COMMERCIALIZING FAITH

"Give a man a rock,
Tell him its divine.
And he’ll worship it,
Till the end of his time…”

These famous words of Swami Vivekananda, perhaps best describes today’s commercial faith. I call it commercial, because, lets face it – you just can’t go to a temple nowadays, or any place of worship, for that matter, without cold, hard cash in your pocket. Shelling out huge sums of cash is just the first step – they have different terminologies for it like ‘darshan fees’, ‘prasad fees’, ‘archana fees’, and so on. What is this but blatant blasphemy of “God” and overt exploitation of blind faith of our fellow humans? In laymen terms, its called daylight robbery – only, no one realizes it. Lets take a case study, shall we?

Isckon is perhaps a household name by now. A few years back, there were rumors that the so-called sacred institution was a front for drug peddling, prostitution, and work-force abuse. I don’t know how far this is true, but personally I don’t care. What I actually want to convey about Isckon, is the fact that it does not instill that bhakti— which is what we surely go to temples for. We see cakes being sold everywhere; milkshakes, pizzas, doughnuts, for crying out loud. It’s more like a bakery than a temple and I know many would disagree, but all I tell them is to think out of the box, think rationally.

Unfortunately, I once found myself in a temple dedicated to lord Shiva. I happened to see many things, which disappointed me. I saw a helpless foreigner being cheated out of his money by a purohit, who was speaking to him about how the temple trust found him charitable, and how they would send him prasadam, by post. I saw, also, that the money went into the purohit’s cloth. The people who are deemed messengers of faith, are themselves corrupt. Later a woman who was in front of me asked a pujari, where she could get the archana done, for which he replied to enquire at a counter! You see, the whole effect of devotion is lost if you stuff bakeries and reception counters into temples.

It’s the common scene in any temple you visit, in Bangalore. People try to make temples more attractive and modern but fail to remember during the endeavor that that is not what we want. What we do want is a calm place where we can enjoy our moments with God under a huge banyan tree, listening to the chirping of birds, rather than getting a scratch card to win prasadams!