Today, our everyday lives are fraught with some kind of larger intellectual conflict. This comes to the fore especially when youngsters are forced to take part in a ritual, say like a Shraadha, or a pooja. Aren’t these superstitions which any educated person should shed? Why are we being forced to perform these outdated traditions which are irrational and have no scientific basis? While it was alright to hold on to these practice two centuries back, now that we are exposed to the sciences, should we not abandon these unscientific, false beliefs – are questions we are often confronted with. In short, the youngsters are asking us “why in the age of science should we hold on to superstitions?”
The labelling of the various practices around us as superstitions implies that we are deriving our actions from false beliefs. Why are these belief false? The typical answer would be because they cannot be proved by natural sciences and its methods. Gods do not exist, the dead do not go to another world nor do our ancestors come in the form of a crow – says the rationalist. However, much as we respect the sciences and their achievements, human beings inhabit a sphere which is much larger than that which is made available by natural sciences.
Our inheritance constitutes not just the achievements of natural sciences and other disciplinary forms of knowledge passed on to us by our educational institutions but also the practices which have been passed on to us from one generation to the next through the family milieu. Nor do our traditions and practices derive from the ‘beliefs’ that we possess. In fact, if we extend scientific rationalism to all our endeavours, most of our ways of inhabiting the world would have to be erased in a violent manner.
Superstitions as ‘False beliefs’?
Perhaps a better way to approach the question posed is to reflect on the question itself: How and when did we come to think of various practices like rituals and pooja as ‘irrational’, or as “superstitions” i.e. involving actions that are based on false beliefs? Where does this idiom of superstitions as false beliefs come from? At least one element that has played a role in this is our colonial past.
The beginning of casting a whole lot of traditions as superstitions can be traced back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century view of India held by the elite of the colonial administration. Contrary to how we understand superstitions today, superstitions then were not opposed to science in general but referred to practices that deviated from the practices of a true religion. Superstitions were seen as beliefs and practices connected to worshipping of false gods and they were cast in opposition and defined against “true religion”, which was the worship of One, true God of Christianity. Worshipping the true God, it must be remembered, was not classified as a superstition but as a proper form of worship.
Thus, superstition was not a category to capture a universal phenomenon but acquired its meaning from only within a religious, theological framework, especially within what were seen as inter-religious or doctrinal disputes within Christianity. In the early nineteenth century, during the beginning stages of the colonial encounter, Europeans described the native society as “superstitious” or based on “false beliefs” and therefore as “immoral” and “corrupt”, all of which were a result of straying away from the worship of One true God. The practices dedicated to gods other than One true God were characterized as resting on “false beliefs”.
Superstition as the Other of Natural Sciences
With secularization, God goes out of the picture and the theological frame weakens. Understanding God’s Law/works (the book of nature and the book of God/ the Bible) which drove the pursuit of natural sciences in Europe before secularization, gives way to understanding the natural law and the emphasis on “true doctrine” gives way to an emphasis on “a true proposition”. Hence, superstitions today have come to be seen as the other of natural science. This comes from our understanding that events in nature must have a natural cause and any belief or practice which derives its cause from the ‘supernatural’ or from God/gods is faulty, irrational and a superstition. In short, belief in the supernatural and its influence over our events in our lives is superstition and against our scientific temperament. This implies that to identify something as superstition today, we need a distinction between the ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ to be present in a culture, resting on the idea that God created the world while He himself stayed out of it.
However, strangely enough, this distinction is not present in all cultures and all times. In fact, Dale Martin, a professor of religious studies, claims that the distinction between natural and supernatural is peculiar to the modern age and the Christian world, and that the ancients (here, we mean ancient Greeks and Roman) had no term for ‘the supernatural.’ This is a fascinating claim which he demonstrates with a fair amount of evidence. He shows that such a category did not exist for the ancients and neither the people nor their philosophical notions divided reality into the natural and supernatural. This is not because divine forces such as gods, daimons did not exist but because ‘the ancients did not separate out divine forces and beings from “nature” (made of “matter” and “natural forces”) and relegate them to a separate ontological realm.’ The Greek term physis (nature), he points out, refers to ‘all that is’ and the ‘ancient people took the gods, and all other beings we would think of as “supernatural”, to be part of nature if they existed at all’ (Martin 2004: 14–15).
Ancients and Superstitio
The ancients thought about superstitio differently. Superstitio or deisidaimonia in Greek was to see it as ‘any sort of excess in one’s attitude or behaviors with respect to divinities and the beings, persons, places and things connected with them’ (27). Thus, it was not wrong to be devoted to a particular god or to pay respects at the shrine of gods but to do so in a way that was extravagant, excessive and inappropriate. Martin points out that it is only with Origen, a Christian intellectual of 2–3 CE who presents Christianity as the only true philosophy and condemns the worship of gods and images as unphilosophical, based on “false beliefs” related to “false gods” and ‘superstitious’ that superstitions come to be associated with idolatry, a sense that prevails in Macaulay in 19th century India.
Rituals as Superstitions
In 19th century India, the practice of idolatry and performing of rituals came in for specific criticism. This becomes clear when we see the early history of colonialism, especially the debate between the Anglicists and Orientalists. The Orientalists and Anglicists are often seen to be on the opposite side of the camp, with the Anglicists desiring to introduce Western Science and education and the Orientalists being sympathetic to Oriental learning. However, we see that the differences between the two factions are insignificant when compared to the presuppositions of the Indian society they shared. Both held a normative, evaluative view of the native society that it was “immoral” and “degenerate.” It was immoral because the people had lost sight of truth, practiced idolatry, involving worship of several false gods. In short, a true practice and therefore a “right” practice would be derived from the scriptures which contained the laws of God. A false practice, which was also therefore morally wrong, derived from a belief in false gods and deviated from scriptures.
What is striking is that this mode of thinking introduced by the British where practices derived from scriptures and were true or false, was unavailable before this time. As scholars like S. N Balagangadhara have pointed out, asking whether practices were true or false was not the way to settle any dispute about practices before this period. Instead, a practice was assessed based on whether it brought satisfaction to the people who performed it or whether it achieved the desired end/effect or whether it was beneficial or harmful and practices were subject to constant revision and change.
The practices were not meant to be true or false or right or wrong in any ultimate sense because there is no concept of a Law given by God. Instead, our gods, much like in ancient Greece and Rome, are one among many participants in human endeavour. We deal with our gods as “personal agents” who can get angry, be appeased, can bring us fortune or misfortune based on our treatment of them. In other words, we deal with them as we deal with other human beings. They possess power in their assigned spheres and place. Our rituals were ways to bring these together.
Thus, we have two ways of talking about our attitude to our practices. We can either ask whether they derive from true beliefs (which is difficult to prove) or we can ask if we are taking part in appropriate behaviour or indulging in an excess with respect to our attitude and behaviour towards our gods and practices. The second approach, I submit, allows us to show respect to for things held sacred, value what has been passed on by our ancestors, and prevents us from dismissing our varied forms of inhabiting the world just because they cannot be proved by the natural sciences. Why forsake traditional resources to deal with nature and all that happens in our lives – a life lived according to common sense, practical knowledge, with some concern about gods, daimons and rest of nature.
Certain practices have come into being over time and they have a social value. The least we can do is to understand the nature of these practices and its function in the society. To evaluate these practices based on whether they derive from true beliefs is to mistake the nature of these practices for they are not based on beliefs. Several factors have gone into their formation and they are a result of considerations and reflections of people over generations. To assign beliefs to practices implies that we think of practices as a result of articulated beliefs or propositions (which can then be proved true or false). In fact, it is the other way round. Beliefs or propositions are an attempt at articulating practices. In short, inherited practices are always prior to individual beliefs. Therefore, beliefs are not essential part of the practices.
Of course, how do we bring our practices in alignment with our current life pattern – is a question that still remains.
Bibliography
Balagangadhara S. N. 1994. Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion. Studies in the History of Religions, Vol. 64. Leiden; New York, NY: EJ. Brill
Martin, Dale B. 2004. Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rao, Narahari. 2010. Inter-cultural Dialogue as a Form of Liberal Education, in P. E. Bour, M Rebuschi, and L. Rollet (eds.) Construction: Festschrift for Gerbard Heinsmann, pp 1-15. London: College Publications.