Chinese Relativity, Growing Up...

Some time ago there was a controversy regarding a purification ritual at a famous temple in Kerala. The "Guruvayur temple" has strict rules and conditions as to who can enter the place and if someone who doesn't satisfy those conditions enters, a purification ritual has to be performed. The rules are not written down anywhere but passed down from dad to son in the head priest's family. What if the son is mentally retarded? Well, I assume there are rules for that too, though we're not privy to such things. The head priest on the other hand has a hot line to god and consults him on important issues such as who to allow in. The only other people with such hot lines to their respective gods that I know of are the pope and G.W. Bush. But then, theirs is the real (jealous) god because it is written in the Ten Commandments. Recently, my favorite thinker, G. Carlin parsed, deconstructed and pared that list down to about two commandments (check it out on the web, if you're interested). And, maybe to counter that, the Vatican came out with a new ten commandments for driving, which prohibits lot of interesting stuff such as engaging in sin in cars. It only mentions cars, so it must be OK in rickshaws, buses, trains or the interestingly named cockpits.

Let us get back to the purification ritual. The guy who entered the temple had a Christian mother, which was in violation of the rules. The head priest explained (in rediff) that such rituals are also performed, for example, when someone throws up or defecates inadvertently inside the temple. Nice, a Christian is equated here with poop and puke. Imagine if the guy was a Muslim. There would have been a fatwa on the priest (as well as on the Muslim guy) immediately and the priest would be passing wee-wee in his loincloth. I'm assuming it is a loincloth but it could very well be a VIP Frenchie brief, unless the orally conveyed rules say - thou shalt not wear briefs.

Ideally, my reaction to such religion-related news is based loosely on Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: "No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less." But this time, for lack of anything else to rant about - Chikungunia is passe - I'm trying to make some sense out of this incident.

First of all, we have to check what the apologists for such actions say. One thing you keep hearing about is the word tradition. "Hey, that's the tradition followed at that temple and you should respect that." Fine by me. Tradition says that non-Hindus are not allowed in and ritual cleansing should be performed if they come in. But, it was only 60 years back this very same place had the tradition that said, "some low-caste Hindus are not allowed in and ritual cleansing blah, blah." Why was that tradition discontinued? I don't understand the logic behind that (though I know religion and logic are incompatible... still). If we still followed those traditions, this guy with the Christian mother and a low-caste father wouldn't even be allowed to let his shadow fall on that head priest. Who knows, perhaps the head priest has been secretly conducting ritual cleansings all these years. So much for traditions.

Another point made is that non-Hindus would come in to gawk and not pray. What is the big deal with gawking? My pious friends used to go to temples with the dual purpose of praying to god and ogling at women. Guys go through this phase when growing up, and 99.99% remain in that phase till they kick the bucket. It is what we call a growing up tradition (also defined as LIBF or lust induced brain freeze by Dave Barry .)

My hope is that they bring back some of these traditions. Like the one where women are not allowed to cover their breasts - only this time it'd include all women and not just the lower castes. Hey guys, not so fast. I don't think we should do that. The growing up tradition would go haywire. There'd be no fun.