As stories of survival and tragedy still do the rounds, post last Saturday’s bomb blasts in Delhi, the mood is undeniably contemplative. And by that I don’t necessarily mean a debate about whether we require a more stringent law to combat terrorism, because, of course, the need is to secure the country, by means of newer legislation but more importantly by sharper policing and effective implementation of the laws. Instead, what I am going to be talking of are other deeper thoughts also swirling in our heads at this moment. And one which I ran into just this morning goes something like this: Does god exist at all, in the face of all this horror?
Of course, it has been fashionable to reject god. The “intellectual” circles, ever since early 20th century when Nietzsche and Sartre, Kierkegaard and Kafka shaped discourse in the “progressive” West, have always done that. But I now find that the political and social climate that contributed to (aesthetic) existentialism — because though this is the most common version we all know, there is a theistic version too as proposed by Islam or Judaism or Christianity, which accept a creator, god, but say that the shape and meaning of life is up to the individual, not pre-determined — has many parallels in India today.
There may not be a World War happening but in many other ways we are living through war: A constant sense of insecurity, unprecedented violence, a loss of the sanctity for life and a total breakdown of systems. So if god exists, where is he? Or are we all waiting for Godot, unable to see the absurd, if you can call it that?
India has always been a study in contradictions. Just when you’d think that everyone would and should be steadily losing faith, pushed towards nihilistic thought by blasts, stock market quakes, job cuts, murders, rapes, killings in the name of religion, more BMWs mowing down more people… a chunk of our society turns round to affirm faith. You may have noticed that despite all the murders carried out in its name, religion is not a bad word at all in India, yet. (Though I do acknowledge that most of us who are moderate and middle-class and consider ourselves liberal tend to be uncomfortable with any overt display of it.) But if you, like me, tend to see organised religion with all its trappings as distinct from faith, you will find it heartening that it is not just a more Right-wing India that is resurgent at the moment but another one too driven by subtle hopes.
Look around and you may just see a resurgence in faith too. For every family lost in the floods or in terror strikes, there are “miraculous” escapes that offer hope, however faint: a bleeding man tottering to hail an autorickshaw and collapsing in front of it before he can even get in. A good Samaritan auto driver rushing him to the nearest hospital instead of turning his back and fleeing like any mortal in this country would do 90 per cent of the time.
What is that? God, destiny or a random sequence of events? If you have faith — and, interestingly, almost 75 per cent of this country’s top scientists who believe in god, do — you obviously won’t subscribe to the random chance theory. You may believe god to be a mere construct of man but isn’t he — or she — also an image of all our ideals, standing for everything that is good and kind and powerful and creative in humankind? Besides, if you do need to believe in something, which you do any way to get through life, isn’t it better to put that faith in something positive, something substantial, god, or goodness, or a humanist potential — not in, well, nothing?