Kancha Ilaiah Telegraph picture

Rationalists and several Ambedkerite scholars on Saturday criticised the central government for its decision to telecast the Ramayan and Mahabharat serials on Doordarshan amid a food and transport crisis that has forced many migrant workers to set out on foot from cities to their villages.

The Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (Fira), the apex body of over a hundred rationalist associations, and scholars like Kancha Ilaiah said the government was trying to capitalise on the religious beliefs of the people to escape unpalatable questions on its shoddy handling of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Social activists like Rahul Sonpimple and Ashok Agrawal said that the government was shirking its responsibility towards the poor while engaging the attention of the middle class on the religious epics.

Information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar on Saturday tweeted that both serials will be shown on DD and asked cable operators to show the channels.

Fira secretary Sudesh Ghoderao said common people usually believed in God and superpower out of helplessness. The government’s decision to promote serials based on religious epics shows its helplessness, he added.

“It is unfortunate the government is promoting religious beliefs than scientific temper. Religion cannot help the people escape Covid-19. The science will help,” Ghoderao said.

He said the BJP is hiding its failure by using faith. Although the screening of people from the coronavirus-affected countries was started in January, strict isolation was not being followed.

Fira has written to rationalists in the country to dissuade people from following superstitious practices to seek escape from the virus.

Ilaiah said the biggest war on mankind is the virus war which must be fought scientifically. He said all leading religious places had been closed for visitors because religion is of no help.

“Virus is the greatest danger to any nation than even nuclear war. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata cannot save the nation. All religions of the world have proved ineffective to fight the virus. Gods have shifted from shrines to hospitals. The minister should have asked channels to show programmes on scientific discoveries,” Illaiah said.

Ilaiah cited RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s two-year-old statement that Sangh cadres would take less time than the army to reach the border to fight the enemy. Iliaiah asked why the Sangh cadres are missing when migrant workers have to walk back hundreds of kilometres without food or transport.

“The government is asking people to maintain social distancing. Because of caste system, the upper castes have been maintaining social distancing for thousands of years. The current practice of isolation is disease distancing,” Ilaiah said.

Sonpimple, a votary of social justice and a former students’ leader in JNU, said that the telecast of the Ramayan and Mahabharat serials was a reproduction of “regressive” Brahminical thought on society.

“The teachings from these epics are regressive. The government is not bothered by the common people who are suffering without work, money, food and transport,” he said.

Agrawal, an activist working on the education sector in Delhi, said the upper classes and the middle class in the country seemed unconcerned about the problem of migrant workers. Similarly the government, he added.

“The suffering of migrant workers shows the lack of sensitivity on part of the rich and the government,” he said.