One of the saddest cultural casualties in the Tiranga Wars is our natural irreverence, our delicious freedom to joke about with God and godly matters. Nowadays, we actively LOOK for insults and reasons to be offended, even where none exist. The most illiterate example of this last week was the idiotic ban, now revoked, on Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural, an outstanding secular work. It is our cultural and constitutional right to read these books — yes, even the Vedanta. To cut us off from them is to perpetuate Macaulay’s “infamous” Minute on Education. How could you, Mr Singh? Must the “believing” modern Hindu, whose faith survived the centuries but was battered beyond belief by Saffronist poverty of imagination, scuttle back into the closet? An action replay of when the Left ruled media and academia? The reason Hindutva is hated by so many Hindus is that it is a mirror image of the jihadi belief system: “One way, my way”. Please don’t mirror Murli Manohar Joshi, Mr Singh. Or Mullah Omar.Instead, let’s put away religion for a while from political scrutiny and try getting back to an easy, happy familiarity with the Divine. Many of us remember laughing about God in public without anyone getting hyper. The Swiss laugh at their own kanjoosi with the joke that once, God came down to visit Switzerland. He went to a shepherd’s hut and tenderly enquired if all was well. “Everything is wonderful!” gushed the man, offering God a glass of fresh milk. “You have really provided so well for the Swiss: lush meadows, great mountains, cows and goats that yield rich milk, no political trouble.thank You, Lord!” Highly pleased, the Almighty prepared to depart, at which the Swiss automatically said: “Ein und schwanzig, bitte (One-twenty francs, please).”We remember a Hindi film — was it Lok Parlok? — in which “Krishna” prances to a most foolish song about being a “flute master”. Sreela Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Goswami Maharaj, head of the Gaudiya Math, recalls a tea garden owner who argued that God entered every heart in the form of tea (Sarvasya cha-ham hrdi sannivisto, Bhagvad Gita 15:15), though what poor God told Arjuna was, “And I reside in the heart of every being as the In-dwelling God”. One of the oldest PJs in modern India is the famous prayer, “Sarve jana sukhino bhavantu”: let all people be well and happy. Other sarkari types reportedly asked, “Why just the employees of Survey (of India)?” Dreadful puns, I know, but don’t you think it’s about time we lightened up about God?
