Bobby Kunhu
“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.” – Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
“Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
A common trope in Tamil cinema is the Malayalee Namboodiri wizard–good or bad–and the superiority of his magic. This reflects a perverse social reality, where people in Tamil Nadu believe in existence of black magic in Kerala and the abundance of superstitious practices in Kerala. From burying charmed eggs, chicken head or scrap in rival’s yards to amulets, charms, threads etc., are a daily affair of Kerala life across religions without exception. The trope in Tamil cinema invokes the Namboodiri, but unfortunately leaves out Syrian Catholic priests and Thangals (claimants to lineage from Prophet Mohammed) who indulge in occult that would help individuals in matters ranging from acquisition of material wealth to vanquishing of enemies. However, the most common reason for approaching the occult–dark or otherwise–is for health, resulting in an equally flourishing system of quackery. And then there are the extremes such as the Pentecostals praying people to death and the Jain belief in Sallekhana (fasting to death) of which the latter may make news. With respect to all other forms of superstitions, Kerala, as a society is usually silent, as for many people these superstitions are a way of life.
It is precisely in this context, that the outcry from Kerala media, polity, civil society and judiciary with respect to the recent case of human sacrifice reeks of hypocrisy. While many of them practice and preach superstitions (not as extreme as human sacrifice, as we shall see in the rest of the essay), human sacrifices aren’t new in Kerala as most of the current discourse will have us to believe. In fact, bourgeois Kerala has reported at least eight instances of human sacrifices for reasons ranging from fertility to recovering a lost elephant with at least three victims who were only six years old–one of them as recent as 2021–where a woman slit the throat of her own six year old son to appease deities.
If there was no human sacrifice involved in the rituals, the mastermind of the plot could very well have become a successful godman and some of these very critics may also have promoted him. On the very same day that the story of the human sacrifice was breaking on various news channels, in the show Flowers Oru Kodi (One Crore) hosted by public intellectual and veteran journalist, Sreekandan Nair, the participant was a woman that claimed that she was a paranormal with extra sensory perception and could sense and exorcise ghosts. Almost every television channel in Kerala has aired shows that have referenced and promoted superstitions at some point of time or the other, not as fantasy or art, but as reality.
When it comes to political society, both the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) are equally superstitious. Successive governments have seen a very few ministers using Kerala State car bearing registration number 13, and the transport department usually doesn’t allot this registration number, unless specifically requested by a minister. Interestingly, the MLA hostel did not have a room number 13. When the nominated member, Simon Britto Rodrigues was allotted room numbers 12A and 12B, he strongly protested and took it up at the Kerala and got the number changed to 13. This term, MLA C. K. Hareendran stays in this room.
Worse is the fate of Manmohan Bungalow, one of the official residences for Kerala ministers. It is believed that anyone who stays in this residence will not last a full term as a minister and will not get re-elected to the Kerala Legislative Assembly. This myth is propagated by both the media as well as the political class. The Manmohan Bungalow was built by the Travancore Royal family next to Raj Bhavan (Governor’s House–also built by the Royal family). It was first allotted to P. S. Nataraja Pillai as a member of the Travancore Constitution Reforms Committee. Feeling that the bungalow was too ostentatious, he lived in a small house and made the bungalow his office. One of the prominent residents of this bungalow was K. Karunakaran, when he occupied the residence as the Home Minister of Kerala. He vacated the house 30 days after he became the Chief Minister on account of the Rajan Murder case during emergency. This maybe the reason for the Bungalow being considered inauspicious.
However, regardless of the superstition, Karunakaran won four consecutive assembly elections and parliamentary elections twice, apart from six years in the Rajya Sabha. Another heavyweight that was allotted the bungalow was R. Balakrishna Pillai in 1982, who allegedly did a vasthu puja (vasthu refers to adherence of buildings to caste/religious demands) to thwart shani (Saturn) and was forced to resign his ministership in 1985, following his (in)famous speech that Kerala would become another Punjab at the height of the Khalistan movement. Pillai also went on to enter the legislative assembly four more times and become a minister four more times. M. V. Raghavan lived out his term as the Minister for co-operation and sports in this bungalow between 2001 and 2006, but peddlers of superstition would point out that he lost the next election. The next prominent occupant of this Bungalow was Kodiyeri Balakrishnan during the 2006 V. S Achuthanandan government. He occupied the bungalow after allegedly making alterations to suit vasthu for a sum of INR 17 Lakhs, but moved out into a party-owned flat near AKG Bhavan, the state party headquarters within two and half months.
Following this, the Bungalow was considered for the Trivandrum bench of the Kerala High Court. When the proposal did not materialize it was allotted to the Public Works Minister T. U. Kuruvilla, who had to resign within a year and vacate the Bungalow facing corruption charges handing it over to his successor Mons Joseph, who in turn handed over the Bungalow along with the Ministry to his successor and party chief P. J. Joseph. He vacated the Bungalow when he resigned in 2010 and his party moved to the UDF. It was then allotted to V. Surendran Pillai, who refused to stay there and used it as his camp office. In 2011, when UDF came to power, it was allotted to the power and transport minister Aryadan Muhammed, who stayed there for the full term. He was succeeded in the Bungalow by Thomas Isaac, who asked for the Bungalow specifically given the superstitions around it and he too lived the full term in the Bungalow. Presently the Bungalow is allotted to Antony Raju, Minister for Transport. Manmohan Bungalow, like any other inanimate building has seen all kinds of residents who have had all kinds of destinies, good and bad. However, it beats me how this building has been singled out as being jinxed and the Kerala civil and political society continue to perpetrate the myth.
Given the prevalence of superstitions in Kerala, attempts have been made in the past to legislate against superstitions. In 2019, the Law Reforms Commission of Kerala had proposed the Kerala Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices, Sorcery and Black Magic Bill. However, this wasn’t even tabled before the assembly. One of the reasons could be that the superstition industry in Kerala, across religions, is financially, socially and politically powerful. Given the negative publicity and image that the present human sacrifice case has garnered, there are plans to promulgate this bill as an ordinance immediately and currently it is being vetted by the Home and the Law Ministries. This law ostensibly looks progressive and specifically outlaws practices including piercing cheeks or arrows as part of rituals, preventing medical treatment or offering relief through prayers, black magic, sorcery, exorcism by ‘violent means’, bounty hunting, sale of luck charms, animal sacrifices, isolation or prohibiting entry of women, segregation of menstruating or post-partum women, degrading and inhuman practices such as parading women naked, sexual cohabitation to ‘bless’ women, regardless of consent and so on. All the offenses listed under the schedule of this proposed legislation are cognizable and non-bailable.
It is my opinion that this law is bound to fail for three inter-connected reasons viz. inherent contradictions in the proposed legislation itself, the organisation of Kerala society and resultant lack of political will. The draft bill contains numerous exceptions wherein not only rituals, but even forms of quackery–as long as they don’t involve murder or rape–can be protected under the guise of ‘tradition’. Here, it has to be noted that the maximum punishment under this legislation is seven years and a fine of INR 50,000, whereas murder is a capital offense and the punishment for rape cannot be less than ten years under the Indian Penal Code. Further, the bill excludes astrology, while in Kerala, it is most often the astrologer, who directs supplicants to sorcery for remedial measures and are at the root of the problem. It is also important to remember that despite Kerala Animals and Birds Sacrifices Act, 1968, chathanseva (worshipping lesser deities), involving animal/bird sacrifice to propitiate the deity continue to be immensely popular. Similarly, despite the Drugs and Magic remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act, 1954, public spaces in Kerala are filled with billboards and pamphlets offering treatment for conditions ranging from diabetes to erectile dysfunction. As majority of adherents to all religious practices in Kerala are bound through superstitions, outside of their religious calling, the bill has been drafted in such a way that it would not hurt any of the voting constituencies. As a consequence, even if enacted, it is unlikely to be of much effect once the furore over the present human sacrifice case disappears from headlines.
“The fact that we are hearing about human sacrifice in Kerala is beyond shocking; some of the things happening here are beyond the limits of absurdity. I wonder where Kerala is going,” Justice Devan Ramachandran observed in open court while hearing another case on 11th October. However, the Kerala High Court has had an history of not only practicing superstition, but also castigating the person who challenged the same. The old building of the Kerala High Court did not allocate Courtroom 13. When the High Court was shifted to the new complex there was no room number 13. Instead room number 12A followed room number 12. When N. K. Chandramohan filed a writ petition (WP No. 4268/2006) seeking allotment of room number 13 to a courtroom, a bench comprising Chief Justice V. K Bali and Justice S. Siri Jagan dismissed the petition as a frivolous misadventure to malign/embarrass the Court and imposed a cost of INR 10,000. Undeterred, Chandramohan appealed to the Supreme Court (civil Appeal 5138/2006), which came down heavily against the High Court. A bench comprising Chief Justice Y. K. Sabharwal and Justices C. K. Thakker and R. V. Raveendran made it clear that the High Court is an institution and should not be encouraging superstitious beliefs. The Supreme Court order itself was problematic in the way it was reasoned out. Rather than rule out superstitions in any form regardless of its origins, this particular ruling was reasoned that the unluckiness of number thirteen was based on ‘Christian’ thinking which conflicts with the country’s ‘secular’ constitution!
Further, within the Malayali civil society, there are many celebrated technocrats and scientists like K. Radhakrishnan, former Chair of ISRO, E. Sreedharan, the cryogenic scientist Nambi Narayanan and so many more, who engage in public display of religiosity/superstition even in public space. Pujas are conducted before rocket launches and these launches are slotted to avoid ‘interplanetary’ rahukalam (time of the mythological shadow planet Rahu).
The way I see it, once the noise around this case dies down, Kerala will go back to its old (‘progressive’) ways. The old ways include maintaining feudal castes, patriarchal social structures reinforced by superstition. Only that there will be no noise till the next human being is murdered or raped. That is why when liberals wonder how progressive people–meaning the second accused Bhagaval Singh in the human sacrifice case–can be entrapped in webs of superstitions, I am amused!
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Bobby Kunhu is a lawyer, researcher and writer.
Image courtesy: the internet.
