Note: This article first appeared in The Frontline as a cover story.

WHAT is good for the market is proving to be good for the gods in India. The more material acquisitions the middle classes make, the more pujas and homas they feel compelled to perform. Every vahan (vehicle) must have its puja, as must every tiny plot of bhoomi (land) before anything can be built upon it. Every puja, in turn, must have an astrologer or two and a vastu shastri, too. And then, every astrologer and vastu shastri worth his/her name must know how to work a computer, speak in English, and be “scientific” about it all.

Watching India’s thriving god market, one cannot help asking a simple question: where are all these seemingly modern pujaris, astrologers, vastu shastris and other retailers of rituals coming from? How does the supply of ritualists keep pace with the bottomless demand 21st century-Hindus have for religious rituals of all kinds?

Deemed universities have always served as crucial links in the supply chain that runs from traditional gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas to the homes, temples, offices, shops and even corporate boardrooms of the middle classes in India, going all the way to NRIs. The diplomas and degrees conferred by these universities, the majority of which are funded by taxpayers’ money, are actively “modernising” Hindu priestcraft and turning it into an economically comfortable middle-class occupation.

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In this series of articles I write about the forced enforcement of religious laws. 

Inscription on the Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore

Here are a few stories that have a common thread running through them.

•         Two teenage girls, their mother and maternal aunts were shot and buried while still breathing- their crime? The girls wished to marry persons of their choice- their mother and aunt supported them.
•         A married woman in her twenties was shot dead after being pulled out of her lawyer’s office; the lawyer was also shot at but had a providential escape. Reason- the victim had gone to consult the lawyer about divorcing her husband who was inflicting cruelty on her. The only eye witness to her murder by her husbands people was her mother, who later testified that she had seen or heard nothing. The dead woman’s father justified his daughter’s murder on the grounds of family honor!
•         A married woman was escorted by her friend’s son nearly half her age. That was construed of as spending time with an alien man. The punishment? The boy’s sisters were raped by the woman’s husband and his brothers.
•         Genital mutilation is carried out on many pre-pubertal Muslim girls in some African countries to prevent them from “enjoying sex”! Since it is forbidden in all civilized countries some parents try to take their girls back to the home country where it can be performed.
•         A couple was ordered to be separated by the village panchayat. The reason? According to some religious rule they were of the same gothra and hence were considered as brother and sister and hence their marriage amounts to incest.
•         A girl commits suicide after she was harassed by a local “sena”, for speaking to a neighbor belonging to another community. Her pleas that he was twice her age and had got her a job fell on deaf ears.
•         An auto rickshaw driver was assaulted with deadly weapons because he was transporting a woman belonging to another community, late at night. Her pleas that she was being taken to a hospital in an emergency were ignored.
•         A boy and a girl belonging to different minority communities were traveling together. They were attacked by a boy belonging to the girl’s community, supported by a local sena whose members belonged to the majority community!                                                                                                    

Each of these incidents has one thing in common- the treatment of women as a commodity. The constitution of India, it being a secular democratic republic, guarantees fundamental rights to all the citizens. We have the right to follow a religion of our choice, or to not have one. The right to marry a person of any community (though same sex marriages are not allowed!). The right to live with any person with whom we may choose to live, whether married to that person or not. These rights do exist on paper and for those who can afford the due process of law. But, according to the various Senas and Dals belonging to various religions, the constitution of India has been suspended in our district.

Click Here for Part - II