BANGALORE: The Niduma-midi Mutt has decided to up the ante in its fight for uprooting superstitious practices in the state. On Sunday, a gathering of intellectuals, progressive thinkers, social activists and Nidumamidi Mutt seer Veerabhadra Chenamalla Swami ji resolved to take out a massive ‘walk’ from Bangalore to Udupi if the State government fails to act strictly against superstitions.
The ‘walk’ is the last step of a three-point action plan that was resolved upon. The first step involves organising awareness campaigns at Taluk and Zilla Panchayat levels.
The second step involves a protest at Freedom Park featuring representatives from all over the state and with several Mutt heads submitting memorandums to Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda.
“Of late, we can see an organised attempt to exploit innocent people with newer superstitions. Karnataka must be the only state to have such rampant superstitious beliefs. It is not just about Made Snana. We have to initiate a more aggressive fight against many other practices that demean humanity,” said Veerabhadra Chenamalla Swami.
Speaking on the occasion, former state-unit secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) G N Nagaraj vouched for a phased approach in tackling the
problems.
“The results will be obviously disappointing if we try to eradicate all evil practices at once. Keeping Made Snana as the base, we have to focus on the atrocities meted out to Dalits and shudras,” he said.
He intensified for the creation of an all-inclusive forum for anti-superstition comprising of Mutt heads, intellectuals and commoners. “Our final destination should be the making of a society that is intellectually-superior. Superstitions are created to exploit the masses,” said former MLC A K Subbaiah.
Kiran M Gajanur from the Department of Studies in Political Science, Kuvempu University, Shimoga, said, “We have to be sure that our movement is not mistaken to be anti-Brahmin. Our campaign has to be against the evil practices and not against any particular caste or creed.”