The exam season is fast approaching and it is amusing to find youngsters thronging temples, churches and other places of worship.
For what? Elementary yaar, just to get through! It is as if the whole year’s fooling around will be compensated by a few visits to the religious places!
And once the exams are over, a similar queue will be witnessed just before the results are declared!
It is all the more hilarious to have the parents and guardians propitiating the omnipotent and seeking blessings for their wards as examinations are made out to be the biggest hurdles for their children.
What could be more exasperating!
If ‘burning the midnight lamp’ could be overlooked for a few saintly seconds of abject pleading with folded hands before the Almighty, medicine and engineering would cease to be coveted fields of study. What a stupid notion!
One often hears of people taking the spiritual path to salvation. Though associated with religion, mysticism and piety, traditionally, spirituality is regarded as an integral aspect of religious experience.
Nowadays it is quite normal to have religion and ‘being spiritual’ connote the same sense. However, spirituality is a matter of deliberation today!
In the modern era, a hectic lifestyle has apparently compelled religion and God to take a backseat. Man remembers his creator only when in dire straits!
Beseeching the Almighty to put an end to all his miseries, man, at such times, puts up a fantastic show of his religious devoutness; not to mention the ‘bargains’ and the ‘deals’ being struck at the sacred altars which could put the most pious to shame!
These crass exhibitions of pseudo-religiosity are never the more in evidence than during the annual examinations of students. Parents with their children in tow make a beeline for the nearest places of worship planning to bribe the Gods into making their wards perform well at the tests.
This is apparently an annual feature, with various shrines and sanctuaries categorizing it as a seasonal fare in line with the numerous religious feasts and festivals celebrated.
No wonder then that the cult of new-age ‘spiritual gurus’ too have learnt to capitalize on this fad!
An advertisement in a South Indian English daily a couple of years back was a source of considerable mirth!
A renowned evangelic preacher was conducting an ‘Exam Prayer Meet’ at a reputed institute’s grounds, where special prayers were to be offered for the students’ benefit; they were being invited to “come and be blessed!”
The belief in the efficacy of prayers is that optimism that drives the hopeless to seek divine intervention in times of pain and anguish. Unfortunately, human fallibility ensures that faith in one’s creator is never profound at times when, as they say, the sailing is smooth.
This unexplained habit of invoking the blessings of the Omnipotent to surmount all hardships when in distress is then to be seen as one of those sanctimonious acts put out by man that holds no charm whatsoever anymore.
Heavenly Benedictions and intercessions are definitely to be sought; but why only in calamitous circumstances!
Coming back to our subject then!
Should the evangelist’s call be seen as a publicity-seeking stunt to allure more ‘faithfuls into the flock’? Definitely not!
At best it could be termed as a pacification of the young minds dreading uncertainties when faced with the prospects of justifying a whole year’s studies via questionnaires.
Maybe the preacher’s praying sessions will help conciliate their disturbed minds to approach the tests with a clearer conscience realizing that they have been unnecessarily regarding their exams as a perilous affair.
It is as if the youngsters doubt their own caliber.
Understanding that examinations are a format test of a student’s knowledge or proficiency in a subject or skill, it becomes difficult to fathom the need for prayers to invoke the grace of various Gods and Goddesses to attain success in examinations.
This would imply that the unpreparedness of the child in getting through with the tests purely on the strength of the knowledge that he has assimilated is directly responsible for the ‘bribing’ at temples, shrines and other religious places.
Incurring divine favour or avoiding divine retribution, people are known to propitiate the Gods in various ways. But should the future of the child hinge around such propitious methods!
Examinations are not a gamble where luck tends to play a big role in the outcome. The keen interest and attentiveness the child shows for studies should reflect in a good showing at the examinations.
It is generally believed that nervousness, fear or just a feeling of uncertainty tend to dominate the minds of those appearing in board and university exams. A prayer sent out to the almighty thus becomes almost mandatory in these circumstances.
It was however amusing to hear that it is not just the students and their parents who look for divine blessings. Educational institutions also join the students just to wrap up the preparations with divine blessings.
There were reports in a section of the press some years back about a school in Nagpur which takes their class X students on a local pilgrimage of sorts before the exams. The school principal claimed that the school does this to give strength and a holistic comfort to their students which help them to overcome nervousness during examinations.
The principal agreed that there is no substitute for hard work and thorough preparations. But he was of the opinion that the gesture created feeling of humbleness among the students which makes them realize that there is power beyond this world which guides them to do the right thing.
Board and University examinations have always been considered as ordeals for students; at least they have been made to feel so! Equating them as adversities that could only be triumphed over by divine grace, parents and guardians will continue converting places of worship into ‘bartering grounds’ for their protégés.
