expression’s mother-tongue translation into Malayalam referred to ‘bread’ as our ‘daily nourishment’ in the form of appam which is made of rice. In the original prayer as taught by Jesus it is bread made from wheat as in the ‘Modern Bread’ of today. Because of its rarity in my days, bread was all the more delicious.

The longing for this rare and tasty commodity was the reason I patiently awaited the arrival of the ‘breadwallah’ (rotikaran). He had a bakery in the nearby village of Neendoor. Like most travelling salesmen of the time, he would carry his stuff on his head in a wide-rimmed basket made of bamboo splinters, similar to the one used for transporting coconuts. It would contain goodies like ‘rusks’, ‘buns’, biscuits, and of course bread. As soon as he put the basket down, I would grab whatever I could lay my hands on and run off to a safe distance beyond the grasp of my mother. She would be shouting to me to bring everything back so that a proper tally could be done and the correct payment made. I would have none of it, knowing very well that some of the stuff could be confiscated and returned. The trick was to take a bite of each item so that they could not be taken back, just like today’s children who would lick the ice-cream as soon as they get it so that their brother or sister becomes repugnant to touch it. My mother would be forced to shell out more than what she would have liked.

Children then were innocently naughty unlike those of today who are more calculating. When it came to matters of Church, my friends and I took part in all its activities and functions. At some time during our lives we were altar boys. We helped the sacristan light the candles; we assisted at mass held in Syriac, (Suriani), not a word of which we understood; we used coconut shell charcoal to get the fire in the thurible going for ‘incensing’; we made sure the vestments were folded neatly and kept back in the cupboards; and so on. This closeness to Church had its side effects, one of which was that many of my contemporaries were called to the religious life. It was a time when parents prayed hard that God may bless them with a son as priest and a daughter as nun.

The vocation to dedicate oneself to the service of God is manifested in many ways. St. Peter, a fisherman, heeded on a whim Jesus’ call to be part of His messianic mission. St. Paul, who was a tormentor of Christians, converted after his fall from his horse and had visions in which Jesus called him to spread the messianic message to the gentiles. St. Francis of Assisi was the son of a rich cloth merchant who, after he had a vision, gave up all his riches and a life of debauchery to follow God’s call; he later founded the Order of Franciscans. My call to the religious life also came through a ‘vision’ I had while watching a short documentary film. After mass on a Sunday it was announced that The Salesians of Don Bosco would be screening a film at the forane church at Kaipuzha that evening. With hardly anything to do on a Sunday evening, I took a leisurely walk to the church along with some of my friends.

The documentary dealt with the average day in the life a typical Salesian. He is seen teaching, running orphanages, managing secondary schools and colleges - in general catering to the young generation. This is all done with a smile. It also showed the life of an aspirant to priesthood in the Salesian Order; how he gets up at the stroke of five, silently does his morning ablutions, silently walks in line to the church for the morning mass, silently walks in line from there to the study hall where he spends an hour after which he silently walks towards the refectory where the supervisor brother asks God’s blessings over breakfast and the bell is rung and the holy silence is broken. Breakfast is followed by 30 minutes of cleaning the entire place, again supervised by brothers. Classes follow; then lunch; more classes; games; shower; study; supper; evening walk; night prayers in chapel; good night message by a priest; back to dormitory. Other than at times of silence, the screen is filled with laughter, gaiety and carefree merriment. The aspirants also go for day long picnics and outings. Great fun is had by all and is highlighted in the documentary at every opportunity.

More than all the fun and games, what glued me to the screen was a particular scene. While taking the viewer around the campus at Thirupattur, where the Salesians have their training centre for initiates to their congregation, the camera slowly pans the mechanized bakery and lo and behold: there come out hundreds of loaves of bread on a conveyor belt! For me that scene was akin to Paul’s vision of Jesus. This is it, I said to myself. This is God’s clear sign to me. I felt something stirring within me. I felt God’s call. It was pangs of hunger which in my greed for that rare commodity ‘bread’ I (mis)took as hunger for God’s love. There and then I decided to dedicate my life to the religious life as a Salesian priest. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways!

The entire family came along with me to Pachalam, in Ernakulam where the late Fr. Francis Guezou was starting a house. After spending two days there, I was sent to the Salesian aspirantate at Thirupattur. It is a boarding school where one is slowly and subtly introduced to ways of religious life. Though I was just promoted to form IV at my home school, I was demoted to form III since my English was not good enough. There I was transported into a completely alien world – hostel life at its strictest. Mass, meditation, visits to the chapel, rosary, prayers, classes, study and games filled the day. Every moment from waking up to an hour after going to bed is supervised by a brother, lest the aspirants succumb to some impure temptation or other. Purity was an obsession with St. John Bosco, the founder of the Salesian Congregation. So much so biology was banned from our matric curriculum lest the pre-teen boys learn about human reproductive system with dire consequences to their chastity. While going for walks, one is expected to cast one’s eyes downwards, so as to avoid looking at a passing woman or girl, which might lead to impure thoughts and result in loss of grace and heaven.

John Bosco’s mottos was “catch them young” and indoctrinate them, something similar to what the communists do to their young. The methods are similar; what is different is the aim. With Don Bosco it is blind love of God leading to selfless service to fellow humans. The communists on the other hand decry social class divisions and aim to instill hatred of the bourgeois in the proletariat. For one it is salvation; for the other revolution. Both brainwashing and indoctrination are very powerful tools in the wrong hands, as is seen with Tamil Tiger and Muslim suicide bombers. They do completely alter one’s mindset. Since these two are mostly used for nefarious purposes, they are condemned by one and all; however, no such condemnation is forthcoming when these same methods are used in the name of love of God and service to man! In addition how every word, motion, gesture, action, emotion is critically observed, analyzed and reported to some superior in the feudalistic hierarchy of the seminary was to dawn on me only after I took the plunge. In fact, the entire Catholic Church is entrapped in a feudalistic mindset, from which it is unable or unwilling to escape. By the time I joined the novitiate at Yercaud under Fr.Egidio Sola, a plump mild mannered Italian, I, along with most of the novices, could be canonized alive. Paradise gained.

[Post Script: Part 2 will shed light on my life in Paradise at Yercaud and how it was lost! Acknowledgement is due to John Milton whose poems inspired the subtitles. In my case I first gained paradise and then lost it. In his case he married and then wrote “Paradise Lost”; later, after his wife deserted him, he merrily penned “Paradise Regain’d”.]

[Published in the June 2009 issue of Snehasandesham]

AYYANETH’S “THIRUSESHIPPU” : AN APPRECIATION

2010-09-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

Ayyaneth

Last week I came across the book Thiruseshippu (relic) by Pathrose Ayyaneth (1928-2008) published in 1967. A prolific writer, he has penned 40 novels, 10 short story collections, a few plays and articles. His first novel that accidently fell into my hands was Kodungattum Kochuvallavum (A small boat in the storm). While looking for a book without pages torn off at the Kottayam Public Library where most books suffer this surgery, I found Ayyaneth’s book on a damp unpolished table. I had never heard of this author. It is the story of a Catholic family’s downward journey from respectability to total disintegration, caused to a large extent by leading their lives based on the distorted values built on religious myths and blind faith in a feudalistic environment. I realized that he was exposing the rotten underbelly of the Church through this novel.

I was hooked. I read a few more of his novels: Thettu, Asurakandam, Verum Veruthe, and Drohikalude Lokam. But I was disappointed. They reminded me of cheap thrillers by Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins that you take along to pass time during a long train journey. Like Collins and Robbins, a touch of soft porn helped sell his books like hot cakes. But unlike them, Ayyaneth is able to sprinkle gems of philosophic wisdom throughout his books. He seems to have an obsession with certain parts of the female anatomy. Luckily or unluckily for me, my familiarity with Malayalam language and its literature is superficial. I was forced to stop studying Malayalam at Form III (Standard 8) because of a failed call to priesthood. Nor did I have a chance to read and study in depth Hindu mythology. Hence Ayyaneth’s references to erogenous parts using mythological terms and stories are beyond me. It is like listening to an erotic story in Chinese.

Thiruseshippu, however, brought him back into my favor. More than the book, I was very impressed by the ‘review’ written by the eminent Malayalam scholar and one time Kerala education minister, late Prof Joseph Mundasserry. For him, all major religions are run by bureaucracies with vested interests. In Europe, the influence of the Catholic bureaucracy and the evils perpetuated under its protection has been reduced drastically due to the social changes taking place there. A similar development should have followed suit in Kerala; on the contrary, the Catholic bureaucracy here is still mired deep in the feudalistic mode, and continues fearlessly in its evil ways with great vigor.

It was Ponkunnam Varkey who first raised his voice against the misdeeds of bishops and nuns through his short stories. Although his writings made waves at the time, everyone soon forgot about them. Ayyaneth is one person who is following Varkey’s footsteps and that too at a more elevated level.

Mundasserry the literary critic, however, questions the credibility of parts of the storyline. He suspects that the novel is based on real events. For me that is a pregnant statement: he seems to know more than he cares to reveal. He concludes that this novel is like a bomb thrown at the perversions in the Catholic Church; for this service alone, the Christian community of Kerala should be grateful to Ayyaneth. Thiruseshippu, he asserts, is a feather in the cap of Malayalam literature.

The novel has a simple storyline. Ponnamma comes from a rich family, while her neighbor Babu is of middle class extraction. Gopi and his family are low cast Ezhavas (Chokons) living as serfs on Ponnamma’s family property. All three attend the same village school. Everyone thinks that Ponnamma and Babu are made for each other. However, Ponnamma is in love with Gopi. This scandalous relationship is vehemently opposed by her family. They murder Gopi and make it appear as suicide. She refuses to marry the boy proposed by the family which forthwith disowns her. Rather than commit suicide she decides to join a convent; and she becomes Sr. Bernarda.

Within a short period, Sr. Bernarda is consumed by Tuberculosis. She is discarded by her community and dies a lonely and painful death. Some time after her death, the mother general is cured of her ‘gas’ problem after coming in contact with a relic kept in a box found on Sr. Bernarda’s person after her death. The news of this “miraculous” event spreads like wild fire. In time, many cures and miracles are attributed to the sister and the relic. Sister Bernarda becomes Saint Bernarda. The relic is now kept in a golden casket reverently touched and kissed by the faithful and which has become an object of great veneration by her devotees.

The veneration of relics and the belief in the power of intersection by saints so widely practiced by the Catholic Church are brought to total ridicule by the author when it is revealed that the piece of bone venerated as ‘relic’ is a piece that Ponnamma (the present St. Bernarda) surreptitiously recovered from the ashes of Gopi, her lover, after his cremation!!

The first eighty pages of the novel throw into sharp relief the following issues: life in convents; sexual exploitation therein; creation of saints, miracles and relics; the myth of “bride of Christ”.

Ayyaneth’s description of life in convents is dated. The current situation is much more liberal and democratic. Not so, 50 years ago. Feudalistic attitudes reigned supreme within the prison walls of convents. Women from rich families stayed at the top of the pyramid. Sexual exploitation of the poor but good looking inmates by the ‘confessor’ priests with the connivance of the senior nuns (who were often their concubines) was rampant. Lesbianism was common. These perversions are all still extant – Sr. Jesme’s book stands testimony to this.

What is commonly understood as miracles are physical impossibilities. Every one of them has a scientific explanation, even though it may not have been discovered as yet.

Unlike today, the early Church venerated as saints all those who led holy lives. Now-a-days many vested interests regard the millions spent on creating a saint as a wise investment. The returns are manifold. St. Alphonsa has become a cash cow for her congregation and for the diocese under whose jurisdiction it comes.

Relics are body parts and things associated with the dead saint. These are venerated under the belief that favors are received through them.

The belief that every nun becomes the bride of Christ at the time of taking vows is a myth that is perpetuated to lure immature young teens to become nuns and dedicate their lives like slaves to their ecclesiastical masters in building a bigger and richer Christian empire. In the Old Testament God is represented as the Husband. Israel, His people, is the Wife. In the New Testament Jesus is the bridegroom and husband. The individual Christian and the collective body of believers are his bride, then wife. St.Paul used this imagery in his epistles. He exhorts men to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. This area is studied by seminarians as ‘bridal theology’ during their theological studies.

Every nun is married to Jesus. Krishna had 16008 wives; but Jesus has many times more. Every convent is Jesus’ virtual harem. While the church dictates strict monogamy, its authorities vie with each other to get Jesus married to more and more young women. Many of these young women, denied of their natural urges, secretly fantasize physical relationships with Jesus, their groom. After all, Jesus was a virile and handsome young man of 33 at the time of his death.

Virtual polygamists: Jesus and Krishna

Carmelite nun Teresa of Ávila had in her prayer trances the physical equivalent of orgasms. She described the soul's intense desire for Jesus in the language of erotic passion. In this, she belongs to a long tradition of mystical experience known as bridal mysticism.

The author in his introduction requests the reader to believe that whatever similarities the characters in the story might have to people living or dead is accidental. It is my belief that novelists normally do not make such defensive statements in a purely fictional work. I grew up in Kaipuzha, about 3km as the crow flies from Kudamalloor, the birth place of St. Alphonsa. As a youngster, I heard some loose talk about the early life of the saint that does have echoes in the present storyline. However, they remain hearsay without factual evidence.

Ayyaneth, whose works shocked 'custodians' of conventional morality, died in a hospital in Trivandrum of injuries suffered in a road accident. In his case, the clergy treated his death as just punishment for badmouthing the church. If a bishop, on the other hand, were to die in a plane crash, it should be understood as God calling him early to enjoy eternal life! How convenient! Even after his death, Ayyaneth continued to defy the Church he was a member of – as per his will, his was buried sans any religious rituals.

I wish more people would come forward to expose and fight the frauds perpetuated by the Catholic Church in God’s name.

PREMARITAL SHH…: IT IS TIME FOR KNANAYA REVERSE MIGRATION!

2010-09-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

A short article “Premarital sex is fine, say 90% teens” that appeared in Bangalore Times, dated July 4, 2010 set me thinking. (Forgive me Father, for I have sinned; I used the s-word.) As part of the promotion exercise of the film Udaan, its producers conducted an online survey of 1004 urban respondents aged between 12 and 19, of which 77% were boys. The responses include the following interesting statistics: 50% have kissed someone of the opposite sex; an equal number have stolen money from their parents; 20% have got intimate in the bathroom and 90% of teens think premarital sex is fine. The last statistic is the causing me sleepless nights.

Within a fortnight another article appears in the same Bangalore Times, dated July 20, 2010 with the heading “Dating it Right”. Here we have reports of another decadent Western practice, ‘dating’, fast becoming common place in India. When we were growing up, ‘date’ was a noun; these days it has also become a verb ‘dating’, involving certain acts that in the good old days (oh, how I miss them!) would lead you to hell, unless you repented and confessed. This article contained some statements totally going against the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church. Sample the following from a 24 year old girl:

“Why would I want to get married, when I can date, or get into a live-in relationship? Marriage for many is about legalized sex. I don’t have to get married to satisfy a physical urge”. (Vandana Saxena)

Last year the South Indian actress Kushboo caused a mini moral tsunami when she stated in an interview that it

“…was fine for girls to indulge in pre-marital sex after taking precautions to keep unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases at bay” and that “no educated man could expect his partner to be a virgin.”

The Indian male, highly strung by this assault on his age-old right to a virgin bride dragged her to courts through the length and breadth of the land until the Supreme Court came to her rescue.

A number of questions rush to mind. Is this the beginning of the end of ‘Indian Culture’ as we know it? Is the concept of ‘virgin bride’ becoming obsolete? Is the Indian society moving from the ‘license Raj’ to a ‘licentious’ Raj? How can religious leaders, the self-proclaimed guardians of morals, allow this slide into moral chaos and degradation? Where will all this leading to? Won’t there be hundreds, nay thousands of unwanted school/college girl pregnancies? Will schools and colleges have to make provision of maternity rooms and day-care centers and time outs for feeding and nappy changes? Won’t this emerging trend also lead to a rise in PDA (public display of affection, for those not familiar with Indian legalese acronyms) – holding hands, hugging and long smooching (God forbid!) – leading to high BP and heart attacks in desi Mother Grundys?

This viral infection is percolating fast, though subtly, even to the remotest corners of the land (that is going to the dogs), thanks to the media. What has the Catholic Church, including the spiritual leadership of our Knanaya community doing to stop the spread of the twin heretical disease of ‘dating’ and ‘premarital sex? (Oops! I forgot. We were busy organizing and leading protest marches against the unfair, unjust and politically motivated arrest of the totally and absolutely innocent accused in the Abhaya case and fundraising for the same.)

This permissive virus will not leave the Knanaya youth unaffected. The leadership of the community must act with alacrity to stem the rot. There are many unsavory things going on in the metros that the Knanaya parents living in the rural areas of central Kerala and Malabar are unaware of. They send their wards to the big bad metros – Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi etc. – for higher studies and work. These children have been protected while at home like animals in a zoo. Barely six months after their arrival in the metros there is total metamorphism in their thinking and behavior.

Some of them manage to juggle two or three partners simultaneously. This means for the girls two or three cell phones, eating Colonel’s Kentucky chicken by bucket-loads and free daily movies, not to mention the ‘unmentionables’. Others get into live-in relationships under the pretext of cost cutting. The naive parents back home continue to believe their children to be the same church going, morally upright and innocent boys and girls. It is imperative that the parents and senior members of the Knanaya Community are made aware of this dangerous development among unmarried youth.

Some parents abroad, especially in the liberal US and Europe, think of leaving those permissive societies and returning to India so that their children can grow up imbibing the Indian culture (read sexually strict culture). In the light of the survey, I am reminded of the saying pata petichu panthalathu..

There is a lesson in all this for the Knanaya community. It is time for reverse migration. In 345 AD our ancestors migrated to Kerala with the prime aim of evangelizing the Kerala heathens and to do a bit of trade on the side; it is time we in Kerala start migrating back, not necessarily to where our ancestors came from, the region in and around Iraq, as that country is in ruins now. Rather, let us go to US, Canada, countries in Europe, Singapore etc. where there is true democracy, little corruption and the icing on the cake, plenty of money. And those who are already in these countries make sure you abandon all thoughts of returning to India which is becoming permissive. Stay put. Like there, here too teens think dating and preteen sex is fine.

Of course there are many more solid reasons for leaving Kerala; inter alia: Rising religious fundamentalism; poor education system based on memorization and reproduction; leading state in India for alcoholism, road accidents and suicides; over politicization, bandhs and harthals; dog in the manger policy towards job creation; the arrogant and lazy nature of the Keralite; environmental prostitution for the benefit of the well-connected; the widening gap between the rich and the poor; rise in crime, gondaism and quotation gangs; endemic corruption - the list goes on.

There seems to be convergence of opinion by teens all over on such dangerous issues as dating and premarital sex. Hence it does not make much difference whether one raises one’s children here in India or abroad. At least in America, Europe and Singapore those problems mentioned above are minimal compared to Kerala.

The Catholic Church has always considered sex to be permissible only within legitimate marriage solely for continuing the human race. St.Paul, founder of the Catholic Church and the greatest of saints allowed sex to happen between legitimate married couples only and that too in the extreme case of hormones going berserk. So this premarital hanky-panky is totally out of line with what the church has been teaching for the past 2000 years. Our wayward youth must be reminded about this teaching of the church through all available avenues – Sunday homilies, catechism classes and our official publications.

The original migration in 345AD took place under the leadership of a layman, Saint (according to our Jacobite brethren) Knayi Thomma with the Bishop of Uruha accompanying him to take care of the spiritual needs of the migrants. Given the changed circumstances, the reverse migration is going to be led by the spiritual leadership, headed by the hierarchy of the Community, with the sycophantic lay leadership bearing the luggage and singing praise songs. (One is reminded of Livingstone exploratory journeys of Africa with the natives carrying the provisions.)

This Jubilee year is a good time to officially inaugurate the reverse migration. It can be added as an additional item on the agenda of the various committees already in existence to take care of the celebrations. E.g. the ‘transportation committee’ can investigate the ways and means of getting the cheapest air tickets for the largest number; the VIP accommodation committee can also be tasked to find ways and means to accommodate the arriving reverse immigrants temporarily until they can be settled permanently.

I have already started encouraging my son to look for a job overseas and do a reverse migration.

BIBLE STORIES RETOLD: ANGELS & DEVILS; ADAM & EVE

2010-08-28T23:36:00.001-07:00

First God created heaven. Then he created angels to populate heaven. They were categorized into different orders: cherubim, virtues, powers, thrones etc. Lucifer (whose name means light bearer), a cherub, was God’s most beautiful angel. However, he was not content to play second fiddle to the Almighty, but wanted to be equal to Him. So one day, for a start, he tried to raise his throne to the level of God’s throne and all hell broke loose, so to speak. Then he recruited his own army of discontented angels and started waging a war against God. God was really mad and to lead his own troops, he appointed Archangel Michael as his field commander. As can be expected, Lucifer lost and was thrown along with his army into hell.

According to Pope John XXI, then Bishop of Tusculum, the number of angels who sided with Lucifer numbered 133306668 while those with God were 266613336! These figures were later confirmed by the 15^th century scholar Alphonso de Spina. I am still to figure out how they came to those numbers. Once in hell, Lucifer was known as satan. The angels who fell with him became the demons.

The second great endeavor God undertook was to create earth and put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam was created first so as to give him a chance to say something. Again, God was quite thoughtful in creating man first since He didn’t want any advice! He formed the shape of a man out of clay and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and presto Adam came alive. After creating Adam, He stood back, looked at him carefully, and scratching His Head, He told Himself: “I think I can do better than that.” Then He created Eve. He put Adam to sleep, took one of his ribs and turned it into the woman.

After admiring his newly created children for a few minutes, He briefly addressed them: “Don’t.” Just like that. “Don’t what?” asked the two. “Do you see those two trees laden with fruit in the middle of the garden? The apple tree on the left is the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the other on the right is the tree of life. Do not eat the fruits of these two. You may eat all others.” “Why?” chorused Adam and Eve in unison. “Because I said so”, replied God, clearly irritated by audacity of the two. Calming down he explained: “You will die if you eat the fruits.” Leaving them to explore the garden He went back to His heavenly abode to reflect on the day’s creative activities.

Archangel Gabriel noticed that God was in an unusually pensive mood. There was something bothering Him. Neither the heavenly choirs nor the harp and flute players were able to calm His nerves with their soothing music. “What is the problem, my Lord?” gently prodded Gabriel. “Gabe, did I make a mistake in creating man? Maybe, just maybe, I should have stopped with the elephant. At least these animals don’t talk back, unlike these two”, replied God with an inaudible sigh. “I think we should not worry”, advised the Archangel. “In case they become cheeky, we will flood the earth and drown them all.”

Adam and Eve were happy to roam around discovering the delights of the garden. In course of time they settled into a kind of routine. Adam would tend to the animals and cultivate the fields, while Eve took care of the house. There was hardly any need to cook, since there were plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts available all round the year. So Eve spent most of the time in the fields looking for beauty herbs.

During one of her perambulations through the thick undergrowth, she heard a hissing sound coming from close to where she stood. Looking closely, she saw a big snake in the grass looking up at her. “Hi Cutie”, it addressed her. At first she was taken aback at hearing a snake talking to her. Soon however, she became quite puffed up by the fact that there was someone who appreciated her beauty. Lately, Adam had been neglecting her, having got used to her. Besides, there was no other female as a point of reference for comparison. Another thing that struck her was that it was speaking with a forked tongue. “Thanks”, replied Eve. “What can I do for you?”

The snake said: “I understand God has forbidden the two of you to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. That’s because He knows that when you eat the fruit of that tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be like Him. You will also have carnal knowledge.” “What is carnal knowledge?” asked Eve in her naivety. “It means you will know how to have fun. Anyway, you will understand what I am talking about after you eat the fruit”, replied the snake with a sleazy dart of its tongue. The serpent knew that God, for some reason, was slightly distracted when creating Eve and as a result forgot to fill a tiny part in her brain dealing mainly with judgment. So she fell for his charm and ate the apple.

It was Lucifer, now known as Satan, who appeared as a serpent and tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Though unwilling at first, Adam was incessantly nagged by his partner to partake of the apple, and he gave in to her immoral demand most reluctantly. This apple had a magical effect on them: they became aware that they were both naked! Adam, the gallant man that he was, quickly found two fig leaves and gave one to Eve. He wisely chose fig leaves since they are large in size compared to other leaves. However, his wife wouldn’t go for it. She looked around the garden for something more stylish and flashy. She considered mango leaves (too narrow), curry leaves (too small), banana leaves (too big) and a few more, ultimately settling for the fig leaf Adam had originally suggested. Now you know why, after detailed examination of umpteen sarees in the shop for three hours, your wife finally goes for the first one that you had suggested!! This is the clearest proof that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve.

In the evening when God came around for a stroll, he could not find the couple. So he called out to Adam and said, “Where are you?” Adam replied that he was afraid because he realized that he was naked and so had hid himself. Looking around, God could see the outline of two heads peeking from behind a jacaranda tree. “Come out you disobedient children; you have eaten the forbidden fruit, that is why you are ashamed of your nakedness”, God was really angry. “Why did you disobey my commandment?” demanded God. The blame game now started. “The woman you created for me gave me the fruit and I ate” said the man. “The serpent beguiled me and I ate” was the woman’s excuse. Since the serpent had none to fall back upon, he just lay there staring into the distance. This is the same vacant stare that the check-in clerk at the airport has perfected when faced with an angry passenger who is left stranded on the ground as the plane is overbooked!

God decided that suitable punishment should be meted out for this crime of disobedience. He cursed the serpent and told him: “You will crawl on your belly and live on dust for the rest of your life. I will put enmity between your children and the woman’s children; since you will be crawling hereafter, you will bite her children’s heels and they will smash your head into pulp.” One can see this often happening in God’s own country where snakes are out to bite people and people are determined to kill them.

To the woman He said: “You will bring forth children in extreme pain. However, in spite of this pain, your desire for your husband will increase so that you continue to bear children. Henceforth, your husband will be your absolute boss.” A cynic has observed that the eighth wonder in the world is the woman getting pregnant again after she has gone through a very painful childbirth!

Lastly, to Adam He said: “Since you listened to your wife and disobeyed me, your wife shall wear the pants in the house when no one is looking. You will eat by the sweat of your brow till you die and return to the ground from where I created you. You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Then He chased them out of the garden. A Cherubim with a rotating flaming sword was placed as security guard at the entrance to the garden so that they don’t sneak back in to eat the fruit of the tree of life and live forever.

In course of time, earth began to be populated by humans. Satan and his legions, now condemned to everlasting torture in hell, and with nothing else better to do and to avenge themselves, found a new vocation, namely that of tempting and corrupting man and leading him to sin against God.

There is another story about the origin of demons that I came across recently while surfing the net.Once earth began to be populated by humans, God decided to appoint some angels to watch over them. They were called ‘watchers’. No touching, no meddling, no contact, just watching. Well, it was a bad decision on the part of God. When the watchers saw how beautiful the daughters of men were, they took them as wives and began to have children with them.

These children were called nephilim who were giant monsters. They began to eat humans and when humans were not available, each other. Fed up with all this, God summoned his commander-in-chief Archangel Michael and told him to throw them all into the eternal fires of hell. Demons are the evil spirits of the nephilim and they also form part of Lucifer’s army.

Derived from the idea of ‘watchers’ was the belief of an angel hovering over our right shoulder. He was known as the ‘guardian angel’. He is there to protect and guard us 24/7. As a counter, Lucifer also sends one of his devils to hang around our left shoulder, tempting us to do bad things and disobey God. We, as children, were taught to call upon our guardian angel when in doubt and need, and to thank him daily before we went to bed for protecting us from the vile Lucifer who wants us to offend God so that he can drag us into hell’s eternal fires.

[Published in the January issue of Snehasandesham]

MORAL RELATIVISM AND DIVISION BY A FRACTION: MEMORY BYTES OF A BYGONE ERA

2010-08-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

In the 1950’s when I was growing up, we lived in rural Kaipuzha, right in the heart of Upper Kuttanad. Electricity was only just beginning to be available. So, for most of us, no television, no fridge, no microwave, no music system, no i-pod, no cell phone, not even a landline, no nothing. The present generation must be wondering how we survived. Well, our lives and activities revolved around the local parish church, the school and the paddy fields.

We were taught to respect priests and nuns as God’s representatives on earth. Talking back or showing the slightest sign of disrespect to them would be punished with sound beatings. Bishops were in a higher category as far as subservience and obedience was concerned. Our Bishop, as I was growing up, was Thomas Tharayil, who was my father’s cousin. His visits to the parish were occasions of great joy and celebration. He would alight from his foreign car dressed in a white cassock with red buttons and tied with a red sash and wearing his red skull cap. There was also the large gold cross attached to a very thick gold chain hanging around his neck. We would all kneel before him and kiss his ring as a sign of respect. He would celebrate the solemn mass wearing the mitre (the cap that looks like the crocodile’s mouth) and golden staff in his hand. We would all make sure we took Holy Communion from him only. On his annual official visit, he would distribute prizes to the top catechism student in each class, the first price going to the one who can best memorize the catechism book which was in question answer format. None of us understood what the contents really meant. In fact they were not meant to be understood or questioned, rather they were to be believed and obeyed.

God created you. He is 3 in 1: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The first humans created by Him were Adam and Eve. They were put in a garden and told not to eat the fruit of the apple tree. Satan in the form of a snake tempted Eve and she ate the fruit and then forced Adam to eat the apple. God was very angry and He chased them out of the garden. Because of this disobedience, all descendents of Adam and Eve, with the exception of Jesus and Mary, His mother, are tainted with original sin. Jesus the Son of God, the second in the Holy Trinity, took flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, had a virgin birth and was crucified on a cross by the Romans and Jews for sedition. On the third day He rose from the dead and moved around visiting his apostles. Forty days later, He ascended bodily into heaven to sit permanently at God the Father’s side. His death saved us all. In memory, we celebrate the holy mass, during which the priest changes bread and wine into the real body and the real blood of Christ which we eat and drink. Before we take communion we should confess our sins and be purified.

Sins are of two types: venial and mortal. Lying to your mother about the cookie that disappeared is a venial sin. Killing someone in cold blood or looking at a girl with lust is regarded as mortal. If you die without confessing a venial sin, you go to purgatory and stay there until some of your relatives and friends acquire sufficient indulgences on your behalf. You may collect indulgences through good works and prayer and in the good old days you could buy them. Anyway, the length of your stay depends on the total number of venial sins against you and how fast your friends and relatives can gather enough indulgences to get you out and send you to heaven. On the other hand if you die without confessing a mortal sin you are sent straight to hell. However, if you are clean of sins, both mortal and venial, you go directly to heaven. In those days, these two places, heaven and hell, were very important in the Catholic Church’s scheme of things.

The tortures of hell and the joys of heaven were explained to us in detail during our catechism classes. Heaven is the place where God sits on a high throne surrounded by his angels. Some of these angels form choirs and continually sing His praises. Others play the harp and the bugle, eternally playing those instruments and keeping God and other saved souls happy with their soothing music. Since they are all spirits, they need not spend time on cooking and eating and brushing teeth in the morning etc. like us humans. If we are good, then after death we go to heaven where we become angels and join the choirs or assigned to play the harp forever. Anyway, this was much better than burning in hell for all eternity! There is a special type of very hot non-extinguishable fire that burns without turning you to cinder.

The end result of all this was that in case we thought we did something wrong, even minor, we would become paranoid and run to the nearest available priest, wait in the queue to confess so that we would be ready for heaven if something tragic were suddenly to happen to us with no time to repent. By all means we had to avoid the fires and snakes of hell.

Apostle Paul, based on visions of Jesus, in which he claimed direct revelation by Him, made Jesus divine and preached a morality based on the pre-Christian Greco-Roman culture in which he grew up. Following Paul, and later Augustine, morality was mainly confined to sexual matters. Other sins, regarded as mortal, though at a lower level of gravity, were: not attending Sunday Mass, not confessing during the Lenten season, not taking communion once a year at least, eating meat on Fridays, and being disrespectful of priests and nuns. They were designed to keep the sheep in the pen. With the exception of lust, the deadly sins – gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride - were considered as not really serious sins but rather aberrations. Fraud, cheating, and betrayal – they were in the minor league.

Let me illustrate.

There were two grandfathers in my neighborhood, both closely related. One had two brothers who were priests and the other a son who was a priest. There were also nuns in their families but I am not sure of the exact numbers. One needs to remember that the more priests and nuns a family produces, the more exalted is its standing in Catholic society. Such families were regarded as having ‘superior pedigree’ and hence marriage alliances were eagerly sought from them.

The two grandfathers were regulars at daily mass. One had two of his grandsons kneeling beside him on either side. At the time of the consecration of the bread and wine, both would half-close their eyes, lift their heads upwards and raise their hands heavenward in supplication. Both went and received communion daily. Overall, it was the demonstration of an extremely saintly behavior inside the church.

Outside, however, it was a completely different story. They would not speak to each other. Moreover, each took every chance to malign the other to anyone who cared to listen. Both were very well off financially. They owned large tracts of coconut orchards and paddy fields. It happened that the two of them owned some paddy fields with a common boundary. In the darkness of night one would get his workers to shift the entire length of boundary mud wall, about a foot high, into the other’s field by a couple of feet. Since the soil was dark clayish, it was very soft and moist and easily shifted. The other gentleman, once he realized his loss, would move the mud wall, not to its original position, but further into his enemy’s territory by a good three feet! This back and forth shifting of boundaries amused the locals no end. At one time one of them planted a coconut sapling just on the boundary so that most of the nutrition is taken from the other’s property. Within a few days, the other gentleman did the same just on his side of the boundary so that the two coconut trees grew up like Siamese twins.

One time my father and his friend Mathaisir, who was also my drawing master at school, wanted to broaden and raise the small stretch of village road connecting our houses to the main road. Everyone including the very poor willingly shifted their boundaries bordering on the road and rebuilt them at their own expense. But not these two gentlemen! Their properties jetted out like sore thumbs. In those days it was thought unnecessary to confess selfish acts of this nature since there was nothing impure about them.

Of course murder, unlike these days when bands of contract killers roam the country, was very rare. I remember it was such a spectacle when someone was discovered stabbed to death on a narrow path we used as shortcut to school. We would never walk there alone, and if one happened to be alone, he would make a dash for it, making sure to jump over the spot where the man lay murdered, lest the victim’s evil spirit that was hovering around would possess him!

Our good behavior was, without doubt, the result not so much of looking forward to joining the choirs of angels in heaven but rather of fear of hellish fire and brimstone. Fear was an all pervading feeling then – fear of parents at home, fear of teachers in school, fear of church authorities, fear of hell hereafter, fear of God; in fact there was hardly anything we did not fear. This fear of nearly everything kept us in line. At school we were beaten black and blue for the smallest offence and we suffered in silence unlike today’s youngsters who would jump before a train and kill themselves because their demand for ‘chili chicken’ is denied or they failed their exams; suicides, like murder, were very rare and far between.

During my middle school years, one of my teachers was Thodukayil Pothakuttysir. One day he was teaching us math and the topic was division of a number by a fraction. The technique, as you know, is to multiply the numerator by the reciprocal of the denominator. To demonstrate practically how this is to be done, he led me, one of the smallest in stature, to the front of the class, held me up upside down by my heels and asked the class how I looked. They chorused, “upside down”. “So”, he continued, “do the same to the denominator and multiply the numerator.” My classmates may have forgotten the incident, but I certainly haven’t. And I have never made a mistake in division by a fraction!

[Published in the February 2009 issue of Snehasandesham]

Dear Friends

2010-08-28T01:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long gap in publishing my musings. Reasons range from sheer laziness to time taken to supervise the construction of a house in Adichira, Kottayam. Hope to spend quite some in Kerala in future.

Thanks for all your comments and words of encouragement.

I shall post those articles already published in Snehasandesham (SS)at digestible intervals. Even though some of you have already read them, go through them when you feel bored, or have nothing to do. You might discover a different perspective! Who knows!

I shall also post some musings that do not appear in SS. Since SS is only a monthly publication, any additional musings of mine can only appear here.

Remember, I write for fun. It is just a hobby.

Some of my writings serve a cathartic purpose; others are meant to provoke thought; still others are written in a light vein. If what I write makes readers sit up and debate, well and good; if anyone is offended, it is not intentional, rather incidental.

Kindly send in all your comments (even anonymously). They encourage and sustain my efforts.

Happy reading!

Maani.

WHEN I WAS IN AMERICA…

2010-03-30T22:25:00.001-07:00

In the good old days, while I was growing up in the rural areas of Kuttanad near Kottayam, some priests who were lucky enough to visit United States would start their homilies or speeches with the expression “When I was in America…” Ditto for that exclusive club of laymen who felt their locus standi among their peers would improve with an anecdotal description of their American experiences at the start of every conversation. Now-a-days, when a tenth of Kerala’s population is in the U.S. at any given time, and at least a fifth has visited the country at one time or another, the expression ‘When I was in America…’ does not hold any surprises for the listeners.

I spent almost six months in U.S. from June to December 2007.This was my third visit to that country and the longest. My wife and I were there to assist with the birth of our second grand daughter Anusha or Anu as we affectionately call her. We slightly shuffled the letters of her big sister’s name Ashna, added the letter ‘u’ and presto, we have Anusha.

My daughter stays at Ashburn. It is an extremely quiet place about 50 km from the Washington D.C., the U.S. capital. It will take about 30 minutes’ drive by car on a Saturday afternoon to drop into the White House to say ‘hello’ to Barack Obama. During peak hours it is more like 45 min to 1 hour on the 12-lane highway. With the sun setting at around 9 pm in summer, there is a lot of daylight for a quick drive to Washington D.C. to visit one of the numerous museums and other tourist attractions.

In U.S. cars stay on the right. Inexpensive petrol, multiple lanes on highways and clear road signs make driving a pleasure. If you can invest around $250 on a global positioning system (GPS), even I, who tends to get lost all the time, can drive around without the aid of road maps as this device very cleverly prompts what is to be done well in advance. Drivers hardly use the hooter, a few not even aware that there is such a device. (I am not joking!) There is such competition to sell cars that buyers, particularly from the subcontinent, spend the whole day bargaining as you do in a fish market.

Unlike Indians, Americans are very polite and law abiding on the roads. In India, there is no fear of the law – everyone is either related to a politician or a policeman or at least is an acquaintance of one. In the worst case scenario, one can bribe one’s way out of most difficult situations. In America, there is fear of the law. Add to that the shoal of lawyers waiting to sue you at the slightest provocation.

One day I went with my daughter to the supermarket. In America everything is big: men and women are huge; pizzas are extra large; supermarkets are very spacious, the car park endless. I got bored of walking around inside and came out to look at the surroundings. After sitting on a bench for a while, I decided to take a stroll through the car park. I went to the pedestrian crossing and waited for a gap in the traffic as we do in India. As I put my right foot on the road, every car on either side stopped. Fearing that they would all start at any time and run over me, I decided to go back to the bench. Immediately all the cars started to move. A little later as I again put one foot on the road with the other still firmly on the pavement, all vehicles screeched to a halt. I hesitated and went back to the bench. The movement of cars started again. My daughter later told me that the cars stopped to let me cross the road. If one of the cars were to even slightly brush me that would be a golden opportunity to sue the driver and win a huge compensation! In India, drivers wait for you to cross the road so that they can run over you.

When one thinks of capitalism, the United States comes immediately to mind. But there is one area where socialism is very much evident: the domestic environment of the desi. Most of the Malayalee (+other South Indian) families in and around Ashburn come from middle and upper middle class families. Many of them have never sullied their hands back home doing manual labor. In America, they do change; in fact they are forced to change. Domestic help is at a premium. So it really amused me to see these formerly spoilt youngsters, especially the males of the species, helping in the kitchen, cleaning the house, washing the bath and toilet, doing quite a bit of gardening, and other such chores.

A couple of months into my stay at our daughter’s house, Ashna, my granddaughter was sitting beside me turning the pages of the ‘Style’ section of ‘The Washington Post’ while I was engaged in the main section. Suddenly she turned to me and asked:

“Dada, how is that my picture is not in the news?”

“Well, you must be newsworthy, or make some news.” I replied.

“One thing”, she went on, “I want to be famous and my photo should come in the newspaper.”

Then she started on one of her tantrums and insisted that her photo appears somewhere. I suddenly remembered that a couple of her photos were on my website where my blogs appear and showed them to her. She was immensely pleased. And now she wanted to know what a blog is. I spent the next twenty minutes explaining blogs. After a few minutes of deep thought, during which time I went back to reading the paper thinking that she would soon forget the whole thing, she suddenly jumps up and says:

“I also want a blog and become famous!”

The next couple of days she kept pestering me about the blog. On the third day, she brought a bundle of papers, a pencil and an eraser and made me sit at the dining table. She sat next to me and being very lazy herself, told me she would dictate and I should write down what she wanted to write on her blog!!

So I wrote, very slightly edited and typed verbatim what she dictated. I hope this is not her first and last blog. The following is the finished product.

ASHNA’S LATEST NEWS

By Ashna Maria Vayalil

Ashna wanted to be in the news for a long time. She is only six and a half years old. Ashna has a baby sister Anusha who is only 3 weeks old. She also has a cousin sister whose name is Diya. Ashna’s birthday is on October 13. When she was 4 months old she was in ‘Editor’s Choice’ and she won first prize. Sometimes she is good, at other times she is bad. She wants to have 2 sisters instead of 1. She has a nice beautiful garden. There are tomatoes, cucumbers, green chilies, strawberries, bitter gourds, curry leaves and mint leaves in the garden. We also have pine trees, jasmines, roses and other exotic plants as well in our garden.

Ashna’s house is pretty too. There are 3 bathrooms, 1 kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 1 library, 1 breakfast room, 1 family room, 1 living room and 1 dining room. We have 4 clocks, 1 TV, 13 windows, 25 lights, 4 closets, 3 exits, 6 sofas, 4 umbrellas – that is all in Ashna’s house.

Ashna the girl loves to dance and sing and watch TV. She also watches a program called ‘Kutties Choice’. She loves to paint and she loves to play on the computer and watch lots and lots of TV. She wish she had 56 sisters and 54 brothers and 100 cousin sisters and 1 cousin brother.

She is in grade 1. She is going to grade 2. She wishes that she is already in grade 9!! The grade 2 school is ‘Hillside Elementary’. Her old 1^st grade school was named ‘Virginia Academy’.

She really wanted to hear about herself in the news and she wanted to be famous. And now she is going to be. She has lots of pictures, almost 100 that she made. When she was already in her mommy’s tummy she wanted to be famous. She calls her mommy ‘mama’ and her dad ‘daddy’.

She loves Hindi movies and some English movies and her favorite one is ‘IQBAL’. And her favorite song in Iqbal is “Aashaye” and it goes like this:

Aashaye, hile dil ki

Ummidien hasse dil ki

Abu mushukil

Nahee Kuchbi

HoOOooOOOoooo

Aashayee………………..

Ashna will write again later.

I hope she will.

SEX, LIES AND CATHOLIC CHURCH

2010-03-30T22:04:00.001-07:00

The basic urges of living beings are two: self-preservation and self-propagation. Hence the pleasures associated with food and sex. Plants to a lesser degree and animals to a greater degree satisfy these urges through instinct whereas man tends to temper his instincts with a rational approach. If pleasure was not associated with these two propensities, Adam and Eve would have been the first and last humans. There would have been no need for Jesus to die to save us. And the Catholic Church would not exist today. With no Catholic Church, there would be no priestly celibacy and no pedophile clergy abusing children.

I read the following somewhere on the internet:

Sex is an interesting topic. We tend to think we have free will, and that we are not animals. The reality, however, is that our character is inherited genetically and supplemented by hormones and other chemicals that drive behavior. Of course, there is free will within a small environmental envelope, but survival by reproduction seems to be the dominant instinct! “Our behavior can be altered within narrow parameters according to the social and cultural customs of where we live and how we are raised. But much of our life cycle is pre-ordained. In all major essentials, we are a reproductive skin covered bag of water, subject to instinctive controls of an organic machine, run by genes, hormones, enzymes, acids, salts, proteins and small electrical currents.”

One of the cleverest inventions of the Catholic Church is the guilt associated with sex. Credit must go mainly to St. Augustine of Hippo, the brilliant fourth century theologian. Like Tiger Woods, David Duchovny and Michael Douglas of the present era, he suffered from sex addiction in his early life. But unlike today, when these celebrities can check into a sex de-addiction centre, Augustine had to rely on his own resources. First, he chased away his concubine of seventeen years and the child they had together. Then his brilliant mind went into overdrive and he ‘invented’ the idea of original sin. All men and women (except Jesus and Mary – I am not sure about Joseph) are born in sin from the time of Adam and Eve’s honeymoon. Human nature as a result is corrupt. The ideas of the Stoics and of Plato in particular helped Augustine in this invention. The latter had developed the concept of the duality of human nature wherein the ‘soul’ is regarded as superior to the ‘body’ and the ‘spirit’ at a higher level than ‘matter’.

The ideas of life after death, heaven, hell, and devils also helped. Unlike the body that does not survive death; the soul is destined to live forever – happily in heaven or crying in hell depending on how one lived on earth. One had to save one’s soul by all means. For this, man has to overcome his corrupt nature and there is nothing more corrupting than sex. Hence celibacy and chastity are hoisted over family life as the superior ideal in life. The list of sins against the flesh is a legion: even your private thoughts and words are added to those of your acts.

However all is not lost. The Catholic Church introduced the idea of ‘confession’ to help you save your soul from eternal damnation. The moment the little lamb has entertained an ‘impure’ thought, he or she can rush to the priest, confess and be absolved so that the door to heaven is reopened. He can now have a go at another bad thought; confession is there to save him. Thus the fear of hell and God’s anger bring the little lambs back to the church again and again for salvation. The association of guilt with sex is part of a master plan towards controlling the minds of the lambs leading to the consolidation of church’s absolute power over all matters spiritual and temporal.

“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton.

Very few are aware that he was referring to papacy when he said those famous words.

Along with confession came ‘confessional solicitation’, something quite common, but not frequently talked about. Many a priest uses the confessional for the detailed cross examination of sexual sins so that the conversation sounds like the sound track of a highly erotic movie. This in itself is highly pleasurable to the ‘celibate’ priest starved of intimacy. The more adventurous opportunists of the lot use this occasion to identify the weak willed and easily available ones and propose a more private one on one physical encounter. After all, he cannot be faulted since self-propagation is a basic human urge.

Against this natural human urge the Catholic Church has declared celibacy and chastity as superior. Priestly celibacy was enforced from the early days of the church. At first the intentions were noble; later the purpose was not to let church property fall into the hands of the children of priests and bishops. Right from the outset, it was doomed to failure. Presently we are seeing this compulsion’s sad fallout – abuse of children and cover up of the abusers. The present Pope is also in a pickle with the revelation that he was aware of abuses but did little to stop them.

“Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him that the Rev Peter Hullermann, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.”

Hans Küng, a highly respected theologian who was banned from teaching because of his opposition to the doctrine of infallibility, unleashed a fierce attack on the Pope demanding that the pontiff "acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person".

Pope Benedict XVI has apologized to Irish Catholics for the sexual abuses of its clergy through a pastoral letter.

The following is part of an email from a good catholic commenting on Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter:

“The overwhelming feeling conveyed by the document is that the moral authority of the Church has to be upheld at any cost — even at the cost of truth itself or of finding a genuine solution to this crisis that has been like a slow cancer eating away the heart of the Church. What comes across in this document is an attempt to portray the Pope as some sort of Divine Being and Teacher himself who speaks down to everyone else in Creation, including Bishops.”

Denial of truth, inability to move with the times, disregard for the sufferings of the faithful, a permanent ‘high’ brought on by a feeling of absolute power continually reinforced by sycophants groveling and offering adulations 24/7 – these have been the recurring pattern of papacy throughout the ages. 2000 years ago, in a fit of righteous anger Jesus said:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which looks beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

His words are more relevant today. The following is one example of how ‘priestly celibacy’ is one big fat joke.

Church Head in a fix over affair with cook

Bangalore: A priest in Bangalore has found himself in a spot for ordering sex from a cook - something like what Tiger Woods did when he ordered a `plate-full' of hot and spicy sex from a waitress in the US.

The priest, Arokya Das, heads the St Peter and Paul Church in a posh locality of Bangalore. Reports said that the priest had been having a sexual relationship with the cook in the church. While this has been going on for quite some time, church-goers warned the priest to focus on the work of God and not on the assets of the cook. But Das obviously had his own preferences and continued his relationship with the cook.

When things started to spill out into the open, three youngsters thought of teaching the ‘reverend’ father a lesson. According to the police, soon after Sunday mass, the three youngsters tried to assault the father in full public view.

A shaken father managed to escape and dialed the police. But the three youths prevented the police from entering the church saying that they wanted to give the father a lesson or two in morality. Later, the three were arrested.

Soon after the arrest, hundreds of church-goers surrounded the church and wanted to know why the three youngsters were arrested and not Father Das. The police had to summon the president of the Karnataka Tamil Catholic People's Voice, John Kennedy.

Kennedy admitted that Father Das had been having an affair with the cook and despite warnings, he had continued to maintain a clandestine relationship.

Later in the evening, Vicar General Father S Jayanathan visited the church and held a meeting. He assured the agitated crowd that action would be taken.

There was no word from Father Das or the cook. They were probably cooking up something!

Random thoughts on some recent tragic/comic/tragi-comic events

2010-03-22T08:37:00.001-07:00

1. Michael Jackson moonwalks to nowhere land.

Death and taxes are inevitable. Birth is sooner or later followed by death. What is tragic is the way MJ died: skin and bones; totally bald; unable or unwilling to eat proper meals; symptoms of skin cancer; signs of numerous plastic surgeries. How far are wealth and fame measures of health and happiness?

2. Mayawati’s 1000 crore elephantine inferiority complex.

Mayawati is the prime example of Paulo Freire’ assertion that the more one is oppressed the greater will be the oppression dished out by that person in turn. The whole exercise is highly comical to an outsider but very tragic to the poor of UP for whom 1000 crore is a lot of money. Remember Saddam Hussein and what came of his statues?

3. Teacher absenteeism in Indian schools.

Gurcharan Das, who often writes in Times of India on educational matters, said in an interview that 1 out of 4 primary school teachers are absent on any given day; further, 1 out of 4 do not teach! This is more tragic than MJ’s death or Mayawati’s elephantine ego. The government needs to spent money on upgrading teacher training, put in mechanisms to make teachers more professional and control the unions. Can anyone tell me which university in India allows a person, teacher or not, to do M.Ed. by dissertation without written papers, which only serve to test your skills in recall and reproduction? I hope the new education university proposed by Azim Premji will cater to all those who wants to make a contribution to educational theory and knowledge, irrespective of age and whether they are in teaching service or not.

4. Minister Kapil Sibal’s proposal to abolish standard 10 exams.

No doubt, there is merit in his proposal. However, in the Indian context, the numbers of teachers absent and not teaching on a given day will go up from 1 to 2/4. The quality of education will, most likely, come down. In many other countries, there is accountability on the part of the teacher. More internal assessment means, more abuse of the hapless pupil. If we follow Sibil’s thinking, after a 100m dash on sports day everyone who ran is given a grade and a certificate of completion. In singing competitions that dominate our TV these days, there will be no elimination; everyone will win, each given a grade – fair, average, good - as well as a prize. Competition is part of life and education is a preparation for life; the key is to keep it healthy

CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MY RIGHT TO CIVILIZED DRINKING

2010-01-26T21:43:00.001-08:00

In Times of India dated February 8, 2007 there was an article titled "Right to drink" by Jaimini Mehta. It deals with total prohibition in Gujarat which, the author argues, infringes on his 'right to consume alcohol in moderation'.

In contrast, the Kerala Catholic hierarchy clubs the moderate and excessive users of alcohol together calling them all by the derogative Malayalam term madyapani (= drunkard) and accuses them of causing a litany of social ills from divorce to depression to suicide. It advocates total prohibition as a panacea for this plethora of diseases. January 28 is celebrated as 'anti-alcohol' day by Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC).

The first heretical reaction that crosses my mind is that henceforth Catholic priests/bishops should stop using wine during mass and instead try water. I wonder why one cannot advocate temperance as a via media between total prohibition and intemperance. Temperance is the moderate use of alcohol as opposed to its abuse. Before getting into the pros of temperance, a brief run through the history of alcohol and its varied uses might strengthen my arguments in favor of temperance as a happy medium between the moral highhandedness of the abolitionist and the excesses of the drunkard.

In the popular movie of the 70s, Beautiful People by Jamie Uys, one scene depicts a number of animals, including elephants and a troop of baboons dancing in drunken stupor a day after consuming large quantities of rotting fruits of the African marula tree. They were obviously enjoying the 'high' from their fermenting juices. It can be safely assumed that early man and woman did enjoy in a similar fashion. Many archeologists do believe that wines made from grapes have existed for the last 10000 years at least and beer even longer. Viticulture, the selective cultivation of grape vines for making wine, is thought to have originated in modern Armenia around 6000-4000 BCE. Ancient Egyptians were drinkers since it is now known that they invented the straw for drinking beer that contained wheat-husks. A 1600 BCE Egyptian text describes 100 different prescriptions calling for the use of alcohol. The Greeks had Bacchus as the god of wine, while Romans worshipped the same god as Dionysus. This worship took the form of an orgy of intoxication. In many ancient creeds, a tipple was the main means by which worshippers achieved ecstasy.

Alcohol formed and still forms an important part of Jewish rituals. Hebrews were most likely introduced to wine during their captivity in Egypt. When Moses led them to Canaan around 1200 BCE they regretted leaving behind the wines of Egypt (Numbers 20:5). Later, following their release from the Babylonian exile, the Hebrews developed Judaism as it is now known. During the next 200 years, wine became a necessary element in their life. It came to be regarded as a blessing from God and a symbol of joy (Psalms 104:15; Zachariah 10:7).

Jesus was a Jew and as a Jew he partook of wine and was falsely accused by his critics of being a drunkard (Luke 7:33). He used wine and approved of its moderate consumption (Mathew 15:11). In fact his first miracle was turning water into wine to make wedding guests happy. Apostle Paul considered wine to be a creation of God and therefore inherently good. He recommended it for medicinal purposes but condemned drunkenness. Late in the second century certain heretical sects rejected alcohol and called for total abstinence. During the forth/fifth centuries the church responded by asserting that wine is an inherently good gift of God to be used and enjoyed.

During the middle ages, monasteries made beer to nourish their monks and to sell to the people. As the consumption of liquids was not considered to break the fast, beer was always permitted. The levels of consumption reached astounding highs: 5 liters/monk/day!! The early modern period saw Luther, Calvin, leaders of the Anglican Church as well as Puritans in agreement with the teachings of the Catholic Church of the time: alcohol was a gift of God and created to be used in moderation for pleasure, enjoyment and health; drunkenness was viewed as a sin.

Alcoholism and intemperate use of alcohol has always been condemned by most social and cultural groups throughout history. Ancient Greek philosophers Xenophon and Plato both praised the moderate use of wine as beneficial to health and happiness, but both were critical of drunkenness.

The distinction between the temperate and intemperate is crucial in analyzing and understanding the evils of alcoholism, its prevention and treatment. My major criticism is directed to the lumping of the two together indiscriminately and accusing the moderate drinkers of crimes committed by those with destructive drinking behavior. This is akin to accusing every Catholic priest, nun and bishop of sexual abuse just because some among them are found to be abusive. In fact this kind of generalized criminalization causes great harm to the moderate social drinker and his family life. Moderate users, who are in the majority, are overshadowed by their more boisterous counterparts, and it is the latter who through their nefarious activities grab a disproportionate amount of attention and news coverage. Some moderate/social drinkers spend a couple of happy hours at a pub having a tote or two; others gather at a common friend's place to share a few beers; still others have a couple of drinks at home. After relaxing in this fashion, they continue with their lives without causing any harm to anyone. Current research suggests that the moderate consumption of alcohol is preferable to abstinence; it appears to reduce the incidence of coronary heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis, among many other diseases and conditions and to increase longevity. (My late father Pralel P.C. Joseph who died at age 93 is a shining example.)

I spent part of December 2006 and most of January 2007 in Kerala, attending a number of functions: four related to my own son's marriage, two in connection with my niece's marriage and one for a cousin's son. Out of these seven occasions, alcohol was served at five of them. Many guests were teetotalers while a sizeable number of them were moderate consumers, happy with a couple of drinks. Then there were the excessive drinkers including the rather young and the very old. There are some things unique about the alcoholic Keralite: the copious amounts greedily gulped down within a short interval of time without solid intakes; the incapacity as a result to hold liquor; and the inability to hold sensible conversation.

I tried to find more about the alcoholic Keralite. I was told that there is a steep rise in their number especially among the younger generation. Kerala is already infamous as the state with the highest reported cases of suicide. Why so many alcoholics? Why so many suicides?

I have my own theory in this regard. I believe there is a paradigm shift from the value system underscored by religious precepts to one which revolves around the twin foci of wealth and power. The mad rush towards material possessions is guided by selfishness; there is no time for love. Now the question is: how did this paradigm shift come about? Why was the religious leadership, both Christian and non-Christian, unable to prevent this unholy shift?

A half century ago when my generation was growing up, our lives revolved around the church and the rituals therein. We were made to memorize the catechism in the question answer format by the good nuns, without really understanding most of it anyway. We were taught about sins which ranged from the very venial (lying to your mother about the cookie you ate without her permission) to the very mortal (thinking about a girl). The consequences of sin, both venial and mortal, were drummed into our young minds - long periods of stay in purgatory if you die not confessing and repenting a venial sin, while eternal damnation in hell awaits you for a similar situation for a mortal sin. You can escape from purgatory to heaven if you have enough friends and relatives to offer sufficient prayers - different prayers have different periods of remission. Hell down below, however, is a completely different kettle of fish (or more appropriately snakes). There is a special type of very hot non-extinguishable fire that burns you eternally without turning you to cinders; different kinds of poisonous creepy- crawly like snakes, centipedes, spiders getting into your anatomy through one opening and coming out through another. Heaven up above, on the contrary, is a place of perennial sweet music, with choirs of angels playing harps, keeping everyone entertained. The holier you are, the closer you are to God's throne. So we tried to be good so we could end up in heaven and join the angelic choirs for all eternity and we avoided being bad because we did not want to end up in Lucifer's clutches. As is very clear, our 'disciplined lifestyle' was the result of fear and terror. It was much later that I realized that the Catholic Church and Stalinist Russia have one thing in common: fear - fear of hell in the case of the former and fear of Gulag for the latter.

This type of value system based on religious speculation and rituals, systematically developed in young minds through indoctrination, cannot withstand the test of time. As the winds of social and economic change began to sweep the country, it fell by the wayside. Materialism became the new mantra. Many thought happiness could be bought with money and power. However, as any economist would affirm, wants are infinite, means are limited. Disillusion set in. Many who tried to hold on to heaven were suddenly told that it is no longer a physical place of angels and music, but a state of mind. With nothing substantial to hold on to, man feels totally empty within. This feeling of emptiness leads to depression, drugs, drunkenness and related vices. Some find life so empty as to be meaningless and not worth living and prefer to end it. Perhaps it is time to think of a different set of values to base our lives on.

Bertrand Russell in his book 'Why I am not a Christian', talks of such a value system: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Love and knowledge are mutually inclusive: neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. Love, however, is more fundamental, 'since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge, in order to find out how to benefit whom they love'. Knowledge is also important since we must know in what our happiness lie.

On an atheist website there is a set of New Ten Commandments. The first two are: 'Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you' and 'In all things strive to cause no harm'. This is simply what Christ told the Pharisees: 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself' (Mathew 22:39). In today's world if a child can be brought up to love and cherish others, he will not get totally drunk and cause mayhem all around; he will think twice about the shame and sorrow he will bring on his family before he thinks of suicide. He will find happiness in loving and being loved. So what is needed is a paradigm shift from a value system based on ritualistic and literalistic traditions to one underscored by the core teaching of the New Testament: love your neighbor as you love yourself. Then there will be no need for the prohibitory edicts of the KCBC against drunkenness!

Just because people commit suicide by jumping in front of trains, we cannot stop train services. Banning the use of knives cannot be done although some have been used to kill. In fact humans, being curious by nature, would like to know why something is banned. Banning the movie 'Da Vinci Code' by overzealous Church authorities had the opposite effect: it made many more millions at the box office than otherwise! Prohibition has not worked in the past, nor will it work in future. It also brings about other evils as well. When American prohibition of the late 18th and early 19th century was withdrawn in 1933, an elaborate syndicate of organized crime built on the multimillion dollar 'bootlegging' industry survived. Even at home we read of tragedies caused by the illegal brewing of liquor, most often poisonous, in places where prohibition is extant. A very good example of how ineffective are prohibitory orders is to be seen at times of engagement and marriage receptions held in parish halls. There is a strict injunction against serving of alcohol in the parish hall or its premises by the bishop which is vigorously enforced by certain overzealous priests. But the diehard drunkards get around in various ways: setting up mini-bars in car boots; having an open bar arranged in a house nearby; pitching a tent on a vacant plot next to the parish hall etc. So KCBC needs to look beyond prohibitory orders and channel their efforts in bringing about a change in the Faithfull’s mindset through education, a shift in core value system and above all exemplary lives devoid of the pursuit of power and mammon.

In conclusion, I would like to appeal to Church hierarchy and the anti alcohol lobby not to drown the subtle but crucial differences between drinking and drunkenness in the clamor for total prohibition. And I agree with Jaimini and request them and other moral crusaders not to interfere with my right to ‘civilized drinking’.

POLITICS OF EDUCATION – QUALITY VERSUS QUANTITY

2009-05-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

The number of students passing out of educational institutions in India every year is, no doubt, in their millions. We as a country are slowly but surely succeeding as far as ‘quantity’ in the field of education is concerned; it is now time to reflect on the ‘quality’ of education that is being offered. It is only reflection with action that will lead to praxis.

My reflections on the quality of education in India started a couple of years ago after I retired and returned from South Africa to settle down in Namma Bengaluru for good. I have been ruminating on the times of my own schooling as well as on certain incidences in the recent past related to academic life. Some thought provoking articles in The Times of India on education added gist to my reflections. The immediate provocation for an in depth reflection has been the famous educationist Paulo Freire becoming the villain of the piece in a standoff last year between Christian Churches in Kerala and the Marxist led government over the content of a social studies text book for standard VII. The controversy centred around parts of the content critically questioning religious belief systems and introducing the idea of atheism.

All of us remember our school days as the most carefree of our lives. In fact, it is the happenings – good and bad – of this period that we love to reminisce with our schoolmates even in our old age. In those days all teachers taught with liberal doses of the cane. Education consisted of the teachers giving us information - formulae in math, capitals of countries in geography, Emperor Asoka’s reforms in history and so on. We silently listened and memorized. We did not dare to ask questions on the subject matter out of fear of our teachers; besides, there were no doubts as all we had to do was memorize.

Even at University level, memorization was the way to go. Just one example as illustration. Fr. Racine, a retired French Jesuit and a brilliant mathematician taught us Abstract Algebra during my M.Sc. course at Loyola College, Madras. Other than saying Mass, eating his frugal meals and teaching us a couple of times a week, he spent the entire day developing new Mathematics theories. The only problem with his teaching was that he would solve a problem in three sentences, whereas it required at least ten for the mathematically challenged. Only one out of a class of 16 barely understood what was going on. The rest of us ‘mugged’.

It was only when I started teaching that I began to think about mathematical concepts. A good grasp to the subject is a must for any teacher to make himself understood. Even then, both my students and I hovered around the ‘knowledge’ and ‘recall’ levels of Bloom’s taxonomy with infrequent forays into the next level, that of understanding. The examination system also remained at the ‘reproduction’ levels, testing students on their ability to ‘recall’ information. These days private coaching and tuitions do a roaring business reinforcing memorization of facts and mechanical application of theory. In this system, most students score in the nineties; however, John Kurien, Director, Centre for Learning, Pune, rightly says that ‘Marks Mask Incompetence’ in an article of the same title appearing in The Times of India dated July 27, 2008. The net result according to him is that “… a large proportion of our engineering and business management graduates, and a far greater percentage of general graduates, are unemployable.” My son, who was at one time in charge of interviewing and selecting candidates for the post of software engineers for his company, told me that, based purely on their potential to apply computer knowledge in implementing projects, two out of twenty would barely fit the bill. A close relative who graduated with distinction in electronics engineering could hardly identify the problem with a non-functioning T.V. set. On investigation, I found that the best student is one with the sharpest memory and that there are professionals who can do the final year project, which involves applying the theory, for you for a consideration.

This type of learning is aptly named ‘the banking concept’ of education by Paulo Freire. Just as we deposit money in a bank and withdraw the same later, bits and pieces of information are ‘deposited’ in the minds of students to be ‘withdrawn’ at the time of tests and examinations. Against this, Freire advocated ‘problem-posing’ education.

So, who is this Paulo Freire?

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) is a Brazilian educationist whose theories and praxis of education have contributed enormously in liberating oppressed masses all over the world. I have been a fan of Paulo Freire for more than a decade. It all started when I became involved in a teacher training program in Apartheid South Africa in early-nineties. The black majority was systematically being oppressed by the white minority. This was going on for a long time. A similar oppressive system prevailed in Brazil in the last century. Paulo Freire, who was born and brought up in that country, expounded his theories on liberating the oppressed masses in the book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” which became a runaway success. Realizing that his ideas were most apt and relevant for the liberation of the South African black masses, I prescribed two chapters from this book as compulsory reading for my third year B.A.Education students. If the process of liberation is through Education, then the ideal person to start on this path of liberation is the teacher who must first free himself from the oppressor’s yoke before he can liberate his students.

What is the core of his educational philosophy?

Freire starts with the premise that man’s ontological vocation is ‘humanization’ – becoming more fully human. This is thwarted by acts of dehumanization – injustice, exploitation, oppression and the violence of the oppressors. When a person is brought up in an environment of oppression, he internalizes the methods of the oppressors and in turn becomes an oppressor. He is unable to express love and compassion since he himself has not been shown love and compassion.

To surmount oppression, man must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action, he can create a new situation in the pursuit of a fuller humanity. The oppressed should engage in reflection of their situation leading to action – praxis.

Banking education is one very effective method employed by the oppressors to continue the consciousness of oppression in the oppressed. The more students work at storing information, the less time they have to develop the critical consciousness needed to transform the world around them. The more passive they are made, the more easily they tend to accept their state of oppression. The oppressors use banking education to change the consciousness of the oppressed and not the situation which oppresses them. The educator’s role is to regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the student. Education becomes an act of domination and domestication, indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.

Against this, Freire proposes ‘problem-posing’ education. It is based on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thus helping man to achieve his ontological vocation of becoming more fully human. The students become critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. They come face to face with real problems in the real world and develop the power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world.

The Indian context.

After more than six decades of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, the Indian mindset is still feudalistic. Geriatric dynastic rule is still the norm. Men and women of dubious character and criminal bend are foisted as leaders riding the crest of the cast and creed bandwagon. Corruption is endemic. The sheepish mentality developed through indoctrination using banking methods of education is the root cause of religious fundamentalism leading to suicide bombings and terror attacks. Religion, unable to withstand the scrutiny of the critical mind, relies on blind faith. What better technique than ‘banking education’ is there to keep the sheep in the fold! When students are insulated from engaging in problems of the social reality around them, many take the suicide route when confronted with easily solvable situations

Why is Freire’s name dragged into the recent Class VII Social Science text-book controversy in Kerala?

The main allegations against the Social Studies text-book of Class VII are that it

“... is trying to teach children atheism, materialism, anti-religious sentiments and wrong perspectives on the Indian history.” and that “… the book’s effort was to finish off religious beliefs and to propagate atheism.”

Members of the text-book reform panel countered saying:

“… the effort was to enliven the academic curriculum through critical interaction of the students with society.”

Added a member of the panel:

“The book is asking the students to understand social reality themselves and to approach it critically, which is the only way to develop their intellect, thinking faculty and sense of social responsibility.”

He said the model was based on the theories of Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire, who had shown

“… the right path to right education in the social model like ours.”

I believe it is high time for us to transform ourselves from our feudalistic and paternalistic mode to a democratic, participatory and critical mode of thinking and acting. Old habits die hard; but bad habits must surely die.

A critical and transformatory mindset is essential for us to become more fully human and to help others in this vocation of humanization. For this to happen, the next best place after home is the school. That is why it is imperative that we as a nation impart to our children an education of quality. This calls for a change from the traditional ‘banking method’ of education to the ‘problem solving’ model leading to awareness and critical engagement in the student with personal and social reality.

[Note: Action with reflection leads to praxis; action without reflection is activism; reflection without action is verbalism.]

DRIVING IN BENGALURU AND THE RULE OF LAW

2009-05-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time (long ago) Bangalore used to be known as pensioners' paradise. When I first arrived in Bangalore in the early 70s it was a city of tree-lined roads, leisurely drives, clean air and inexpensive restaurants. Flyovers, one-way streets and underpasses were unknown. These days the former pensioners' paradise has changed its name to Bengaluru. With a concentration of information technology companies it is known world over as 'the Silicon Valley of India' . Along with information technology came a host of problems: congestion, pollution and chaotic traffic, to name a few.

Infrastructure development never kept pace with Bengaluru's rapid IT development. Endemic corruption acts as the perennial spoke in the wheels of progress. This is particularly evident on the roads. Driving in Bengaluru has become a nightmare so much so people are socializing less and less. What I do to amuse myself, sitting in never-ending traffic jams, is to observe and smile at the strange behaviors unique to India. Here is a sample.

· Arrival/Departure of a so-called VIP (Very Injurious Parasite, according to Jug Suraiya) forces all motorists to be stranded in the middle of nowhere until 'his majesty's' motorcade passes. No one is bothered about the man-hours lost or the sick that need urgent medical care. (We may be a democracy in name, but in practice we are still feudalistic in our attitude!)

· Motor-cyclists overtaking on the left in defiance of your left indicator flashing. When he is knocked down, you are the guilty party!

· Autos cruising looking for passengers. Imagine you are stuck behind with a running tummy!

· Those driving straight keeping to the extreme left at a traffic junction blocking traffic from using the free left.

· Vehicles (autos in particular) keeping to the extreme left and then trying to make a U-turn at a junction while the traffic is moving forward.

· Parking almost in the center of the road and going about your business, as though this person has inherited the road.

· Cyclist on the extreme right in the fast lane (as understood internationally). He needs almost the entire lane as he swings his hips from side to side.

· Ditto for bullock/horse carts minus the swagger.

· Ditto for fruit vendors; in addition they are always crossing the road as though the fruits are sold faster on the other side.

· Drivers on a two-way street, while turning to the right onto a one-way street, cutting corners preventing the smooth flow of oncoming traffic.

· Vehicles, particularly autos and motor-cyclists, coming and stopping more and more to the right of a narrow two-way street at a traffic light to a main road, blocking those from the main road from turning left.

· Government vehicle parking smack below the 'no parking' sign on the right of narrow one way street (parting is allowed on the left) and the madam/sir coolly going about his business, while ordinary mortals have to go round this VIP car.

· Cows/buffalos helping to create traffic circles.

· Jumping traffic lights.

There was an interesting article titled "Short Arm Of The Law" by Ronojoy Sen in The Times Of India dated February28, 2008. In it the question 'Why do Indians jump traffic lights?' is asked. The answer according to Sen is that there is no rule of law in India. The citizen easily flouts the law because the enforcing agencies are ineffective. Endemic corruption, lack of equipment and insufficient personnel are flaunted as the usual culprits. But what should worry one more is the attitude of the common man towards law. One reason for breaking the law with impunity is the low cost of doing so. Sen goes on to say that many law-abiding people wish for another dose of Indira Gandhi's emergency rule or some kind of dictatorship so that the stick can be wielded ruthlessly and force people to fall in line.

This means that the average Indian only responds to 'fear' - fear of punishment whether human or divine. He will not urinate against the compound wall if the picture of a god/goddess is painted thereon; not because his action will cause health problems. He will not follow traffic rules out of civic duty. The same is true in most areas of life. A minister can steal crores but nothing will happen to him if his party is needed to prop up the government. Add to this the feudalistic mentality of the Indian. The spectacle of senior IAS offices feeding cake to CM Mayawathi and MLAs prostrating before Jayalalitha come to mind. The question to ask is: are we Indians truly free? Are our minds free of oppression? What kind of education are we are imparting to our children in India, if at the end of the day when they become IAS officials and MLAs they are so servile and act so slavishly? [Do you think I am in Utopia?]

HISTORY OF GOD (Contd from where I left off on Friday, 22 May 2009)

2009-05-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

Let us now briefly examine the God/gods of the different religions.

Judaism ‘evolved’ the idea of a monotheistic God, Yahweh. This happened after long periods of worshipping three types of gods: worship of the family gods (teraphim), worship of the sacred stones and worship of the great gods, some native, others foreign (Baal, Molech etc).

Zoroastrianism introduced gods as abstract concepts. Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil. He is said to have received a direct revelation from the one true god Ahura Mazda. Soul, life after death, resurrection, judgment, paradise, hell, and devil were all Zoroastrian ideas first, later borrowed by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Buddhism may be thought more as way of life than as a religion in its narrow sense. It developed as a reaction to the greed and materialism of the newly emerging merchant class at the time of Siddhartha Gauthama who left the comforts of a life of luxury as well as his family and wandered the world as a mendicant in search of enlightenment. One night he put himself in a trance and when he awoke he became the Buddha, the enlightened one. He believed in the gods of the time but for him the ultimate reality was beyond the gods. All life, for him, was suffering; only dharma, the truth about right living brought one to nirvana (the ultimate reality, freedom from pain). The state of nirvana has nothing to do with the gods; in fact it is beyond them. By living a life of compassion for all living beings, speaking and behaving gently, kindly and correctly and by refraining from drugs and intoxicants that cloud the mind, one can attain nirvana. The same universal secular message is given by Jesus as response to the question by the Pharisees about the greatest commandment: love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. (Mathew 22:34-40). Perhaps the rumor that Jesus traveled to India could be true, as he seemed to have imbibed some Buddhist principles.

Hinduism has many parallels to Greek religious practices. Both are steeped in myths with numerous gods and goddesses who have many human characteristics. However, traditional Hinduism is a way of living than a way of thinking.

Islam has borrowed heavily from both Judaism and Christianity. Mohammed, considered God’s prophet by the faithful, was resting in a cave outside Mecca, called Hira, in 620 C.E. when he heard voices which he wrote down and collected into the book Qur’an. The message was clear: God is one and there is no other. There is a Judgment day with eternal paradise for the good and everlasting hell for those who go against His will.

Christianity. Chapter 4 of Karen Armstrong’s book ‘A History of God’ is titled ‘Trinity: The Christian God’. There is a reason for this. Though Christians claim they believe in monotheism, their God is not exactly one; He is three in One or One in Three – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 3=1. 1=3. For ordinary mortals, this is a mystery and that is how the Christian Church wants it to be regarded. Do not try to understand it, rather, just believe it! Jesus was a Jew and his initial followers were all Jews who believed in the one God Yahweh. How and why did the later followers of Christ change to a ‘kind’ of polytheist mode of thinking?

St. Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, who became a follower of Christ after he fell from his horse and who claimed to hear disembodied ‘voices’ that he identified as the words of Jesus, could come to our aid here. He was instrumental in spreading the gospel to the gentiles who were used to a variety of gods. It was he who realized that the good news of the gospel would have greater acceptance if Christ, the messiah, was projected as divine rather than human. Hence he claimed that Jesus was a preexistent ‘heavenly’ being; that he was created as the ‘first born’ of all creation; that he existed in the form of God and that he was equal to God.

Natural Laws

2009-05-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

Readers know the natural law, "When a body is immersed in water the phone rings." I now have, thanks to James Clarke's Stoep Talk column, published in The Star newspaper, a new set of these natural laws...

· Law of the workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

· Law of probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

· Law of close encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

· Law of result: When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

· Law of biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

· Law of logical argument: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

· Oliver's law: A closed mouth gathers no feet.

RELATIVISM

2009-05-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

There is nothing permanent except change, said ancient Greek Philosopher Heraclites. According to him, “You cannot step twice into the same river”. From birth to death we keep changing. Our bodies grow and mature and wither away as we become old. Our minds learn new things every day. Our emotions keep changing. Fashions come and go. All societies keep evolving. What is moral in one is immoral in another. What is wrong today is right tomorrow.

We are all familiar with the expression ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. The Western world regards stick-like women as beautiful. Hence you see such anorexic models walking the ramp at fashion shows, showcasing those outrageously ‘unwearable’ dresses. On the contrary, they would be regarded as victims of an incurable disease like AIDS or TB by the African masses, whose concept of female beauty resides in plumpness. Again, most disagreements conclude with the statement: ‘that’s true for you but not for me.’ This subjectivism in values, known as relativism, extends to all areas of human experience like beliefs, knowledge, morals and taste.

Relativism is the philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual. This means that all moral positions, all religious systems, all art forms, all political movements, etc., are truths that are subjective. The first clear statement of relativism comes with the Sophist Protagoras, as quoted by the ancient philosopher Plato, "The way things appear to me, in that way they exist for me; and the way things appears to you, in that way they exist for you. Thus, however I see things, that is actually true - for me. If you see things differently, then that is true - for you. There is no separate or objective truth apart from how each individual happens to see things”. For him, "man is the measure of all things".

Let me illustrate the concept of ‘relativism’ in some areas of human behavior. The first type we consider is metaphysical relativism: the position that all assumptions and beliefs about God, creation, life after death, hell, heaven etc are subjective. Some people believe in God, while others do not. There are still others, who start out as believers, but end up as atheists. Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher who lived in the nineteenth century and who is considered the forerunner of Existentialism, was such a person. Son of a pastor, he was raised as a devout Christian and was known as “the little Jesus” by his schoolmates. But by his middle twenties, he had become an atheist. For him God is dead; He plays no vital role in our culture. There is a section in his writings describing the antics of a madman who announces the death of God.

On a bright morning, the madman lighted a lantern and ran to the marketplace calling out unceasingly, “I seek God! I seek God!” People all around were laughing at him. Suddenly he jumped into their midst. “Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you, we have killed him, - you and I. We are all his murderers. Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? – for even gods putrefy. God is dead; He remains dead. And we have killed him”. Then he threw his lantern to the ground and it broke in pieces and was extinguished. Later the madman made his way into different churches and there he intoned his Requiem aeternam deo (May God rest in peace!). When called to account, he replied, “What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?”

The Nietzschean contention is encapsulated in a phrase attributed to one of Dostoyevsky’s characters: “If God is dead, all things are permitted.” This leads us to the next type of relativism: moral relativism, the position that moral values change from time to time, place to place and culture to culture.

Back in the days when I was working at the University of Venda in South Africa, we lecturers would often attend national and international education conferences where we would present academic papers and discuss ‘weighty’ educational issues. They were also occasions to visit (at University’s expense) other parts of the country and experience different cultural traits and practices. One such conference was held at the University of Zululand, not far from Durban. On the final day the ‘bigwigs’ – Vice Chancellor (VC), Deputy Vice Chancellor (DVC) and the Registrar Academic (RA) - would be present at the concluding meeting where they would thank us for gracing their University and we would thank them for their wonderful hospitality. As we waited for the dignitaries to arrive, I noticed that the chairs on the stage were arranged in a special manner: one big one followed by four smaller ones, another big one followed by three smaller ones and a third big one followed by five smaller ones. Shortly the Vice Chancellor entered, followed by four women. The elderly looking matron sat next to him; next to her sat a middle aged woman, next a young woman and lastly someone who was just out of her teens. A similar situation took place regarding the DVC and Registrar Academic. Not used to the local customs, I asked a Zulu colleague who all these women were. She told me that the four women next to the VC were his wives sitting in order of their status. Ditto for the DVC and the RA. My eyes popped out in amazement. Polygamy is common in Africa, but it was the first time I saw an official approval of the same at the highest academic circle. After this, cultural entertainment by topless damsels and young men clad in cowhide loincloth was less shocking for someone brought up in strict monogamous practices. I suppose Pope John Paul II too wasn’t shocked as he was welcomed by bare-breasted maidens ululating and dancing in joy when he landed at Durban on one of his African safaris. My Catholic Zulu colleague told me that if the good white nuns insisted on covering up, the girls would refuse to attend catechism classes. Both the Western and the Eastern world regard female breasts as erotic and hence cover them; for the Zulus and their cousins the Swazis, female breasts are meant only for nurturing babies. The part that they consider erotic is the thigh, a fact officially stated in the Swaziland parliament a few years ago. That brings us to aesthetic relativism, the view that beauty and taste are subjective.

Recently, a very close relative came home to visit in the late afternoon. Since it happened to be the ‘happy hour’, I decided to indulge in a bit of civilized social drinking. I brought out an unopened bottle of Remy Martin from a secret location in my house where I keep the ‘sophisticated’ stuff. Knowing my weakness for cognac, my son-in-law had packed it along with the rest of the knickknacks when my wife and I returned from US after being there for the birth of our second grand-daughter. It was on a flight from Johannesburg to Bombay that I first developed a taste for cognac. The bar had run out of brandy and the kind air hostess offered me Remy Martin. I still remember her name: Erika Venter (pronounced Fenter in Afrikaans, the language spoken by most whites in South Africa). Unlike the grumpy Air India air hostesses, who metamorphose into obnoxious school matrons during flight, the South Africans offer service with a smile. Anyway, back to the story.

A couple of short-stemmed glasses were brought out and I, with the studied dignity worthy of the cognac, ceremoniously poured the expensive stuff and put an ice cube in each glass. The connoisseur would hold the glass in his palm and as the warmth from the hand gently melted the ice, he would lightly swirl the drink, bring it close to his face to breath in its divine aroma and then take a small sip to savor its smooth flavor. Not my close relative. He took the glass, looked at it rather quizzically, drained it in one gulp, smacked his lips as though he had drunk some Ayurvedic concoction, and wait for it, requested for some whisky or brandy instead, if available! To add insult to injury, he then asked for some pickle to go with the cognac he just gulped down!

It took great effort on my part to suppress the first reaction that flashed across my mind: “Pearls before a swine”. I then went to the cupboard where I keep the local stuff like homebrewed ‘cashew fenny’ that my sister sent me from Goa. I also do not throw away empty Johnny Walker bottles, but fill them with the local brands. The unsophisticated cannot tell the difference between whiskey and brandy, let alone distinguish between single malt and double malt (blended). His face lit up at the sight of the half empty “Johnny Walker” bottle that I placed before him. Needless to say, he thoroughly enjoyed the stuff. This was evident from the ear-to-ear grin as he thanked me profusely while leaving.

So, was Nietzsche right when he said: “You have your way; I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist”? Well, Plato does not agree. His first objection to relativism is that there is no distinction between truth and falsity; for if each individual is really the "measure" of what is, then everyone would be infallible, which is absurd. His other main objection is that relativism is self-refuting. If Protagoras is right, then whatever a person thinks is true, is true. But in that case, Protagoras must concede that those who think relativism is false are correct. So if Protagorean relativism is true, it must also be false. Get it, you armchair philosophers?

HISTORY OF GOD

2009-05-22T05:23:00.000-07:00

Did God create us or did we create God? Is He the product of man’s creative imagination?

Karen Armstrong, in the introduction to her well written book “The History of God” asks: Is God the projection of human needs and drives? According to her, God was and is still a product of the creative imagination, like poetry and music. Karen Armstrong was born a Catholic, joined a religious order and became a dedicated nun but was unable to glimpse ‘the God described by the prophets and mystics’. So she left the convent and became a commentator of religious affairs.

In her book, Armstrong traces the historic development of the concept of God. She talks about the Christian God, the God of Islam, the God of Philosophers, the God of reformers, the Jewish concept of Yahweh and discusses the death of God and the rise of Atheism. The human idea of God has a history since its meaning is different to different groups of people. For her, the statement, ‘I believe in God’ has no objective meaning; it only means something in context. Each generation has to create a concept of God that works for it. She concludes with a provocative question: ‘Does God have a future?’

So how old is the concept of God?

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” - Voltaire

“If triangles had a God, He’d have three sides.” - Old Yiddish Proverb.

Much of the following information is found in the book “Ideas: A history from Fire to Freud” by Peter Watson. This is an extremely interesting, readable and informative book, especially for those looking for origin of ideas and concepts.

Some anthropologists are of the opinion that ‘God-concept’ originated in man’s dilemma of mortality. Aided by the tool of rationality, unlike animals which live by instinct, humans came to the realization that one day they are going to die. What made death all the more terrifying was that it could befall us any time. To overcome the chronic anxiety of death at any instant, humans developed animism as a coping mechanism. In this belief system a soul/spirit exists in every object including inanimate things. The spirit was therefore thought to be universal and it came to signify God. So there was not One God, but everything was God. This was a kind of formless God. With the development of agriculture, fertility (both in humans and crops) was of paramount importance. So there developed the concept of Mother Goddess in the shape of a naked and pregnant woman, since woman was the source of life. She is flanked by her male partner the Bull. The Bull symbolizes the male principle as well as the fact that the forces of nature are not easy to control. God’s transformation from female to male came later.

In nomadic pastoral civilizations, God was found not on Earth, but up above in the Sky. This was a Male God whose voice was thunder and whose anger was expressed through lightning. He was the Sky God who made rain for grass to grow for the cattle. The main sky gods were the sun and the moon. It is interesting to note that although very many different types of religions existed in ancient times, they can all be reduced to possess some distinctive core elements: a belief in the Great Goddess, the Bull, the Sky Gods, the need for sacrifices, in an afterlife, and in a soul that survives death and goes either to a place of suffering or to a place of joy depending on how one lived life here on earth.

The situation changed during the period 750 – 350 BC. According to Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher, most of world’s great faiths came into being during this period. Many leading philosophers and prophets appeared at this time: Confucius, Lao-tse, Buddha, Zarathustra, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Homer, Parmenides, Heraclites, Plato, Archimedes etc. Philosophical possibilities like skepticism, materialism, nihilism, sophism were developed. Religious treaties such as the Upanishads also appeared.