In god we trust

India has been the heart of spiritualism before time itself and probably will continue to be in times to come; can this be the reason for having 330 million Hindu gods in India? Population of India is approximately 1,170,938,000, dividing this count by the number of gods we have, it is shocking to know that we have one god for every 3.5 Indians. Some Indians don’t worship Hindu gods, making the ratio worst, probably one god for every 2 individuals (and they say that we are on verge of human population explosion). Few gods are much more popular than others and hence have more than 2 devotees, i.e. there are some gods who have no devotees at all. But this is not the point, the point is, why do we have so many gods to begin with?

I generally don’t bother myself by thinking on these non-trivial issues of life, I offer my prayers to couple of Hindu gods and go about minding my own business. As I like the concept of Hinduism above any other art of living philosophy, I always believed, more the number of gods directly proves the richness of Hinduism and the open mindedness of Hindus towards recognizing skills of people and occasionally start worshiping them and ultimately making them gods. As I grew older, I realized that most of our gods are result of our fears. Humans feared fire, hence a god for it, we heavily rely on rains, and hence a god for it and the list goes on and on. Probably these might be the reasons for having so many gods, but why do we have so much faith in our gods? Making a new god is probably easy, we have already done it 330 million times, but developing faith in them is probably hard, I am still puzzled about the fact that we all indeed have some faith in our gods.

After two years, I finally went to India on a month long vacation and I “kind of” understood the reason for having so many gods and such a strong faith in them. Life of people belonging to middle class and lower middle class is hard. Everyone has numerous dreams but not everyone can realize them, may be because of unavailability of opportunities. People have very less control over their own life’s, they are not sure if they’ll return home alive after work, not sure if their efforts will get noticed or will fall pray to local politics. People die just because ambulance couldn’t reach on time, or doctors go on strike or are hooked up to duplicate medicines or just because no beds are available. We have so many tropical diseases that don’t even exist in the western world, and one falls ill because of contaminated food or water. Every day is a struggle as there are thousands available to do the same task keeping everyone on their toe. There are more reasons to be worried than to be happy, there is more dissatisfaction than being content.

Where shall a common man go for help or whom shall the sufferer cry out for help, probably to god? We pray for almost everything, occasionally, even for the buses and trains to arrive on time. We pray for exam results, better future, wellbeing of loved ones and everything we can imagine of. People and the country literally runs “Ram bharose”. With millions of wishes lined up for god to answer, just one god is not enough, and hence we need million gods. Chances are very high to be lost in the enormous pool of people, and it takes miracle to exist, probably that’s the reason why we have so much faith in our gods.