A List of 330 Million: Still Not Enough Gods

I was told as a kid that in Hinduism (the religion I was born into), there are 330 million Gods. Yes, you heard it right..... 330 MILLION!!!

I was told this by my father when I was a small boy of maybe 7 or 8 years, but even today the number seems unreal. Quite recently I looked up for the authenticity of this information and I found that even Wikipedia mentioned this as a fact. It was said that among the commonly known Gods that we are used to seeing in temples and more fondly on TV, there are others who were declared Gods. These were court poets, scholars, warriors and people who did something beyond their call of duty for the betterment of society.

One does not need a PhD in mythology or history, but just common sense to understand that people were given titles for their good deeds and contributions. They were called Lords or Gods as an appreciation for their good work. These titles were supposed to invoke a sense of respect and not worship. This is where most of us lose out on our common sense. We fail to distinguish between respect and worship.

So what does respect mean? In the current Indian context it's falling down on the feet of the person you respect or are supposed to respect and swallow anything that they throw at us without ever questioning them. And it is this precise flaw in our definition of respect that makes us fall prey to conning and conniving individuals who proclaim themselves as God or his messengers. How else can we explain our actions when a so called Messenger of God was arrested for heinous crimes that he committed to stay in power?

Our blind faith in such self made Gods have made us lose touch with our own humanity. It is this blind faith in these pseudo deities that drives several families towards insanity. It also makes human beings do things that we normally deem unthinkable. An instance that comes to my mind now is the incident in Mumbai suburb where a father used to repeatedly rape his own daughter because a Baba (religious Guru) told him it will help him get his near bankrupt business back on track. All this with the support of his wife, biological mother of the same daughter being subjected to such inhuman treatment.

The are innumerable similar instances in our country of misguided worship. We have declared actors, sportsmen even animals as Gods. There are dedicated temples, religious hymns and even religious festivals for certain film stars. We had so many stupid incidences in the past, including Ganesha statues drinking milk, only to realize that most of those incidences of modern day divine intervention were elaborate hoaxes created for an ulterior motive. Yet our learning from all this is absolutely zilch.

We thought technological advancements would stall the growth of such superstitious beliefs, but then we have so many people sending us emails, WhatsApp and Facebook posts instructing us to share some message or image warning us that, there will be 5 years of bad luck if we don't continue the chain of stupidity. It seems highly unlikely that we as a society are going to escape this deification syndrome in the near future.

I hope and pray that the new generation would look up from their mobiles and free themselves from posting selfies with a face mimicking certain animal species, and look at these things from a logical point of view so that they don't fall prey to this malignant practice of declaring anything and everything as God. If not, then I am sure I'll have to tell my son very soon that there are roughly 450 million Gods in our country much to his shock and surprise.

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