Sulking religiously… or how to Punish Godly misdemeanors

Rarely does a faith allow its adherents to freely indulge in doubt or openly voice their skepticism. On rare occasions the church may allow the faithful to withdraw from society and battle their demons in the solitude of the monastic crypt. But the Bhakti tradition in Hinduism allows a Hindu to go on a private or even publicly articulated sulk against a God. This sulk could be a passing whim against a deity who did not, for example, help a lazy student pass an exam. But it could take the shape of a major episode bordering on sacrilege. According to a report in The Indian express [ May 5, 2006, Pune edition, Page 5] the inhabitants of Gethasalu in Tamilnadu decided to shut down the temple of god Jadiasamy when the well-known bandit Veerappan carried out a massacre in their village on October 8 1993. When Veerappan was killed on October 18 in 2004, the temple was reopened and god Jadiasamy found himself restored to his former status. This was indeed a big sulk, lasting more than a decade. We do not know if the village deity Jadiasamy has been large-hearted enough to forgive the villagers, but the villagers have definitely condoned their god as if nothing had ever happened.

There is of course no way to find out if this misdemeanor still rankles in the heart of the god Jadiasamy and whether everyone has started afresh on a clean slate with no vestigial karma. To sustain blind faith in the shapeless and formless almighty is a tough task emotionally. There is a constant fear of internal wavering and then there is the challenge of convincing others fellow believers of being rock steady in one’s belief. The only consolation is the din of those innumerable rituals and ceremonial prayers that suppress the doubts murmuring in the heads and the hearts of the believer. And thus the long gaps in faith go undetected, and thankfully unpunished.
Whether religious or non-religious, sulking is a very intimate act. First of all one only sulks in order to cause either hurt or irritation in the victim. For example, you don’t sulk against a green grocer who has shortchanged you. Instead you either argue or just blow up. Sulking is often directed towards someone superior or intimate such as parents. I heard the unforgettable example of a private secretary to a top manager, going into a sulk when he did not notice a smart haircut. Sulking scenes are a constant feature in Hindi films. You see religious sulk when a character rings a dangling bell outside the temple and walks straight to the god, delivering a long monologue in a plaintively angry mood. The marble face of the good may seem impassive to you, but the hero or his mother as the case may be, make sure to give him their piece of mind. These sulkers perhaps leave only when they are able to vividly imagine a chastened look on the face of the idol. Filmy heroines in Bollywood tighten their nooses on the hero through their sulking when they say – ‘I am not talking to you’. Often the hero has to sing a song or two in all kinds of deserts and mountains before the heroin rewards him with a smile.Arguably, the most intense emotion in a large Indian household is neither hate nor love but the sulking. It seems to radiate in invisible waves, traveling through neuronal circuitries, spilling out of brains till the entire house fills up with a strange choking haze. Husbands, mother in laws, brother in laws refuse to meet each other’s eyes. When asked if something’s the matter they tend to mumble monosyllables alleging that ‘nothing’s the mater except your imagination is working over time.’ In brief, denial of sulking is its greatest strength.
But sulking can be a double-edged weapon. In a religious context it comes very close to sacrilege as in the case of the victims of Veerappan. By way of fathoming the sentiments of those villagers, did they intend to declare their god impotent or did they doubt the very bona fides of the deity? Did the villagers feel cheated by a god who did not come to their aid when in need, or was the god blamed for sitting impassively in his abode when his men were being butchered?

This is an emotional quicksand that is difficult to fathom. We don’t quite know if it’s this way or that. Most likely it’s just a messy combination of all these sentiments.It would then seem that sulking can reveal depths of faith rarely seen in the fickle minds of human beings. A devotee goes into a sulk only when he can feel god in his gut, in all his/her realness. But it also reveals the sacrilegious temptations of a believer whose expectations must be met by a god to prove that he continues to care for his followers. Interestingly, when the residents of Gethasalu stopped worshipping their deity, they did not altogether banish him or shut his shop, nor did they make a doctrinaire declaration that his existence is herewith discontinued through a theological dictat. They just decided to teach him a hard lesson when he seemed to deserve it, the same way they decided to embrace him all over again after a decade when Veerappan was eliminated by the STF.

It is very tempting to compare this to the role played by the fans in Telugu and Tamil cinema in India. While the outsider may want to imagine that the fanatical fandom ensures a sort of voluntary slavery, S V Srinivas in his study of Chiranjeevi’s fans [fan clubs and individuals] found that the star himself faced constant pressures from his fans. In fact Chiranjeevi seems to carry a gnawing anxiety over every move and statement he makes in public life. Indeed ‘ye raste hain pyar ke, chalna samhal samhal ke’[‘make sure to tread warily on the pathways of love’]. The halo that you often see around the south Indian stars, may thus be largely composed of whirling photons of neurotic insecurities and anxieties, rather than unmixed deityhood. It would seem that god Jadiasamy after his last experience is now condemned to a life of perpetual torment, experiencing alternate waves of omnipotence and impotence with the sort of rollercoaster frenzy that we mortals remain ever unlikely to experience. Unless, of course, we decide to defect from the margins of madness to its vertiginous center.
ratnakar tripathy