Fight Against Superstition Needs Country Wide Campaign
Super+ Intuition = Superstition. It is the extreme intuition of a matter that doesn't exist. It is just a "mind over matter concept that is neither rational nor practical in any sense. We need a wide spread campaign that appeals to common masses of the country and eradicate such practice from its roots. This is not all that easy, but yes, not impossible as well.
For this focused minds and rational brains will help reducing such malpractices. It is widely believed that 70% of superstitions are related to health concerns, cleanliness, habits, meditative wisdom, medical facts, soul enlightenment thoughts etc.
Some of the common superstitions are; not to call someone from behind while the latter is going for some work. One more health related practice is girls during menstrual cycle to be completely cut off from household activities. She is not even allowed to sleep on bed. 'Cat crossing' and 'Three people going together' will lead their task to utter misalignment, are also some of the superstitions.
The above practices are pegged to religion, fortune and evil spirits etc. Earlier, people were too illiterate to understand the importance of good habits and positive thinking and practiced them in ignorance. Their successive generations found a trailing path in the wrong practice and went down the direction obviously almost blind folded.
Such superstitions have no logic behind them but are difficult to eradicate as they are entangled with the sentiments of the people. And when it comes down to sentiments of people in India, it is not only hard to tackle them because it invariably gets connected to politics. However, this is not good for the health of the nation.
People need to understand the difference between 'Superstition' and 'Belief'. Superstition is something that makes you weak and coward and stops from doing anything, while belief is a positive concept that gives you all the strength and confidence to perform a job. There is a very thin line between the two, and care should be taken not to slip into the darker side.
Most of these superstitions are fact based and considering toady's scenario of education, common sense and rational attitude; it won't be that difficult to get them corrected. We just need to reach to each and every member of the society and give them logical reasoning. Positive thoughtful and focused mind are the possible solution to this.
India being a developing nation, we have to develop simple and effective ways of communication regarding superstition. Broadcast advertisements, Door to door knowledge sharing, scheduled awareness programs with the help of local people are few of the immediate steps that can be taken to eradicate superstition.
Also social networking is very good way to reach out to the society. If all this is done in an organized way, we can definitely have 'Superstition Free India'.
Vipul Kumar Pandey
Related Essay
- Fight against Superstition needs a countrywide campaign
- how to remove superstitions in india
- Why India is in the grip of superstitions
- What is superstition in India and how to overcome
- Indian superstitions and the theories behind them
