A 'Best-Selling' Book Extolling Idol-Worship!

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 18 December 2023 While reading Amish Tripathi and his elder sister Bhavna Roy's new book 'Idols: Unearthing the Power of Murti Puja' (published by Harper Collins, India), I understood why this man (Amish Tripathi) is a blue-eyed boy of the current political dispensation that thrives and survives on Hindutva's new wave. Because of eulogising Hinduism and its fictional deities, this erstwhile 'atheist' turned devout believer enjoys plum positions in the UK. The duo's earlier book 'Dharma: Decoding the Epics for a Meaningful Life' (2020) also had the same boring stuff that smacked of neo-Hinduism. When mythology is explained and interpreted with a view to highlighting a specific religious and belief system, a discerning and dispassionate reader feels cheated and disillusioned. Here the point whether idol worship is right or wrong is immaterial. One agrees that Semitic faiths' (esp. Islam) hysteric aversion to But-Parasti (idol worship) is wrong, justifying it as the crux of a faith (Hinduism) is incorrect either. Many sects of Hinduism don't believe in idol-worship. Arya Samaj condemns it. Pristine Jainism and Buddhism had no concept of idol-worship. That all Jains, regardless of the sects and sub-sects they belong to, visit temples and genuflect before idols is inconsequential. Idol-worship is actually a throwback to our primitive past when humans believed in totems, magic and animism. To quote Dr Muhammad Iqbal, "Hum Se Pahle Tha Ajab Tere Jahan Ka Manzar/ Kahin Maa'bood Thay Patthar, Kahin Masjood Shajar" (Shikwa): "Weird was the whole scenario prior to us (Muslims) / Stones and trees were being worshipped and genuflected before." It's right that humans mind can never be non-idolatrous in the strictest sense of the word. It cannot think in abstract terms. Even Muslims or Christians who abhor idol-worship, consider the Sang-e-Aswad (Hajr Al-Aswad: The Black Stone from Heaven) and an image of Mother Mary (in Catholic Christianity) to be extremely sacred. Muslims may not prostrate before the Sang-e-Aswad or Ka'bah but these idols/icons including all holy structures like mosques or Mazar are actually images. All the followers of all man-made faiths have images in their subconscious to relate to an imaginary superior power. Even when you say that your Allah has no form, when your scriptures claim that you'll be facing him on the fictitious Day of Judgement, doesn't your mind conjure up an image of an Allah who has a form like humans have? So, idols and images do exist in human consciousness or subconsciousness and will continue to exist as remnants and vestiges of our religious primitivism. Mind you, idols were just a means for an early human mind to relate to the supernatural and esoteric. They (idols) were and are required at the earliest stage of spiritual connectivity. A simple analogy will drive home the point. You need a candle to dispel the darkness of night. But when the sun appears in the morning, do you still require a candle? Likewise, making idols the be-all and end-all of a faith is a sign that the mind hasn't progressed after a certain level and is stuck at a very lower plane. Hindus, who worship idols, haven't gone beyond the rudimentary symbolism of image idolization. That such primitivism is being extolled and neo-Hindus are going gaga over this book as a validation of their superstitious minds is really a sad thing. But then, nowadays you write any rubbish and putrid bilge on religion, mythology and spirituality. Rest assured, you'll be called an 'enlightened' master and a great writer. Amish and his la-di-da elder sister, Jaggi, Ravi Shankar, Deepak Chopra and their ilk know how to hoodwink religiously susceptible Indian minds. Such is the deplorable level of collective intelligence. Humans are doomed! ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/best-selling-extolling-idol-worship/d/131329 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism