The numbing scale of death and destruction in Uttarakhand makes you wonder whether it could trigger a crisis of faith and redefine the complex relationship involving man, society, and god.
All natural calamities fundamentally challenge the notion of god as omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving. This was enhanced as last month’s flood tragedy in the Indian state of Uttarakhand bordering Nepal killed thousands who were on pilgrimage there. For them to die in what were moments of extreme piety not only seemed frightfully irrational, but an unpardonable betrayal by god (or gods) who they had gone to worship.
No doubt the unpredictable ferocity of nature, indiscriminate construction, and environmental degradation combined to intensify the damage in Uttarakhand. Yet the believer can’t help but ask questions that the atheist typically poses: is god not supposed to protect people, at least the religious, from calamities? What wisdom does god have in raining destruction on the world?
These are questions philosophers have pondered over the centuries. They broadly divide evil into two categories: horrific actions man perpetrates against others and disasters or accidents which claim lives. If there was a god, all-powerful and all-loving, wouldn’t (s)he have created a world without evil? Their ideological rivals counter it by saying a world without evil would have made free-will redundant and blurred distinctions between good and repugnant.
The free-will argument is relevant to evil that man willfully spawns, such as massacres, but can’t be extended to natural disasters. These are consequences, from the perspective of faith, from the will of god. Yet, as the votaries of faith argue, the scale of destruction can be mitigated through measures humans can take. For instance, constructing buildings resistant to earthquakes, or as in Uttarakhand, not raising structures in flood plains or denuding forests that help check landslides. Though these measures entail high economic costs (or sacrificing gains) – the poor can’t make their houses earthquake-resistant, can they? – the believer, nevertheless, could incorporate elements of the atheist’s arguments to redefine the idea of god.
Unfortunately, Uttarakhand has triggered a contrary response. Many believe the dead were blessed for they were called to the abodes of gods to take their last breaths. This is almost a universal response from people to pilgrims dying, say, in a stampede in the haj or kumbh melas, forgetting that it is contradictory to praise god who chose some to die but also saved many others, as happened in Uttarakhand.
Through such beliefs we seek to rationalise the randomness of life and absurd situations. From this perspective, god is turned into an imperious lord, killing people or keeping them alive in accordance to his whims. Obviously, the faithful believes the actions of god have a higher reason beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals.
In our attempts to reconcile what is seemingly incomprehensible, we have not only turned irrational but also compromised the value of human will. Despite the terrible tragedy in Uttarakhand, there is a whisper of astonishment at the Kedarnath Temple having remained intact even as several buildings around it were washed away in the floods, though there is evidence that many buildings around the temple survived the flood. This selective assigning of meaning portrays god as selfish, raining havoc on people even as he insulated a place of worship from devastation.
Could there not be geological or architectural reasons for the Kedarnath temple withstanding the impact of flash flood? Is it not possible that the building material of the Kedarnath temple, presumably sourced locally, was superior to the brick-and-mortar constructions of the present times? Might not this worldview, which demands a complete surrender of will, explain our indifference to, say, building laws and rapacious violation of environment?
Such questions are not largely asked as commercial gains accrue from promoting a religiosity of an irrational kind. Traditionally, pilgrimage symbolised a rite of passage, an enduring of physical hardship and spiritual crisis, to pay respect to the gods in their abodes. Modernity has made possible instant spirituality, as thousands are ferried by buses and cars, even choppers, to the feet of their gods.
What is needed is to rescue god from attributes we assign to him, attributes which serve our own self-interests.
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