Technology Aided Ignorance

Technology Aided Ignorance

Debi Prasad Choudhary

10/21/2014

As a child, Dasrathi admired his village chief, a tall white old man with a solid golden ring. He admired not only because the chief was dominating with wealth and power, but mostly for his rational and common sense approach to complex problems of villagers. Once there was a theft in the village, where some brass (पीतल) uncials were missing from the house of a strong man. He called a group of tantric, who had special power to find out hidden stuff. The tool for these people was a wooden bed frame called “khata (खट )”, which was placed in front of the village Godess’s temple for worship. The tantriks offered chicken, country liquor and other stuff to the goddesses in the morning and invited her to sit on the Khata. After the completion of the rituals, four young tantric carried the Khata and ran around in search of the lost stuff.  This is commonly known as “ ¹Khata Bidya (खट  बिद्या )”.  Before the carriers of Khata could start running, the village chief asked them to find a sealed packet that he had placed at some secret location prior to searching the lost items. He wanted to make sure that the group could do a good job and avoid the quarrel in case of a wrong identification. As a curious child, Dasrathi followed the group with the khata on bare foot and khaki pant. Until the evening the group was drinking liquor, hitting the khata with a stick, to emulate beating the Goddess and scolding her with uncivilized filthy language. Dasrathi was impatient and praying the Goddesses to show the sealed packet, so that these guys will make her free. The cows returned in the evening but there was no hope for finding the packer hidden by the village chief. The group was asked to go away. It was an eventful, entertaining and exciting day for the villagers though. Dasrathi was relieved that the Goddess is now free, but did not like the village chief who created such situation for her.

This incident generated doubt in “²tantra vidya (तांत्रिक  बिद्या )”, since he was very much interested in these practices. He was, in fact planning to start a simple act to gain supernatural power. He learnt the procedure from a small book bought from a village fair. The procedure was that he would place a lizard under a mud pot with a hole. He would pee through the hold for 21 days. In the end, he would collect the skeleton and recite few prescribed sentences and gain wizard power. He was only 10 years old, so it was really difficult to catch a lizard and place it under the mud pot. So, he was postponing the activity to a future date. From the same book, he also learnt few procedures of practicing on the graveyard, but never proceeded fearing his parents. After the “Khata Vidya” incident, he decided to abandon these ideas altogether. Those days, there was no mass media and the wise village chief contained the ignorance locally.

After many years, Dasrathi was spending a night in a leading research institute as a practicing scientist. Suddenly his colleague came running and said let us go to give milk to Sri Ganesh (श्रीगणेश), who is now drinking from the devotees. He was tired, so did not agree to go to the town, but watched in live television that millions of people were offering milk and Gaaneshji was having a good time. That day, milk price soared to 10 to 15 times. This was an event managed by cable media and mobile phones.

Couple of years back, Dasrathi was resting one evening in a hotel in the national capital before catching a flight next morning. He watched a heated TV debate³ between astrologers, who were challenging scientists and clearly winning. Poor scientists were over powered with logic and debating skill of astrologers. It was as exciting as following the khata in the childhood, but a single wise village chief could not have contained the situation. Use of social media like facebook for propagating false knowledge is becoming rampant. Now the ignorance is spread with modern technology!!!

¹Khata Bidya (खट  बिद्या ): This is still being practiced in those villages even today. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-otherstates/rationalists-challenge-khata-vidya-practitioners-to-prove-its-efficacy/article4159221.ece

²Doctrine of enlightenment as the realization of the oneness of one ' s self and the visible world ; combines elements of Hinduism and paganism including magical and mystical elements like mantras and mudras and erotic rites ; especially influential in Tibet and many rural part of India.

³Here are some still pictures from the TV debate.

Running title: (top) The biggest debate of the country. (bottom) Debate between Astrology and logic.

Running Title: (top) The biggest debate until now. (bottom) Challenge to predict future from horoscope.

Running title: (top) Anil Vats, the Astrologer Professor, (bottom) Challenge thrown by experts.

Running title: (top) Anil Vats, (bottom) Challenge to predict future from horoscope.