Interview with a devotee
Hanuman Temple, Allahabad 
I am a mechanical engineer by profession. I have a BA in mechanical engineering and a master’s in production. I plan to do my doctorate very shortly — maybe in the States, maybe in India. It depends on my family and my circumstance. I’m a lecturer by profession. That means I’m a teacher. I have teaching experience of ten years. I’m a graduate of University of Allahabad. I was a gold medalist in my master’s. I got married in 1988. I have a son who is going to be two years of age soon. I am vegetarian.
Previously I used to eat meat, drink and smoke. I have taken drugs also. I used to smoke ganja. And I was a thief. I used to steal out of my father’s pocket. Daily I used to steal ten rupees. He never used to know. Once I was crying and he said, “Why are you weeping?” And I told him the real story that, “Father for the last three years I have been stealing five to ten rupees a day.” I was just ten years of age. He said, “Why are you telling me?” I said, “Today I have come to know that stealing is bad.” And he was also weeping and said, “It is good that you confessed.”
I was also smoking at that time. Once my mother caught me. She slapped me and said, “If you are going to smoke again, I’ll tell your father and he will shout. A lot of people will hear that you are smoking.” I felt afraid, I felt guilty. Then my motivation changed. It is nothing religion has to do. It is only with self-motivation this comes. Now, for the last 10 to 15 years I have left everything and I have dedicated myself to some supreme power, and I respect the good things of every religion.
My hobbies are helping the poor, giving food to poor animals. Whenever I give, I am thinking it is not me giving, but God is giving it through me. He is directing me. I normally teach my students in the course of lecture all these things. If they are able to save one rupee a day, they should give it to some poor person, irrespective of what caste he is. Feed some poor people. If you are feeding hungry people, you will have a satisfaction in your heart. So these hobbies have come. Whenever I invest money I think I should invest it in good work. I am a very social man. I like to be friends with everybody. I have friends in all castes.
This is one of the very famous temples of Allahabad. It is the most spacious also. Basically, this temple is dedicated to our Lord Hanuman. People think he is supposed to be the servant of our Lord Ram. So indirectly we are worshipping Lord Ram. Where we are sitting, just to our back is Lord Shiva’s temple. People in the city have a lot of faith.
Most of the people who come here are vegetarian. They don’t prefer to take eggs. There is no hot and fast food. But people think that they want to be vegetarian. I used to be non-vegetarian. But after coming into contact with these temples, in the last ten years, I have left everything. I even don’t wear leather. People interpret it many ways. In India, normally people think we are killing. We are killing plants also. Plants also have life. Most of the majority of Indians are illiterate people. So once when they feel something, they think it has got a life. But if I go a village and explain to them that plants also have life, they will not believe me. They’ll say, “No, they’re not alive because we are not able to feel their pain.” But there was an Indian scientist who has proved that plants have life. So basically people are not able to convince this illiterate man because more than 60 percent of the people are illiterate in India. They won’t understand the basic culture. They won’t understand Hindi also, properly. Now, because of the vast difference in language, you’re not able to communicate your ideas well.
Now, these animal products we are discarding are the reason that they are able to see their pain. This is another factor, they are able to see the pain in the butchering of animals. On the other hand, most of the gods have their own sort-of raid. So for example, we are seeing this. We see horses there, lions there. Suppose they are just wearing the shoes made out of horses skin, they’ll think that they are just killing the servant of that god. And that is the reason they are avoiding leather and not eating animal products. In the ancient times we used to worship animals also.
In India it is the culture in order to show respect, we touch the feet and put them on our forehead. That means that your feet are so auspicious for me that I’m keeping it on my head. That is supposed to be the first thing. That is why we are touching the feet of the deities here, and touching the temples. And we offer sweets also here. We think that once we bring sweets to the temple as if God has taken some out of it, and the remnants of the food we are taking, that means God is pleased with us and we are having sweets. We can’t offer salty things, because we think salt is not supposed to be very auspicious. We won’t give them some sort of a salty biscuit. It wouldn’t be good. But in South India, you’ll find in many temples that they give salty things to the gods. But in North India, you’ll find everywhere, they give in the form of sweets or fruits.
Here, what people do in order to communicate with Lord Shiva, is they read those books, which are available here and written in Hindi. But this is superficial. They are reading and they are having their minds somewhere else. So very few people, one out of a million, is able to communicate well. The people are not able to communicate well, because they’re reading and their minds are somewhere else. Most people are really obsessed with their social life. So this is the way they communicate.
In India, a lot of Western impact is coming slowly, slowly. So, the basic Hindu cultures are just moving apart So what is there? They are neither Westerners nor Hindus. They are the average of the two. So, in my opinion, I think around only 35 to 40 percent of the people follow Hinduism correctly.
We think the basic thing is, we should be tolerant enough for every religion, this is the basic culture of the Hindu. It is not like fundamentalist countries, that if they are a fundamentalist country, you have to follow their own religion. It is just like the United States, it is free. The second is that we should be kind to the poor people, we should have a kind heart. We should have dedication to God. We should be afraid of a supreme power, which is God. We should be kind to everybody, irrespective of caste. Because in India there are many castes. So now, what is it that has caused people suffering? It is the caste system. They segregate themselves. The basic thing is that, the basic points in the Hindu culture is that we should be tolerant of religions, we should be kind-hearted. We should have a helping hand to everybody, irrespective of caste, and they should have a fear of one supreme power.
[On why members of different castes cannot associate with each other.] Basically it comes from the cultural background. A person coming from caste X, he’ll have a soft feeling for his own caste. Maybe he’ll be dedicating himself to one supreme power. On the other hand, in India, the caste system is very prevalent. Promotions are different between castes. If you got a job, they’ll be promoting on the basis of caste. If they needed bosses, say a Brahmin will be promoted, he won’t promote another. So Ns is the way frustration comes in society. So when one sees that the other person is following his own caste, the other also thinks, “We can be worshipping any god, but regarding the promotion and other sort of things in life, we’ll be going on the caste basis.
[Concerning the BJP and Hindu militarism.] You see, this is a political stunt. In India, wherever they want a change, they try to use some sort of a stunt. There are evidences that wherever people are illiterate, whatever you say, they’ll believe you. If you say, “Go there, there’s a well.” They will trust you, because they’re illiterate and they don’t know whether there is a well or not. This is one factor, that it is always a political stunt. The greatest problem in India is the illiteracy. We are not able to convince people well, whether or not it is good to break a mosque, whether it is a wise step. In Indian society, illiteracy is there, a lot of unemployment is there, there are very poor people, poverty is there. So they can try whatever they want. They basically say, “Be a Hindu.” And they say, “Okay, I’ll become a Hindu.” Because they are poor people. They are just giving them, say, five Rupees, to change their religion. So it’s all a political stunt.
There are some illiterate masses who are in business. They are big business people, but they are not literate. They’ve got big money power. They are supporting BJP. They are giving money also. But normal people like us, we have money only to meet the rent, only 4,000 or 5,000 Rupees a month. We can’t even expect to support these people. We’ll only support the just. The illiterate masses don’t know who to support or where to support. They’re not even close to us. They’re not able to get the opportunity to become ministers. They’ll not be supporting us in any way. It is only political deceit.
Right from my childhood, my family used to take me to temples, so that I should have a fear of at least one supreme power. Whenever I did something bad, they used to tell me that God was watching me and I should be afraid. Because after my death, he will penalize me. I would be awarded or punished according to what I had done. But as I grew up, my father used to tell me, “See we will get it in this life only.” If you’re doing good, maybe after five or 10 years, you will get the return. But if we do something bad or think something bad of someone, maybe in the span of 10 years or 20 years we will be getting the return.
On the other hand, he used to take me to religious places. He used to teach me to give money to support poor people, tell them the real thing. And if someone is on the wrong path, tell them to be on the right path. So all these things he used to teach me. He used to give me good books for reading. All the stories used to be with God. He used to tell me to be tolerant of every religion. I also know about the New Testament and Old Testament. I sent a letter for a Bible course in the United States in California. So that way I learned tolerance toward religions, kind-heartedness, mercy and all these things. I read the Bible also. If you ask me something about the Q’uran, I can tell you some good things about the Q’uran also. Every religious text inspires me.
There is a concept of right and wrong in Hinduism. Everybody knows what is right and what is wrong, irrespective of the religion to which he belongs. That has nothing to do with the religion. Everybody knows what is wrong and what is right. If somebody is standing on a bridge and the river is flowing, if somebody just pushes him into the water, this is wrong. No religion teaches us to throw anybody into the water, whether it is Hinduism, whether it is Christianity, or whether it is Zoroastrianism, or any religion. This is how we think what is right and what is wrong.
God is perfectly good for the persons doing what is right, and perfectly evil for the persons doing wrong. In Hinduism, God has got two faces. He is good as well as evil. He is evil for the persons doing bad. There are many stories in the Bhaghvad Gita and the Ramayana that show this. For example, Ravan took Sita, wife of Lord Ram, to Lanka, which is known as Ceylon. Later on, after a long struggle, Ravan was killed, and Ram became victorious and took away his wife. Now this shows that persons who do bad all the time, later on will be met with their own end. In the Mahabharata there were two groups, the kauravas and pandavas. The pandavas were very genuine people, very honest and kind-hearted. But the kauravas were very dangerous people. There was a war and people say that if you still go to Kurukshetra which is a place near Delhi, you’ll find that the ground is still red, because a lot of blood is still there. The soil you will find red. Later on the Pandavas became victorious, because Lord Krishna was with the Pandavas. So there are many stories on which we trust.
There will always be a discrimination between the evil and good in the nature of God, because as long as the world exists, people will be bad and people will be good. So, there should be one man to punish them, and one man to reward them.
In Hinduism, people think that once someone dies, immediately, as soon as the eyes are closed, his soul leaves his body. After that, we go to a particular place nearby a river and we just burn the body. The body turns into ashes. The phosphorus contained in the bones comes out and it is gathered. Sometimes what happens is suddenly you see a lot of fire. People think it is a ghost. But it is not a ghost. It is basically the phosphorus which has been collected from the burning, and when it reaches a certain temperature, it burns. After burning, it turns to ash, and all the ashes are immersed in the water, the river. In many places, we don’t have rivers, so we burn it in an open field and collect those ashes in a pot and put it later on in some river. Normally the eldest son takes the ashes, it is a custom. He has to remove his nails and everything. Now, people think the soul has left. People think that the soul has gone, and the soul is waiting for its time to be rewarded or punished. According to Hinduism, a man has to pass 8,600,000 lives before getting the shape of a human being.
To get to the point of release from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth takes a lot of penance and prayers. I told you, only one in, say, a million people achieve this. In India, everyone is a worshipper. If somebody has been worshipping for say more than a year, he is considered better than those who have worshipped less, relatively. But nobody’s perfect. In the ancient times, we used to have saints. We used to do penance for years together. Plants used to grow on their bodies, snakes would crawl on their bodies, but they are just meditating on the god. And later on, they would achieve real life in the sense that they have gone past the cycle of life and rebirth. God has told them, “Now I am happy with you, and now I am freeing you also.” This used to happen thousands of years back, when people were able to talk directly to the god. Now there are no such people in the whole of India. You’ll never find one who is able to talk to the god. So they used to talk to the god and reach up to the god through penance and prayers, and what they were saying, nobody could tell you, but they were freeing themselves from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
There is nobody in India like that now because you will find corruption everywhere. For example, there have been cases reported in the newspaper that people are running ashrams, and they are running a flesh-trade business. There have been cases. There was an ashram in Gujarat, run by a Hindu saint who had visited many countries also. His name was Rajneesh. He was a good orator only. He was able to convince people, but he was not able to talk to God. He had good talking skills, that is all. So, you can find people having good talking skills, but they’re not good at heart. As I told you, people that come here, they are praying here, but their minds are somewhere else. I can tell you my case. I was praying here, but I got in my mind that I have to meet my principal today at 6:30. No one is mentally free now. One can be mentally free only if he is unmarried, he is leaving everything behind, and going to some forest, which is impossible nowadays. People never think about what is going to happen later on. People are drunk, they never think what is going to happen another day. They are having hangovers and all. They’ll say, “I don’t know why I drank so much.” But then they’ll be drunk the next evening. God knows if we are truly worshipping. But who bothers. Nobody knows what is going to happen after death.
Hinduism impacts family life very much. You will not believe but still I make my decisions by my father. I am 31 years old, I can make my own decisions, but because of my father, everything is dependent on the head of the family. If my father says no, I’ll say no. We are to give respect to our mother and father first. There is order. First I have to give respect to my parents, then to my brothers and sisters, and wife, and on. So normally what there is now, there are even nuclear families living apart. So, only telephonically you can talk to your father. So every decision has to be taken in by the head of the family. This is what Hinduism teaches us. But no, because of other impacts, everybody is taking his own decision, so that is that. On the other hand, even if I am 50 years of age and my father is 90 years of age, I’ll be morally dependent on him. If things go badly, if I need money, I’ll go to my father. And he’ll never ask me to pay him back. There is a lot of impact with that. It means father is father, he is the real father. After God, we only consider our father. Whatever he says is final.
We worshipped certain gods. We had a temple in our home. My father is in the Central government so he isn’t able to do priestly duties. He has only five or 10 minutes to do prayers in the morning. There is also a wrong conception in Hinduism. There are thousands of gods. But people think God is only one. Allah for the Muslim, Lord Jesus Christ for the Christian, or Ram. People think there is only one supreme power. But in Hinduism you find plenty of gods. You go to any corner you’ll find they’ll tell you by name, Hanuman, Shiva, Ram, like that. I have about 10 to 15 pictures of the gods.
What my father is today is only because of a Christian family. He was a very poor man. One Christian family supported my father. So if you ask me, I’ll observe in a different manner. See, for Christians we think they are very tolerant. They’ll never bother if they marry themselves into some other caste, or if they can marry their daughter into some other caste. They’ll never mind. They want a free sort of relationship. They’re very frank. They will never keep anything in their heart. If they want to say something, they’ll say it to your face. Christians are very tolerant in society in India. They’re very quiet people, never in a quarreling nature. Christians have given us the best education system. These Hindi people are just spoiling the education system in India. So, Christians have a very high image in society. The typical Hindu will say that Christians will take flesh, they’ll take animal flesh. Hindus will not eat with them or drink water in their house. But because of the Western impact, these things are gradually going.
One of my hobbies is that I normally help poor people, irrespective of caste. I sacrifice Monday’s food in the name of poor people. Today I have not taken any food right from the morning. I’m on water and tea only. There are two ways I do this. First, in the name of God I am sacrificing. Second, in the name of the poor people. People are hungry. If I don’t get food what is going to happen to my body? They have been hungry for so many days. On the other hand, when you’re hungry, your mind works faster. Scientifically also, people say it is good. You are having a rest for your stomach. So I’ve got a spiritual stand for this also, in the sense of sacrificing also. So this is the way I come.
Why do I come here? I come here for one reason, that today is Tuesday. It is Lord Hanuman’s Day. Now, when I fast, I will do some sort of a prayer here. I will pray to the Almighty, “Whosoever is hungry, please arrange them food. You are the Giver, you are the gainer in everything. Whatever you decide.” So here, it is a place where you see a thousand people doing the same thing. You also get some sort of an interest to do it. In your house, you have kids, they’ll disturb you, and your wife. Sometimes the telephone rings. Even if you are here for ten minutes, you are able to concentrate well. So this is the reason why I visit temples. Sometimes I don’t visit temples also. I just close my doors and do the meditation there.
There is one Sundar Kanda, part of the Ramayana. It is dedicated to Lord Hanuman. And in that it is mentioned how Hanuman went to Lanka to give the message to Lord Ravan that Rama is going to come. So all these things are given in the form of little verses, and the meaning is given. So that I also read first, then I will take some food, one chapati. I do this at the end of the day. Normally I do it early in the morning. But today I could not do it because of my busy schedule. From 7:30 I am busy. Maybe at 9:30 I will do it, but before ten o’clock so that the new day doesn’t come. So I get a lot of satisfaction that I’ve done something in the name of God and in the name of poor people. I sacrifice a part of my salary also for poor people. I am tolerant to every religion.
Today I told you I have sent a letter to the World Bible House, just north by the railway station, and very soon I will be getting a Bible course. I have done many Bible courses also. I’ve got one Christian friend also just in front of my house. He’s from Kerala. A lot of religious things he used to tell me whenever I used to go in. He always tells me about the stories of old — Joseph, Mother Mary, Nazareth and all. He describes all these places and what God has said. And I’ll tell you that when I used to have a deep liking, still I am having a deep liking for Christianity. And there was a Mother Mary from Italy. She presented me a book. And written on that book, still that book is with me, she wrote that “Mr. Sanjeev is going to be a very loving boy. And I’m presenting this.” It was “Good News” by a man named Luke. That book is still with me. So I’ve got a liking for every religion. I have found that in Christianity there is no drawback. I find no drawback. Only the people have gone a different direction. They are moved by some other factors, I don’t know why. It is such a clear fact. One God is there, everything is clear. God has taken sins for you, he has suffered for your sins. Lord Jesus suffered for us. He has been crucified for us. So I’ve got a liking for every religion. It is my hobby also to have at least some idea about every religion.
I think there are very few literate people who will not agree with this point that Lord Jesus Christ existed. He existed. he was the man sent by God, born to a virgin, but unmarried. Once we’ve got a trust that he has been sent by a god, then we should have that much trust also that we should reach only through him. That is being taught in Hinduism also, that we cannot reach God directly. We need to have a guru. And in Christianity, your guru is Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot reach to the god directly because we are misled. We have to go through him because we don’t know the way. After he was crucified he said, “After three days I will be coming back.” And he came back so that people would have more confidence that once he was crucified, and then he was alive, that He is God. So people have more trust. How can you deny this factor. And one of his disciples was the one who was part of the conspiracy against Christ.
[Concerning faith and rationality in the Hindu religion.] As I told you, there are mythological stories. My dad, my grandfather, have never seen those stories, they’ve only read. And those stories are being just passed down from generation to generation. We’re just trusting what our fathers and grandfathers were saying. Once I wanted to feed some poor people. I went to the shop of a very rich man. The person selling the sweets is running a profit of 20,000 or 30,000 Rupees on this day, profit only. If you stay until 9:30 you’ll find at least 10,000 people visit this temple today. I went to his shop and I asked him for sweets. I paid him for one kilogram of sweets only, and he gave me two kilograms. I kept my fingers crossed and I took all those. I was feeling very bad in my conscience that I didn’t pay. But suddenly I was happy also, because now I would be able to feed poor people well, because I had twice as much. So I tried to leave it rationally with faith. I am having faith in the poor people in the sense of God, because those poor people are God. I feed those poor people as God. God doesn’t mean that he should come in a chariot like this [pointing to the large chariot image on the gate of the temple]. He will be in any form. God says I should not take money from him because his money is honest money. I distributed the one kilogram among the poor and I was very happy.
I love poor animals. It is my hobby to feed animals in the night. Once I went for a jog at 5:30 in the morning, and when I came back to my house, I heard a very faint voice of a dog. What I saw was a dog underneath a gate and he was crying. God must have given something in my mind. That dog was just going to die. Half of it was on one side of the gate and if I pulled it, the dog would die. God put in my mind that I should put some mustard oil on it. And with mustard oil, I just slipped it out and it was saved. That’s how rationality and science work together. God has given me instruction that something is something, “Go, go, go.” So this is all a miraculous happening.
If you see a person is crying on a road, thousands of people will go by and nobody will bother. But I will bother. I will go and talk to the person crying. This has been taught to me by my father and my parents. So if they don’t teach me these things, how can I teach my son that if anybody is in trouble he should help him. They will not have those feelings. Once he is grown up, I cannot teach him.
Why is it necessary for me to come to this temple and worship the gods? At least I should have some faith in my mind. I come to this holy place with the point of view in mind that at least I should have a certain level of God in my mind. I should go to this temple and I will have an atmosphere that is convenient to this. I will find an atmosphere where all people are religious. I can do the same thing in my house also. But I just wanted to go to a place where I could find thousands of people. I can have a change also. You can do it in your house also.
We are lacking the feeling of trust. If I ask you to give me 200 Rupees, will you give it to me? No, because you don’t trust me. If you ask me, I will not give it to you. I’ve just known you for half an hour, why are you asking me for 200 bucks? It is the same way with poor people. The poor people now sitting here, they may not be as poor as we are actually seeing. It is very hard to have a feeling of trust. Very few people will give the importance to deities in India. They will not think in the way that I am thinking, that poor people are in the form of God. If I present this idea to them, they will laugh at me. Because they’ve been reading all these things right from the generations together, that Lord Shiva is God, Lord Ram is one god. But if I’m going to tell them that God is in the form of these poor people, they’ll not trust. They’ll never trust. So the feeling of trust is lacking in Hinduism. On the other hand, we’ve got a lot of corruption, a lot of illiteracy in India. A lot of poverty. These poor people sometimes will become thieves.
There is a very famous story in Hindi. The name of the story is Har Ki Jit, which means the victory of defeat. There was a very big saint in that area, who had a famous horse. One day a man came to the saint and said, “Will you give me this horse?” The saint refused and said, “It is my pet animal. I cannot part with this horse.” The man said, “I’ll take it by any means.” So he changed his robe and sat on the side of the road in the form of a beggar. The saint was passing on his horse, and the man said, “Give me five paise, ten paise.” The saint was very kind-hearted. He said, “Okay, he’s a poor man. I’ll give you ten paise, or one rupee.” He just came off of the horse, and as he was just bowing down to give the money, that man stood up at once and ran away with the horse. When he was running he said, “Okay, saint, I am taking your horse.” Then the saint said, “Okay, you take my horse, but please don’t tell this story to anybody in society.” The man said, “Why?” And the saint said, “Please don’t tell, because if you do, nobody will trust poor people in the future.” Now this changed the man’s mind. When he took the horse, the whole night he was weeping. He saw the highness of the priest who had parted with the horse.
[Concerning the lingam, an image of the male sex organ and the female sex organ in intercourse, related to Shiva.] One bad thing about Hinduism is they expose a lot of sex, which is very bad, if you see some dances and all. Lord Krishna used to be with 10 or 15 or 20 girls. What is all this? So this is a drawback of religion. They think if they bring Lord Krishna. He used to be with 15 or 20 virgins all the time. He used to take baths with females. Now I alone cannot change Hinduism, because if I raised my voice they would say, “You are not a true Hindu.” In any religion you will not find this sexual thing, but here you will find it.
As I told you, the father is the head of the family. We are told right from childhood that we cannot raise our voice in front of our elders. We cannot talk in sexual terms to our father. But I can talk to my friends about the same thing. They laugh. But laughing doesn’t solve the situation. They can’t because they also grow up in the same culture. If I am going to tell something to the saints here, they will fight with me. They will throw me out of the temple. We are not free in society. On one side, you are just telling your kids not to be with girls, to be away.
My father is a friend to me. If I say, “I will roam”, he will also roam. He’s a friendly sort. But if I talk to a typical Hindu he will say that if somebody has done bad, you will also do bad. If God has done something bad, I should not do that. So God is not perfect in that sense. God can be immoral, in some cases.
[The interview took place in a small community of families living in closely-packed houses in the alleyways of a busy market area in Delhi. The tiny houses, which were not much taller than the people, were surprisingly equipped with electricity, and with several public taps. The roofs were covered with plastic sheets and pieces of metal, held down by rocks. The houses formed a wall of doorways and the lanes between them were quite narrow (5 to 8 feet wide) with a sewage drain running down one side. The two gentlemen we interviewed were seated in a string cot at the juncture of three lanes when we approached them. A small group of people gathered to listen to the following. After the interview, we were served chai and biscuits.]
