It's Day 2 of the Great Indian Digging for Gold. This would be the funniest thing to happen in India in a long time. But it's not amusing when the government goes digging the earth to find gold because a baba had a vision. The government hopes that it finds the 1,000-tonne treasure while rationalists fear it may. The government says what if there's a treasure there. Rationalists fear the same. The gold-digging in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao is dangerous either way.
There's fat chance of gold buried inside the ruins of a fort, destroyed in the 19th century in Unnao's Daundiya Kheda village. Locals already swear by Baba Shobhan Sarkar's mystic powers and claim that he once violently shook a tree and currency notes fell like autumn leaves. These are eyewitness claims, as claimed on TV. That should tell you the craziness in what was formerly known as the country of Taj Mahal and snake charmers. Modi said we have moved on to become a country of mouse-charmers. We boast out leap in science and technology. We claim to have Bangalored the world. But this Taj Mahal of moronic madness beamed live on your TV screen has reverted the status. We sell daydreams. We sell charlatan charms. We are Unnao-ed instead.
BABA BLACK SHEEP
We have one Asaram in jail and hundreds out there feeling up little girls in the name of mysticism. We have a Nirmal Baba who heals ailments and solves life's myriad problems by recommending pudina pakodas and black leather wallets. We have babas convicted but not put in jail. We have sadhus accused of all kinds of criminal activities rape, murder and financial fraud.
If this gold hunt ends in finding even a kilo of the yellow, we are doomed. An already overtly superstitious country will rush to self-declared saints and shower them with gold. One baba's vision has driven us to this show of naked lust and mind-numbing stupidity. The Constitution of India prescribed certain fundamental duties when giving us our fundamental rights. One of them obligates all Indians to develop scientific temper and strive towards excellence in all spheres of life.
WE PUT THE ASI IN ASININE
And here we have the custodians of the Constitution, sending specialists from Archaeological Survey of India and Geological Survey of India to chase a dream. A Union minister goes on record telling reporters about the power of babas. Charan Das Mahant, the minister who persuaded the Prime Minister to dig a ditch for rationality, says sadhus know all the world's secrets, the past and the future. This shameless man, a blot on any civil society, will remain a minister even if this gold hunt culminates in a big black hole. That's the tragedy. And if the hunt ends in finding even an ounce of promised gold, Mahant would certainly be promoted. That's the tragedy.
If you go on digging forts and ruins, there is always that 'very little' likelihood of striking gold or something of historical and/or archaeological importance. The baba and his minister disciple are hedging on that very little. What's the harm if something good comes out of it, as another minister, Renuka Chowdhary, said.
HAMPER THE TEMPER
The harm, Ms Chowdhary, is that we are already suffering like the innocent women burnt in the name of witchcraft. Narendra Dabholkar was killed because he fought the blind following of the outdated and the occult. In a country of genuine illiterates and literate illiterates, we have babas exercising undue influence in our society and its politics. For a secular nation, we already have too much religion in public life. That itself brings random rites, rituals and superstitions that hamper development of scientific temper.
As our scientists prepare for sending a mission 360,000,000 km away from Earth, our archaeologists are digging the earth to realise the dream of a unheard-till-last-week sadhu, who claims he spoke to the dead king the fort belonged to. We aim for the Mars while dunking ourselves neck-deep in the marshlands of medievalism. Our founding fathers dreamt of an India that could lead the world. Six decades after independence, we are digging a ditch so deep; we may take another six decades to come out of. Of what use is gold, if we have to pawn our minds for it.
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