iPray ON FAITHBOOK

Sabah Noureen, a 29-year-old math teacher from Hyderabad and mother of three children, has added the application, “Quran Verses”, because her job and kids leave little time or energy for her to read the holy book. So, she conveniently browses it on a social networking site. “Even as I am networking with my friends online, I can read a verse from the Quran daily which I otherwise am not able to. Since the verse appears on my profile page, anybody visiting my profile can also read it. That way, I pocket a share of their reward from God. Facebooking, thus, can become an act of worship too,” she says. 

The reasons for adding the applications are as varied as the people who add them. While piety is Sabah’s premise, Brij Duggal, a 29-year-old software developer in Birmingham, has added the same application for the sake of identity. “I am a proud Hindu and I wish to show my association to my religion,” he says.
Application developers obviously knew the above reasons existed. “Spirituality is a basic human need. Just as social networking sites fulfill the human need to socialise, religious applications satisfy another kind of nee ,” says 20-year-old Dubai-based BBA student Abdullah Arif who developed the “Quran Verses” application on Facebook. Then, there’s Mickel Mhanna, the 20-year-old Lebanese multimedia student and developer of the application called “Jesus”. Mhanna is on a mission to earn his spiritual brownie points. “Jesus told us to preach the truth. And with this application, I feel I am a Facebook messenger,” he says. 

PHONEY CHANTS
Does spiritual networking imply that faith can be practiced anytime, anywhere? Not quite. That ability belongs to the mobile phone, which lets you have a conversation with God even as you are on the move—in a crowded bus, in a busy office or even in a movie hall screening a soporific film.
Himank Tripathi, 26-year-old public relations executive, uses his Samsung Guru B-100 phone that has a “mobile prayer” application to play a hymn to calm him in the middle of a chaotic day. The mobile prayer application allows you to select one of seven deities: Shiva, Hanuman, Ganesh, Sai, Laxmi, Balaji or Durga. Himank changes the deity each day of the week. “That way, I am blessed by all deities around the week,” he says. The phone plays a bhajan related to the deity at the time you want. For Himank, the bhajan is a morning wake-up call.

Mobile manufacturers are clearly tapping into the electronic spirituality market. Apart from Samsung’s Guru series phones, Motorola’s Yuva series handsets such as the recently launched MotoYuva W270 and MotoYuva W320 come with wallpapers of Hindu mythological heroes.
Service providers, too, are jumping into the e-religion fray, thanks to the moolah it’s raking. “In mobile jargon, there’s something called ABCDEF. A for astrology, B for Bollywood, C for cricket, D for devotion, E for education and F for finance. After Bollywood, devotional content attracts the most downloads. Twenty per cent of all our downloads are devotional,” says Krishna Durbha, marketing head (value-added services), Reliance Infocomm, adding that the market for electronic spirituality is “worth hundred of crores and set to grow”. 

Puritans should not scoff. Electronic worship is also plugged into reality. Last Christmas, for instance, Reliance subscribers could enlist themselves for lighting a candle at Tamil Nadu’s famous Velankanni Church. A candle would then actually be lit in the church on the user’s behalf.   

TECH KARMA
Facebook, mobile phone or even the iPod (yes, digital files of parts of the Quran, the Bhagvad Gita and the Bible can be downloaded to your iTunes and be listened to on your iPod) —— fact is that technology has become a facilitator for spirituality.  “The new-found love for spirituality was born out of technology in the form of television channels such as Aastha and Sanskaar. And technology alone will take it forward, this time in the form of Internet and mobile technology. The only way to push the tech-savvy youth towards religion is to get technology to market it to them,” says Aruna Broota, professor of clinical psychology, University of Delhi.
But caller tunes, ring tones and religious boxes on profile pages are not always spirituality per se. Quite often, they are used only for symbolic effect . If you are Hindu, for instance, you would want to wear Hinduism on your sleeve, just as you would flaunt other aspects that define you, like age, occupation or ethnicity. 

Dipankar Gupta, professor of sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, says such religious symbolism has been around for decades. First, people would place a Ganesh idol in the temple inside their homes. Decades later, the idol would rest on the dashboard and the rear windshield of the car. The youth wouldn’t lag behind either. It devised its own ways of religious display—-sporting ‘Om’-plastered funky tees. “What’s happening now in the form of devotional caller tunes is actually an update of what’s been happening since a long time,” he says.
Can technology replace real-life worship? “There’s nothing like going to the temple, ringing the bell and relishing the prasad. Technology cannot bring such joy,” says Himank.