By Rajshekhar Pant
Recently, a certain Chief Minister’s ludicrous comment on Hindu Deities triggered a disproportionate public uproar. As is now a routine, the opposition parties, the youth, and a sizeable section of the society declared their sentiments grievously wounded.
To dwell at length on such a crude remark would be to grant it an importance it does not merit. Cultural symbols that have endured millennia are never so fragile that they can be diminished by a careless sentence or two.
My own reverence for the gods and goddesses is a gift of familial inheritance—one I cannot imagine relinquishing. Yet faith, in essence, remains a deeply personal matter. Encouraged by my parents to question freely, I have always tried to examine the roots of my inherited belief, and to test its relevance against the demands of the present. Where did God originate? How did the many divine forms arise? What did our earliest ancestors see, feel, or fear?
The eminent historian, RC Majumdar, once suggested that in the primordial dawn of civilisation—when no evolved scientific thought existed to explain natural events, their mysteries, or even the sudden stirrings of human consciousness—our earliest forebear must have turned to imagination. Perhaps he saw, in the blush of dawn spread across the horizon, the silhouette of a young goddess. The enveloping darkness of a new-moon night might have deepened his awareness of mortality. For every possibility and weakness within himself, he may have conceived a power beyond thought, beyond articulation.
The first rough verse may have been born in such a moment. Perhaps this was indeed the genesis of God—a supreme, unnameable power emerging not outside the world, but within the mind that wondered about it.
In nearly every ancient culture, the earliest conception of divinity is pantheistic. Greek mythology includes even a god of greed—Mammon—and a god of wine—Bacchus. The primal human impulse of desire generated an entire constellation of deities: Aphrodite, Eros, Himeros, Pothos, Peitho, Dionysus—each embodying a distinct shade of attraction. Roman myth carried forward Cupid; in our own tradition stand Kāma and Rati.
To wander imaginatively through the inner world of our anonymous ancestors—those who roamed the prehistoric world—is a powerful experience. How innocent, how uncluttered the human mind must have been then!
I often feel that this very innocence, this elemental simplicity, forms the bedrock of our traditional faith. It lies beyond logic and scholarship; and if we succeed in preserving it, it quietly conditions our inner life. The image of Hanuman painted on the outer wall of a gym—an image shaped by centuries of devotion and collective imagination—instills in a young aspirant the ideals of discipline, fortitude, and unwavering dedication. Lord Rama becomes a template of the highest virtue in his era; Krishna, in contemporary understanding, appears almost like a strategist or management guru guiding one toward success.
As for the philosophical triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh as creator, preserver, and destroyer—this is no place to cast an intellectual sheen over what remains a simple, heartfelt perception. But this much is certain: the diversity of divine figures crafted around our aspirations, achievements, frailties, and daily experiences reflects both the boundaries of human life and our longing to see beyond them.
This is the most vibrant canvas of our civilisation. What we need, urgently, is the willingness to step into the deep corridors of history, to trace, observe, and understand the gradual evolution of belief. How did geography, resources, conflict, economy, and society shape one another—and in doing so, shape our faith? That journey of understanding is, by itself, deeply enriching.
But in this noisy age of social media theatrics and relentless breaking news, who wishes to undertake such a journey—and why? It is effortless today for someone to malign gods, faith, and belief to serve a fleeting political purpose; and equally effortless for another to rejoice simply because a new uproar has begun.
(The author is an amateur filmmaker, a photographer, and a writer, who has written over a thousand write-ups, reports, etc., published in the leading newspapers and magazines
of the country. He can be reached at pant.rajshekhar@gmail.com)
