Holy water, unholy carriers…

I am fine with religious functions and events as long as they don’t disrupt ordinary people’s lives. The tradition (newly revived during the BJP government rule) of kawariyas carrying Ganga water from Hardwar and transporting them on foot to their respective places definitely don’t fall under this category of personal religion.

For a month, they disrupt roads and create a ruckus wherever they go. And like it happened in Punjabi Bagh yesterday, these people just need an excuse to create a disruption and indulge in hooliganism. I think we really need to dig beneath our rhetoric of giving respect to religious activities and see this event for what it is – a disruptive activity which gives some people a license to rule the roads for a while. And this is not the first time that the Kawariyas have created disruptions in their wake. This has happened year after year and there is in fact an increasing trend of increasing violence.

And anybody who has travelled in Gurgaon in the last week or so will testify to the fact that traffic is literally brought down to its knees just because the kawariyas refuse to stop at red lights and refuse to let cars pass when they are travelling – in short act like they are above the law. And the sad part is that the law allows them to be this way. Small surprise then that they display the kind of anti-social behaviour that they do.

I have a couple of issues with the whole thing

First is a personal one. Religion thrives on making people single-minded by making them simple minded. Carrying water on foot for hundreds of miles is an arduous task and frankly a very intensive one. Many people express their admiration for the kawariyas for the same. But the fact is that it is just empty religious fervour – one bereft of understanding and one based on jingoism. If they really care about the holy water they are carrying, why don’t we ask them to join a river conservation programme? Why don’t they join Greenpeace and try to preserve all that makes the Ganga ‘holy’. They wont simply because that takes a lot of commitment and a lot of background work. And it wont give them a chance to rule the road for a month or indulge in random acts of destruction. For them piety is in walking miles and showing their faith, not in trying to understand their religion.

Second is a practical one. It is understandable that the government would not want to stop something which is born out of belief. But isn’t it also the duty of the government to ensure that the common citizens are not hampered in their daily life? The government seems to favour the first over the second, perhaps because the first group is organized and prone to aggression (maybe precisely because of the weakness of the law-enforcers) and the second group is neither.

So we continue to suffer hooliganism in the name of religion.

 

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