Superstition
God’s Will Not Be Done
Shahina KK Shahina KK 18 Aug, 2011
Don’t open the temple vault, warned astrologers, you will suffer a snake bite. Ha!
KOCHI ~ When God spoke in Kerala, it was on a serious issue—the fear of losing His property. Astrologers who had a three-day consultation with Him to find out whether he wanted the last of the six vaults of the Sri Padmanabha temple opened were told that it was against His will. The ritual called Devaprasnam was based on the celestial configuration of planets. God’s message was clear: don’t open the vault, don’t take my gold or a snake will bite you and your line itself will become extinct.
There was only one problem to God’s will—it now turns out that the vault was, in fact, opened 10 years ago and no one has died of a snake bite yet. An affidavit filed by the Travancore royal family in the Kerala High Court in August 2007 states that they opened all the vaults on 18 December 2002 and took photographs of the wealth, which is now estimated to be worth over Rs 1,00,000 crore. It states that the wealth belongs to the royal family, not the devotees or the government. The affidavit comes as an embarrassment for those who believed in the superstition of the Devaprasnam and also for those who were praising the royal family for not staking claim to the treasure.
That God should have communicated His will was not as surprising as the reaction to it in Kerala. Newspapers presented the findings as if they were a scientific discovery. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy himself was careful in his reaction: “It is a question of faith and believers’ sentiments. If the apex court seeks to know the government’s views, we will convey them.”
Only opposition leader VS Achuthanandan has dared say that this is pure superstition. “These people (the astrologers) are capable of even scaring the Judiciary. There is no logic in it (the ritual) other than their reservations against the stock-taking ordered by the Supreme Court.”
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