Problems with anthropomorphizing God

Kanji Lalji Mehta anthropomorphized God in OMG, Oh My God!, just to take Him down in a court of law. But he was not the first. It can be argued that the Bhakti tradition was born out of and sustained by imbuing God with personal attributes, taking Him down from His impersonal pedestal. In popular culture in India this was done by, perhaps for the first time, an atheist – and that was the twist which made the movie a hit.

This post is about the more traditional route to making God live in our midst by making Him one of us. And, the latest effort, an op-ed article in The Hindu of January 17, 2013 entitled Don’t like this temple? Choose another by Madhu Purnima Kishwar [1] fails.

The article is a rant against the media, particularly the TV news programs (I know that “TV news” is a contradiction in terms) “which have come to resemble inquisitions or kangaroo courts”. I hold no brief for such programs and I am with the writer on this. But – you knew this was coming – the way she has tried to use that justified frustration with the news media in support of a regressive religious attitude (are there any other kind of religious attitude?) really stirred me to pen down this anti-thesis to her thesis.

Her thesis is “Hindu divinities are not unknowable, distant entities. They have distinct personalities, character traits, likes, dislikes.” The devotees are right, have the authority to honor these personal attributes and even “dictate their deities to change with changing times” . But “our modern day missionaries [the media and their cocooned coterie of panelists] can’t stand the temperamental nuances of our diverse deities.”

Well, I have a thing to say here. Our temple practices vary so very widely from region to region (and even within a region, between sects), there is always of a frisson in our minds when we go to temples outside of the culture in which we are born. Why else, I dare ask, do we have Bengali, South Indian, Marathi temples in Delhi? To attenuate that feeling of anxiety, and temple is no place to feel anxious. This leads to the conclusion that it is not just our media missionaries schooled in the colonialist template who are intolerant of the distinctness of any particular deity – Lord Ayyappa of Sabarimala being the totem for the article – but also the temple-going laity.

Mr. Rahul Easwar, one of the hereditary priests of the Sabarimala Temple was grilled for supporting the temple policy of discriminating against female devotees. This is where the anthropomorphizing of Lord Ayyappa began, in the first paragraph of the long article. It was not as crude as the temple policy that was discriminating women, you see. The presiding deity is well within His rights “to shun the company of female devotees”. The writer is aghast that “even the conduct of gods and goddesses” are under the scanner!

I am not going to be equally crude and demand proof from the author that Lord Ayyappa did indeed order that He be not visited by females. Yet, I will ask the author whether the presiding deity of the Guruvayoor Temple demanded that the male devotes be bare chested in His premises. OK, that is not all that serious an issue. What about other temples that denied entry to the lower castes? Was it done on the explicit orders of the deities of these temples? And, when these temples, indeed the presiding deities were ordered to let these unfortunates enter the temple, what did they do? Were they grilled by the media?

The problem with anthropomorphizing God is that it discounts the universality aspects of the divine – the One who cares for all. Yes, a temple has umbilical connections to the proximate culture of which it is a part and this has to be respected. But when that culture becomes a straitjacket, it has to be removed, forcefully if need be, to establish universality – the often cited, and rarely practiced concept that goes under Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. I will come back to this a little bit later.

The hereditary priest, as per the author, kept questioning whether it is acceptable for the inquisitors that there are temples that deny entry to males. Apparently this question, asked repeatedly, never elicited any response. Shame on the inquisitors.

But, is the counter question by the priest an “intelligent defence” of his “faith and Ishta dev” [italics in the original], as the author says? Before I proceed to discuss the intelligence aspect of the counter, I would like to point out that the author suddenly dis-anthropomorphized Lord Ayyappa. Now, the priest is talking not about Lord Ayyapa’s dislike of female company but about the priest’s faith and Ishta dev! Such flip-flops are necessary in defending the indefensible. Anthropomorphizing God brings this on.

Now to the intelligence aspect. The return question is intelligent only to the extent that the discussion gets side tracked. The debate is disengaged from the topic. How would any answer by the inquisitor hold any relevance to the current discussion except in terms of, “He did it, so I did it!” Immature, isn’t it? Immature intelligence, then?

About extricating the temple, indeed the deity from the straitjacket. The priest “has been pleading for respectful engagement with faith leaders in order to bring about changes in allegedly outmoded customary practices and cultural values.” There is not a whole lot to take exception to this, if indeed it is true.

But, the question to be asked is whether any leader of any faith had ever engaged respectfully with leaders of other faiths, let alone with people of no-faith? Never. Not too long ago, when Pope Benedict XVI called Anglicans to shift their allegiance to Rome, was there any respectful engagement? Historically, when the Shivite and Vaishnavite sects were at loggerheads there was no respect between them. You must read Kalki Krishnamoorthy’s “Ponniyin Selvan”, the nicely caricatured character Azhwaarkkadiyan!

The Crusades, remember? The Spanish Inquisition, remember? The current Islamist wars / conflicts / terrorism, remember? When a few years ago the Imams of Lucknow and Jama Masjid Delhi did not see eye to eye on when the moon was visible, there was no respect. So, why suddenly this craving for respectful engagement? Oh, you do not have the Lord on your side!

This is where the difference between the priest’s arguments defending Lord Ayyappa as mentioned in the newspaper article and the law suit brought by Kanji Lalji Mehta against God in OMG comes into relief. The latter is strong, defensible, indeed sensible, all that the former is not!

Raghuram Ekambaram

Reference

1.    http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/dont-like-this-temple-choose-another/article4313507.ece