Evils of superstitions in Indian society

Superstition refers to the blind faith in an idea without giving any consideration to reason, logic and evidence. Many superstitions have originated in human society on account of ignorance and fear of the unknown and incomprehensible. All superstitions are harmful since they inactivate the reasoning capacity of human beings. Secondly, they arrest human endeavour and initiative. Thirdly they make people waste their energy, time and money in worthless rituals and ceremonies. There things lead to decline and decay of civilization. So, we have to be vigilant and guard ourselves against the superstitions.

In India, idolatry remains as an integral part of Hindu religion. The masses assume that by worshipping idols, their sins will be forgiven and they will be rewarded in this life as well as after life. Only under that notion, they perform costly pilgrimages to the so called holy places and fill the temple coffers with money and valuables. This illusion prevents people from acquiring worldly wisdom. It also averts people from realizing the value of thought and work. As a result, people live in vain hope. They expect wonders to happen in their lives. Under this false hope, they don’t involve themselves in any productive and creative activities sincerely. This wrong mental attitude towards life and work acts as a major hurdle to our progress.

Another strongly prevailing misunderstanding among masses is that they can peep into their future with the help of astrology. Even the educated Indians believe the blabbering of the illiterate astrologers. In South India, bride and groom’s birth stars and horoscopes are still the deciding factors for marriages. Based on astrology, people take unwise decisions and dissipate their energy and natural resources in useless rituals and ceremonies. These wasteful activities are the great impediments to our progress.

Faith in God-men and God-women and their supernatural powers is another peculiar superstition in Indian society.Observing his popularity, many cheats and criminals have become self-styled god-men and god-women by wearing saffron clothes. They live in great luxury. They have constructed their residences like palaces at an enormous cost. They deceive gullible people in many ways. They hypnotize people by making them sing devotional songs in chorus and do many rituals and ceremonies to hoodwink them. They employ mass media to hoodwink the masses. In no other civilized country, could this sort of cheats become god-men and god-women and have lakhs of disciples of exploit.

Many societies were in a similar condition and by discarding useless values they became progressive. For instance, Japan kicked off the useless rites and rituals and became a powerful nation. Russia dropped many religious customs and became a healthy nation. Recently, many African countries dropped faith in sorcery and black magic and became progressive. These are the lessons to us. They indicate that we should develop a scientific temper in our society; that we should discard all superstitious ideas doled out to us in the name of tradition and that we should get rid of all anarchistic customs and beliefs. A revolution in the world of ideas is the need of the hour.