At last, at the entrance to the chamber of Lord Balaji, the mass slowed down in its pace, as if readying for the grand finale. I turned to my neighbour and asked him why he was here.
‘I have been coming here every year for the last fifty-eight years. This is my annual health check-up,’ he said.
‘How is that?’
‘Every year, I walk here from Chennai,’ he said. ‘I walk a distance of 140 kilometres from Chennai up to the temple here in Tirumala. While doing so, I discover amazing things about my own body. Are my knees aching? Am I short of breath? The answers point to the state of my health.’
Just then, Surender Reddy grabbed me by the arm and pulled me inside. As I inched towards the statue, he stood behind me, whispering continuously in my ear.
‘Watch him closely, observe, remember what you see forever. Look at his eyes, this is energy, it will protect you.’
And then we were out in the sun. The darshan was over.
Sitting cross-legged atop a platform out in the courtyard of the temple, Professor Prashanth Sharma was chanting Vedic verses on a microphone. Surender Reddy had already explained to me that Professor Sharma was the deputy head priest, and in charge of temple affairs these days as the head priest was away travelling.
I climbed the platform and sat beside the professor, who decided to take a quick break.
‘We do not understand the language of the Vedas. Then why do you recite them?’ I asked.
‘Vedic hymns and rituals are like pure mathematics. We pandits know and understand it. But other people do not need to understand what these rituals mean. It is just like how people need to know only applied mathematics, and have no need to understand pure mathematics.’
He added, ‘See, religion needs to be led responsibly. It is like gold, which is great but also dangerous.’
‘What does religion mean to you?’ I probed.
‘The meaning of religion differs according to one’s experience. At the crux of it, it is to live happily and make others happy. We call this ananda. The Vedic meaning of ananda is different from the popular one, which refers to a person who has sufficient money, worldly resources, and is enjoying the world. Instead, ananda in the Vedas means the shape and size of the universe itself.’
I gathered that the professor was articulating an important and recurrent theme in Indian religious philosophy, that true happiness is often not accessible through ordinary human experience, but must be achieved through some other transcendental means, which can be yoga, meditation, devotion or rituals. For example, from as early as the seventh century, tantriks have viewed the human body as a microcosm of the universe, focusing on it as the only vehicle for attaining power and liberation. Later, the Bhakti Movement, developed between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries in India, brought in a deeply devotionalist trend, which also included techniques to not only worship but interact with God, the higher levels of which would include a variety of psychological states and emotional responses. The conquests of the Turkish, Afghan and Central Asian Muslim warriors between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries have had a significant effect on India’s political history, establishing Islam as a major religion in India. Yet, there are also the more conciliatory and assimilative activities of the Sufis, which have incorporated yogic techniques and devotionalism, similar to Hindu transcendental practices, to implant Islam as a more customized Indian religion. The monist cosmological formulations of Ibn-al Arabi, the personalization of Allah in Sufi poetry, as well as the renunciatory practices of Sufi masters—all of these have created a mystical form of Islam in India. Even though Sufism originated during the earliest phases of Arab Islam, and flourished throughout the medieval Islamic world, it seemed in many ways uniquely suited to the Indian religious setting.
The professor was also right in pointing out that ultimately, the meaning of religion for each of us hinges on personal experiences with religion. On my way back from Tirumala to Delhi, I realized that over the past three years living in India, I had learnt to distinguish between my individual experience with religion—which had been full of conflict—from that of the meanings religion has for others in the country. Religion without faith is shallow and meaningless ritualism, whereas faith in itself is powerful. In India, I met people who were spiritual and inspiring, and the source of their faith was their religion. There were those who, using the power of their faith for a positive outcome, had fought enormous challenges and terminal diseases with extreme stoicism, spirit and peace of mind. There were people across economic classes who had drawn strength from their faith to overcome great personal loss from floods and rebuilt their lives. There were also those who had risen from refugee camps and slums to become millionaires, drawing power from unflinching faith in their own capabilities.
In each case, there was nothing rational about the source of their faith. It was inexplicable what made them so certain of their beliefs. Their faith, I found, was the very negation of reason. It was not supported by facts. Yet, such a faith was beneficial to them, when they used it to improve their life in a country where, usually, nothing is easy.
On the other hand, must we forget the killings in the name of religion in India? Can faith be constructive only when we bury our memories of communal violence? I don’t think so. Instead, we need to make a greater effort to remind ourselves all the time that it is the same absolute sense of certainty that can empowers us with so
