Letter to Ansh — 10

Dear Ansh

It is Saturday morning 23rd February. Your Mother and you are due to come back on 26th to Australia and I cannot wait to see you again. You have grown taller and seem to particularly enjoy a song called, “Jhing jhing jhingat”. It has a catch beat and you love dancing to it. And I love watching you dance to it.

I wanted to talk to you today about statues. In India in particular you will find huge statues of various gods and godmen. Right now they are competing to build the biggest statue in the world, a statue of King Shivaji off the coast in Mumbai and statue of Sardar patel in Gujarat. Another Indian politician in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh built a huge monument to herself using public money. It is so surreal that these things have happened in a Democracy, but I am not going to complain here about how the money could have been used for better purposes. That is the job of the Indian citizenry as it is their money and their country, we live in Australia.

However there is something far more fundamental I am going to talk to you about. When I was growing up we had a poem called Ozymandias by the poet Shelley, which goes like this:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The moral is construed as how the arrogance of great kings has been swept away by the passage of time. Everything physical eventually fades away.

Then there is the story of the Easter island heads. Easter Island is a small island many thousand miles off the coast of Chile in South America. There are hundreds of huge head shaped statues all around the island. At a certain point in time, the story goes the island started running into a resource crunch. The population started a game of one upmanship and tried to build ever larger and taller statues while their livelihood perished away around them. Today the Easter island civilization has gone extinct, nothing but the statues remain.

Statues have been often used to represent Gods, and each culture and tribe had their own representation of God. Mohammed the prophet of the religion of Islam, thought the statues were a big part of the problem of tribalism. He forbade statues and any images of God or himself. You may have many criticisms of Islam and its dogmatism, but this simple idea is very powerful. It frees up people from idol worship. Although on the flip side, adherents of islam have taken this thing too far and have destroyed existing statues which were the heritage of the world.

You are currently at my parents place, every year in the Ganapati festival, the extended family gathers together and celebrates. The festival centers around the idol of lord ganesha which is brought in for a day and then drowned in the river. It is a time of enjoyment and bonhomie. Religion and tradition serves as the glue which holds the whole thing together. Whether or not you believe in God, having people coming together and having a good time with the family is a no brainer. If an idol serves as the crutch or focal point around which everyone coagulates then I would go with it simply for the effects it achieves.

And there is the statue of liberty in the US, it represents a wonderful idea. Freedom. There is a beautiful poem that goes with it by Emma Lazarus and it goes like this:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

You feel inspired and empowered with such statues.

On the other side, In India they perform a Satya Narayan puja. It is tradition to perform a ritual for a new house and on new undertakings. However the religious text that goes with it is outright blackmail. The stories they tell you have a common theme. Man worships for god and offers to perform the puja of satya narayan in return of something. God gives man what he wants and waits for the puja that never comes. God gets angry and ruins the man. Man is repentent and performs the puja. God forgives and gives man back everything.

Moral of the story, perform the puja or else.

I tend to believe that it is a scam cooked up by the pujaris (priests) to make money using scare tactics. You will decide on your own whether you believe in God or not and I will not try to tell you whether to do so or not. But if fear is your motivator then that is a problem. I believe God does not want us to fear him (or her), if a religion or tradition is based on fear or peer pressure then ask yourself is this really God. If worshipping a statue saps you of energy or money then that is bad. If a statue on the other hand gives you joy and happiness then there is nothing wrong with having the statue.

Just don’t make the statue the center of your life. Know its purpose in your life, and as long it serves the purpose of empowering you keep it. When it stops doing that and becomes a drain instead move on.

Your loving father

Moresh