Fear:

April 25/2011: The world over, people are affected by old thoughts that impress their daily lives even today. It is a scientific fact that humans emerged from South East Africa. The ancestor of today’s human evolved over the ages and migrated throughout to populate the earth. Weather, environment and much mix up later today man is a pergent being. Human being is different in many ways in different parts of the globe.

Many different religions hold sway in different parts of the world. Yet there is a common denominator that runs through all over. The level of intelligence possessed by the early man is being judged by the size of its brain by scientists. Evolutionary processes have made a quadruped stand up straight by virtue of the spine strengthening and straightening up. This helped it in standing up as a biped. The front legs of earlier times then turned into long hands like it is seen in the gorilla. As the human stood straight and discovered its uniqueness and started using the top limbs as hands, it also had to start thinking for its survival. What was rarely used previously suddenly became a much depended upon tool. That was the brain. Initially man’s skull housed a small brain. Later, with use, the brain and thereby the housing grew in size. Like we go to a gym and build muscles, similarly, by exercising the brain we built up its abilities, size and shape. In spite of this development, the ‘initial ignorance’ of man managed to hold on to a dark corner of the brain and keep a small but important space for itself. This dark corner and the ignorance which made its home there did only one thing for man. That one thing that it contributed to human intellectual growth was FEAR. In turn, this fear could produce only one thing. That one thing is ‘blind belief’.

Recently, a horrible incident in Deogarh must have disturbed many logical people in the state who read that news. The story is like this. In a village called ‘Suna Munda’ under Deogarh Police station area, 8 persons from 2 families were forced to eat human and pig excrement. The reason for this inhuman persecution was that the crowd of villagers thought those people were practising sorcery or witchcraft and were thus ‘dahani’ or witches who were doing something unknown that was making the pupils of a nearby girls’ school behave odd and funny.

This is not an isolated incident. Many parts of Orissa, especially those having a predominantly tribal population, have witnessed many such acts of blind belief. Only those reported by the media come to light and are discussed. In reality, when such abominable and despicable incidents take place in a civilized society, the only reason to justify them is blind belief.

This kind of a belief is not limited to apasis of Orissa alone. Let us look at a part of the world where the citizens think they are much evolved and ahead compared to the rest of the world—Europe. The history of this continent tells us that fear and loathing for witches have held sway over the people there for centuries. The European culture permitted people to conduct a crusade called ‘Inquisition’ that allowed them to pull women and men out of their homes and burn them alive on stakes in the central square of towns and villages after labelling them ‘witches’. This crusade had the active blessings of the Catholic Church at that time. Later on it was found that the high and mighty of the time used this opportunity to dispose off their rivals and enemies by portraying them as altered. No record of the common man opposing this kind of inhuman behaviour has been noticed in history books. This implies that the evil and devious in human society, in all times, used blind belief as a drug to keep the populace satisfied while they went about settling their own personal vendettas.

Seen in this light, most incidents in Orissa, like the Deogarh one, happen because of blind belief. Fear gives rise to blind belief. This kind of a mindset has only one cure. That cure is education. Not just book based education but a heightening of awareness. As long as we are not conscious, we are incapable of getting free from this devilish grip. 

One who thinks that distance from an apasis or otherwise under developed area gives security is badly mistaken. Sooner or later, there is every possibility of any one of us becoming a victim of superstition somewhere or the other. This thought may be termed as an unfounded ‘fear’ by some. It may be understood that fear also has two sides. There is a negative and also a positive fear.   While negative fear spawns blind belief, positive fear keeps man away from constantly repeating old mistakes. When positive fear increases, it puts superstition out of the way. It is imperative that the apasi youth of today who demands political and social equality also responds to demands of educated society. They too cannot claim that for some age old ritual they have the moral right to cut trees or go on a hunting rampage killing animals in large numbers. When asking for civil rights, the apasi has to keep the safety of the environment in mind and act accordingly.  Demanding rights on one hand and acting on traditional superstition will not only damage the apasis but also cripple the nation in the future.