The Rush To Rediscover Religion

Places of worship see an unprecedented rush. On an average working day, over 40,000 people visit the Lord Balaji Temple at Tirupati: last year it received an unparalleled Rs 400 crore as offerings. Mumbais Siddhi Vinayak temple records up to 16 lakh devotees visiting it on Ganesh Chaturthis that fall on a Tuesday. Thirty-thousand people pray at the Golden Temple complex daily and the numbers growing at 2 per cent a month, says the gurudwara committee. About 2.5 lakh pilgrims, more than ever before, are expected to trek up to Badrinath this year; already unable to manage the heavy flow, the government is said to be considering stopping the registration in a couple of days.

Spirituality workshops, religious study circles, yoga camps, meditation groups thrive. Lifestyle courses like the Art of Living become a craze. Healing practices like reiki and the pranic methodology find thousands of young takers. Experts, institutions and believers of spiritual dwelling practices like vaastu and fengshui multiply.

Gurus mushroom, disciples grow. While Puttaparthi Sai Baba, Pandurang Athavale and Ravi Shankar have mega-million followings that are on the increase, younger New Age gurus-in the Deepak Chopra mould-sprout into affluent Indias spiritual firmament daily, to play shrink, philosopher and guide in what are mostly swank spiritual workshops.

New communities get into organising and participating in religious activities. Unlike earlier, Chennai sees political organisations like the Hindu Munnani organising Ganesh Chaturthi on its streets. In West Bengal, neighbourhoods join in to make temples and offer pujas to hitherto subaltern gods like Mansa Devi and Shitala Ma and catapult them into the mainstream Hindu pantheon. Housing societies such as Akashbharti and Kakitiya Apartments in Delhi build their own temples. So do many hospitals like Hyderabads care and Bangalores Manipal hospitals.

Religion is beamed 24 hours on channels like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi television, plus local channels dedicated to bhajan-and-bhakti proliferate. Channel gurus like Asa Ram Bapu and Murari Bapu captivate viewers. Mythological soaps gain prime time popularity: Ma Manasa on etv Bangla and Sri Ramkrishna on DD7 are mega-hits in communist West Bengal. And while serials like Jai Mata Ki gain some of the highest trps on the national network, Jap, Tap, Brat and Ganesh Puran are in the making.

Computer piety arrives in Hindustan with reports of at least 75 portals on religion being set up by Indians. Many temples-Tirupati, Siddhi Vinayak, Harmandar Sahib, to name just a few-launch sites enabling surfers to seek darshan and offer puja online.

Devotional music captures over one-third of the Rs 400 crore music market. On offer are not just cheap T-Series bhakti cassettes and Narendra Chanchals bhajans but gayatri chants, Geeta mantras, Krishnadhwani, Veda shlokas, Sufi lyrics, tunes for meditation rendered by maestros like Pandit Jasraj and Bhimsen Joshi, among others.

Spiritual tourism finds a market. Kerala packages itself as "Gods Own Country", flaunting its indigenous healing therapies and spiritual lifestyle. Taj Residency Calicut signs up with an ayurvedic chain to develop an in-house ayurvedic package for its guests. Suman Motels has 33 religious destinations divided into three circuits-Vaishnav, Jain and Buddhist.

Corporates sort out their beliefs. Companies like Godrej, Lupen Labs, Ayodhya Paper Mills and the Nagarjuna and Alacrity groups institutionalise meditation. Spiritual institutions, in turn, set up management centres-among others, there are Amrithanandamayi Maths Centre for Value Based Management, Mahesh Yogis Maharishi Institute of Management and the Shringeri Sharda Institute of Management. Vipassana meditation guru S.. Goenka is invited to the World Economic Forum at Davos this year where he addresses world leaders, including Bill Clinton.

The University Grants Commission proposes to introduce super-speciality degree courses in Karamkand (temple rituals by priests) and Vedic astrology in universities through the country.

The Rs-200-crore Sagar group, having tasted mega-success with their mythological serials like the Ramayana, is on its way to create theme parks Ramaland, Durgaland and Gangaland through the country, on the lines of Disneyland. Indiagames.com signs up with the maker of superhit serial Mahabharata B.R. Chopra to develop digital games around the epics characters.

Spirituality is seen as behavioral therapy, powered to transform belligerence into bliss. Inmates of Tihar Jail in Delhi, as well as the Nashik and Yerawada jails in Maharashtra and Chennai Central Prison, take courses in yoga, meditation and spirituality.

Celebrities flaunt their sojourns into spirituality. Superstar Amitabh Bachchan, industrialist Anil Ambani and politician Amar Singh make a Badrinath pilgrimage to seek divine blessings for success in the actors television debut. Socialites Tina Ambani and Rhea Pillai are flamboyant flag-bearers of Sri Sri Ravi Shankars Art of Living. Miss World Yukta Mookhey is coached into Universal Oneness by New Age guru Mickey Mehta. Also a reiki initiate, Priyanka Gandhi takes a 10-day course at Dhamma Dipa, a Vipassana meditation centre in Hereford, England. Other Vipassana graduates are actress Shabana Azmi, model Madhu Sapre and former VJ Meghna Reddy.