Enough of concocted stories!

Ratna Raman

LAST week, a newspaper reported that a custodian of India’s  legal system, explained why the peacock is our national bird. According to this judge, the  celibate peacock  sheds potent  tears, which are gobbled up by the peahen, the ‘ardhangini’ (the better half), thereby enabling conception. 

This modern fake story wins hands down over all extant narratives around immaculate birth. King Dasharatha’s kheer consuming trio of wives, who gave births to fractions of godhead, have been put in the shade. Kaushalya ate half of the kheer while Sumitra consumed half of what was left. The remaining quarter, divided into one eighth portions, were responsible for the birth of Bharata and Shatrugana.  

This myth improves our understanding of how fractions make a whole. It also makes us curious about the absence of serving bowls and ladles. Why did the queens pour kheer down their gullets as if they were guzzling alcohol? Why were they not given equal quantities of kheer? Would we need to recalibrate the divinity content of Dasharatha’s sons, if new statistics were presented?

 Perplexing as older stories are, the case of the pure peafowl, living a righteous life and abstaining from graft, sex and intoxication, has found very few takers. People familiar with the workings of the body and having studied biology at school, dismissed this utterance as ‘poppycock’ (nonsense).

The peacock is our national bird because this flamboyant and gorgeous bird is found predominantly in the Indian subcontinent. Peafowl procreate with each other before eggs are laid, in the manner of other bird species.

 Our flora and fauna is varied. Our architecture and cultural practices have evolved over long periods of interaction between different cultures and continue to link us in myriad ways with each other at associative, emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels. 

The lotus grew in our ponds through the centuries and the saffron sunlit up our skies and sparkled among our flowers and woven fabric long before being chosen as a political symbol or colour. We cannot allow our understanding of various things to be constricted into a reductive uni-dimensional ‘idea of India’ simply because it is ‘politically expedient’ (unfair solutions for political advancement)

Reactionary (extremely conservative) beliefs deny peafowl a sexual life, stop sales of erotic temple sculptures and literature and clamp down on giving gorgeous Taj Mahal replicas  as gifts because the architecture is Islamic. Such fake narratives  corrode our multidimensional identity and are spurred on by illogical, hate-filled  agendas. 

Yoga is constituted by eight equally important limbs: yama (ethical standards), niyam (self-discipline), asana (postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (sensory transcendence), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (spiritual ecstasy). Asanas showcased annually along with a wilful ignoring of other significant dimensions in yoga amounts to ‘posturing’ (misleading).

When important values and beliefs shrink shamefully into empty symbols, it is a matter of collective concern. Renaming roads and cities without addressing infrastructure issues is one such example. Observing October 2 as Swachh Bharat Abiyan Divas,  December 25 as Good Governance Day, June 21 as Yoga Day can become meaningful, when freed of tokenism. No wonder we struggle with aswachh (unhygienic) Bharat, malnutrition, farmer suicides and mangled governance while emboldened vigilantes generate anarchy. Our ancient civilisation is running out of time. We require value-based governance and ‘swachness’ of intent, not banal stories, inciting violent responses.