Now that the heat and dust around Sabarimala have settled, we can afford to think rationally and historically about its core issue. That issue pertains to the taboo imputed to menstruation. All the while the face-off raged, not a word was said about the origin or spiritual logic of this taboo.
My investigation of this elusive taboo took me to the customs and culture of Persia. In Christian scriptures too menstruation is deemed unclean. So also, in Islam, which disallows menstruating women to pray, recite the Qur’an aloud, fast, and so on. No word is said on the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of it. The idea that menstruation is evil, or, a source of religious pollution- occurs, for the first time, in the Zend-Avesta, the scripture of Zoroastrians.
While everything good in the world was created by Ahura-Mazda—the good God—everything evil was created by Ahriman, his evil counterpart. The list includes, besides menstruation, serpents, locusts, winter, darkness, sin, sodomy, and plagues. It is fascinating to wonder what effect the knowledge of this historical fact could have had on the Sabarimala issue. Perhaps it is typical of all religion-centred controversies that its protagonists and antagonists were alike ignorant of the underlying facts. The more complete the ignorance, the fiercer the fights.
When it comes to religious reform, ‘beliefs’ about what is indigenous, or nationalistic, become especially problematic. Volumes of scholarly work exist illustrating the extent to which Jewish and Christian traditions have been influenced by Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Greeks. The type of Christianity developed by the West, in spirit, is almost incompatible with its Eastern origins. It is to the Way of Jesus Christ what Hindutva is to Hinduism.
This is true of the rise and fall of cultures as well. “In the schools of Alexandria,” writes Will Durant, in Our Oriental Heritage, “Hebrew theology mated with Greek philosophy to form the intellect of Europe”. This fact of history underlies the vision of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, or the whole world as one family. Religion is no different from commerce, science, or climate. Its light and darkness spread over the face of the earth. You could go bankrupt, if stocks crash in New York.
Rains could flee from several African countries if the Amazon rainforests are despoiled. The notion of spirits and ghosts travelled through the roads constructed by the Persians for commerce and war, and reached the Jews and it stays with us today. Let’s return to Sabarimala. The sense of taboo attached to menstruation is no less deep or disturbing for being alien. Bacteriology is alien to us in origin, but our sense of alienation from the environment in its wake is deep and compelling.
The idea that man should not eat man is not of Indian origin. It has come down to us from the early phase of the story of man, when regional and national boundaries were non-existent. Circumcision is neither Jewish nor Islamic in origin. It emerged as a substitute for human sacrifice; the prepuce substituting for the person. Other substitutes are: offering an animal in sacrifice, or the ‘first-fruits’ of harvest, or simply a regular supply of praise and thanks-giving to the deity.
I was urged, from childhood onwards, to praise God, but none told me why God was so fond of it, or how it helped him or me. All along, though, I used to feel uneasy about a God who was habitually addicted to praise like the dictators of the world, past and present. Dictators die, but flattery is immortal!
All through history, humankind has progressed by outgrowing beliefs. Humans ate raw flesh millennia ago before fire was tamed and used. Even dead animals were ravenously consumed by our distant ancestors. In the nomadic stage, they ate erratically and ravenously, to which anthropologists trace the origin of greed. We hoard wealth because we are anxious about the future. Anxiety, being an existential illness, is irrational. So, greed knows no limits and is gratuitous. If and when the next phase of moral progress takes place, greed could be transcended, just as the vermiform appendix has become redundant in the course of our physical evolution.
So, irrational taboos need to be outgrown; the sooner, the better. But the issue is how to achieve it. In religious reform, it is counter-productive to put exclusive reliance on law. Law is coercive and reductive. Law has no means to reach or read the depth of human psyche, where taboos lurk. Religious reform should not be undertaken without addressing these tricky zones of collective existence. Reform should be a by-product, not a primary goal. The primary goal must be, as our Constitution prescribes, in Article 51A(h), to “develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.
Regrettably, religion has become an irresistible quarry for politicians; and the custodians of religions today play second fiddle to them, preferring a parasitical to a prophetic role. The judicial system needs to take an enlarged view in adjudicating religious issues, lest judges in their fidelity to ‘the letter of the law’ come short of ‘the spirit of justice’. If discriminatory practices exist in a religious zone, as against the public sphere, it is up to the people concerned to deal with it, say by boycotting it.
The idea that god is more powerful in one place than in another is superstition, not faith. The Constitution of India does not confer on anyone the right to practise superstition. If anything, it imposes on citizens a duty to develop a scientific temper.