| by Bharat
Hiteshi
( December 20,
2012, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Recently
I watched a film, “Oh My God”, that satirises religious beliefs. Based on a
Gujarati play, "Kanji Virudh Kanji" or an Australian film "The
Man who sued God", the film mocked at us for our unending superstitions.
I thought that
doomsayers were confined only to our land till I received a panic call from my
cousin settled in London who said the end of the world was near as the Mayan
calendar that begun in 3114 BC comes to an abrupt halt on December 21, 2012.
The Mayas had developed an advanced society that featured large cities built
around stepped pyramids and they excelled in mathematics and astronomy. The
calendar-obsessed Mayas, with their incredibly accurate calculations without
the help of calculators, computers or telescopes, were able to determine the
length of a lunar month to be 29.53020 days. The actual length is 29.53059
days. The precise manner of rumour predicts a catastrophic celestial collision
between the earth and the mythical planet, Nibiru.
He continued
that panic-buying of candles and essentials had been reported in many parts of
the world with an explosion in the sales of survival shelters. Some believers
were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue
them. And they are not alone. A poll by Ipsos, a global market research company
with worldwide headquarters in Paris, recently found that one in seven persons
believes the world will end during their lifetime. The same poll suggests that
one in 10 people experienced fear and anxiety about the eschatological
implications of Friday. To no one's surprise, fans of Nostradamus, considered
as "The man who saw tomorrow", have also jumped on the 2012 band
wagon.
The US space
agency, NASA, itself has waged a campaign of facts to combat fear-mongering,
debunking the doomsday theories. The space agency has published detailed
rebuttals of five separate a pocalyptic scenarios on its website, including a
meteor strike, a solar flare-up and the so-called polar shift saying that
magnetic reversals do take place approximately every 400,000 years but these do
not cause any harm to life on the earth. Also any magnetic reversal is very
unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.
That night I
could not sleep, wondering why such rumours erupt time and again. Earlier the
end of the world was predicted on May 21, 2011. And I found the answer in my
dreams that since the beginning of human history, people have yearned for a
world of peace, righteousness and justice. Time and time again they have placed
their hopes in politicians who have promised them the moon, and time and time
again their hopes have been dashed. I realised that if such rumours work in the
direction of bringing some morality among people, propelling them to shed
corrupt ways, stop crime against fellow human beings to become good citizens,
then even these rumours should be welcomed.
Shakespeare
rightly said in “Measure for Measure” that "virtue is bold and goodness
never fearful". Let us learn to love as only love can bridge the gulf
between nations, between man and man and between man and nature, and shed all
fears.
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