(11-Feb-2013, 11:46 PM)Captain Mandrake Wrote: Any idea how to stop this madness? I am not talking about just improving safety but about stopping this silly idea of millions converging on one spot for a bath.
The
humanitarian response shouldn't be contingent upon the cause of the congregation, a
humanist response can place equal emphasis on both redressal and responsibility, a
secular humanist response can question whether State redressal is owed when responsibility was private, and a
Kemalist secular response can involve a suggestion of prohibitory orders of the
Section 144 variety when religion encroaches upon public spaces. Each of these responses spans a range from the empathic to the interventionist,
none of which are off the table from a Cultural Naturalist standpoint, a standpoint which may however be expected to be wary of the Kemalist approach or a
militant atheist approach that insists on an unremitting maintenance of the socio-cultural critique on religion not making allowance for other considerations such as a humanitarian tragedy.
Since some realism is called for urgently, rather than hypothetical responses at the extremes of accommodation and prohibition, here are some things the commentariat and freethought advocates could do to begin with, as a Step Zero of sorts:
- Desist from dignifying a practice of dubious medieval origins as 'intangible heritage' to be preserved, from manufactured exultation over Guinness book entries and from
premature self-congratulation about the State's crowd management. It would have been a telling and instructive comparison if a news feature were to compare the administration's preparations on a 'war footing' for pilgrim accommodation at this mela, with the
scarcely livable conditions in refugee camps and displacee camps where the abdication of a State that is busy with
mela event-management is painfully evident. However, media coverage of the jamboree has been almost of an exultant and cheerleading variety. As a telling aside, the coverage is not just indifferent but
unmistakably sneering during the annual Chaithyabhoomi gathering. So for starters, the mainstream media can go easy on the cheerleading.
- Television debates at the very least could exact a price in terms of popularity and cultural capital from public figures who participate and endorse such mass gatherings. Despite Jawaharlal Nehru's
advice to public figures to avoid participation in such melas way back in 1954, few lessons have been learnt and political participation has continued to exacerbate risks in such gathered during recent decades, notably during the
1992 Mahamaham stampede. As things stand, an
innocuous cattle-class tweet seems to incur more cost in terms of lost popularity than
atavist celebrity endorsements of the Kumbh Mela. Celebrities who count messages calling for safe cracker-bursting during Diwali as a discharge of social responsibility, would do well to examine how responsible it is to strain already burdened infrastructure during such events with VIP convoys and camera crews.
- It is understandable that constraints in terms of resources, personnel, time and audience attention-span mean that grassroots rationalist organization's programmes focus overwhelmingly on
miracle exposure via debunking demos, leaving little time for raising risk-awareness about other miracle claims such as sin-cleansing baths. It is obvious that a lecture with slides with a history of
shrine stampedes cannot pull crowds like a miracle-exposure which doubles up as a magic show does. It is reasonable to assume that the overwhelming majority of the most vulnerable pilgrims are not frequent visitors to the blogosphere where freethought articles can address the issue. An ancillary strategy for targeted outreach with mass appeal, about which it will be nice to see some coverage of previous and ongoing efforts, is the staging of street-plays as satellite events to miracle-exposure shows, which revolve around themes in the rationalist superstition-battling agenda besides godmen's parlour tricks.
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