Godmen's opium business

By Ranjan Yumnam *

There are three cottage industries in Manipur which flourish and never fail to earn huge profits, despite or because of the general economic gloom and misery prevailing in the State. These are the private health services, private educational/coaching centres and the business of faith which has mushroomed across each leikai unstoppably like an epidemic. I will dwell on the third, the business of peddling false hopes.

Though we don't have a Godman of the stature of Sathya Sai Baba, fake local Godmen abound, and they range from the stupid to the pompous. As it is, gullible people fall at their feet and recount their worst fears and seek the divine solutions. That tells something about our society. We are so insecure because of the miserable situation of our life that we have to constantly seek the reassurance of the charlatans.

These supposedly gifted people claim to communicate directly with the God and possess powers of forecasting future events such as whether a person will get a promotion, or a lucrative business deal or a great life partner. These paranormal X-men do not miss an opportunity to project themselves as the believers' interface with the God.

This is all fraud. I have no problem with anyone professing any religion or following it but placing one's whole self at the altar of superstition is abominable and does a lot of harm to that ideal called Self-Determination, which is to take control of one's own future and owning responsibility for the consequences of one's actions.

On the one hand, the gun-culture in the State has escalated alarmingly; and on the other, superstitions and dogma have taken deep roots in the minds of the Manipuri people. Even the educated Manipuris and the high and mighty are not immune to this mindless drama of absurdity; they are in fact the big patrons of these self-styled messengers of God.

The eccentricities of these Godmen are amusing. One prominent Godman announced recently that God had given him the permission to enter wedlock apparently because God was pleased with his devoted service of many years.

Second, these avatars of God love publicity and stunts. A budding temple owner in my locality ransacked homes and enacted a gratuitous show of performing pujahs chanting Sanskrit rhymes (sounded like that to me) hunting for a ghost that will wreck havoc on people if not captured. The ghost was never found.

Third, money is the ultimate drive for both the shamans and the clients. The former receives fantastic donations (property and gold, if lucky) and the clients get illusionary peace of mind and a psychological shield against the attacks of the enemies, imaginary or real ones and potential misfortunes. In the final analysis, both the Godmen and the followers are fortune-seekers and the relationship between them is truly a symbiotic one; each feeds on the other to achieve glory.

This, without doubt, is a bad trend. We are retreating to an era of witchcraft and sorcery in this age when we should be solving our problems with vent diagrams, algorithms, a bit of lateral thinking and spreadsheets. As I said, the spread of the belief in clairvoyance is a manifestation of the society's inner conflicts and tottering confidence in itself. We need a straw to hold on to and increasingly voodooism and superstitions are replacing cold reason and analysis to face the adversities in our life. We have completely lost the plot.

Marx said, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." Manipuris are worse than the people addicted to heroine. We are neither religious people nor are we fully atheists. We have blurred all distinctions and what we follow is a deadly cocktail of sham religion and occult practices. It's opium mixed with alcohol.

Osama, not Obama, should win Nobel

What are the criteria for getting nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? As described in Alfred Nobel's will, the contender for the prize "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." This is a good enough qualification for a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The only problem is Barack Obama, this year's winner of the prize, doesn't fit the bill.

When I first came to know about Obama winning the Nobel from a news website, I was shocked. No doubt, this man was a great speech maker who can rouse and captivate the audience with his magical words, but did he actually achieve anything concrete deserving of the Nobel honours? I, like many people, don't think so.

Just nine months into the Presidency, Obama hasn't accomplished anything to furthering peace in the world. The American president has not solved the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, lessened the India-Pakistan enmity, ended the war in Afghanistan or ridded the world of nuclear weapons.

It seems the prize was given to him not for anything he demonstrated but for his good intentions, sincerity and the atmospherics. And in that case, it could be given to anyone by rolling a dice.

It also proves something else. It is an unfair world in which Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize and a gentleman called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi didn't. The Nobel Prize just gets devalued this year.

It may sound crazy and politically incorrect but seeing the unreasonable selection pattern of Nobel Prize nomination committee, I am tempted to propose my own nomination for Nobel Peace Prize.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Messrs Osama bin Laden. This guy hasn't shown up anywhere menacingly and is now seem to be lying low reading Quran in the mountains of Afghanistan. After the 9/11 in 2001, he has not orchestrated any major violent act. He seems to be in peace. By awarding him the Nobel, he should be encouraged to maintain his peace and live upto the world's expectations from a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. I rest my case.

Ranjan Yumnam

* Ranjan Yumnam, presently an MCS probationer, is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. He can be contacted at ranjanyumnam(at)gmail(dot)com. This article was webcasted on October 11, 2009.