Wealth & Power for Easier Access to God

We arrived in India after a long set of airplane rides."Still, the process was smoother than I imagined." While the Air India aircraft did seem old and poorly maintained on the inside, the flights were quite comfortable and the food was good. "While our flight arrived in Mumbai over an hour late, the onward flight to Bangalore was held for us (I assume because the main group of passengers on that flight was aboard our flight)." When we arrived in Bangalore, it was clear that we were the only flight coming in at that hour and so immigration was an absolute breeze and the customs didn’t even bother to stop anyone to ask questions.

The rest of the day was filled with meeting relatives I hadn’t seen in a long time. A big group of relatives from around the region had gathered for the engagement of my niece tomorrow and so it was a blast catching up with them. The engagement, set for tomorrow morning, is surrounded by lots of rituals and so the day was busy with preparations. One interesting visit was to the local temple where the family purchased some offerings to the Gods. Basically, you pay a some of money to the priests and they will do a special, personal prayer to the Gods on your behalf. Since we had purchased a rather large “package” of prayers, we were ushered in to the front of the line and into a private viewing area in the front which was inaccessible to the throngs of worshippers visiting the temple to pray. Our front row seat often blocked the views of the others, but I guess that’s the advantage of paying for the special prayers. After a while, my uncle and I moved to the outskirts of the group and talked about how this system worked. He explained how pilgrims could come from far and wide for a “darshan” of the Gods, but were basically constantly told to keep moving and often got short glimpses of the idols. He made an interesting comment, “But people with wealth and power get much easier access to the Gods.” He said that in very popular temples, which had throngs of thousands of devotees, people who paid a significant some of money for some offerings to the Gods were shuttled to the front of the lines and given access to a private viewing area of sorts which were closer to the front and off limits to the common person. He then laughed and said that it wasn’t just money, powerful politicians and movie stars also never had to stand with the common man in line waiting for a view – they were just led past the waiting devotees to the front, bypassing the often interminable waiting queues. That’s what led to the “access to Gods” comment. The comment struck a chord with me because I immediately related it to the Being Indian book and how wealth, status and power could provide high levels of access and could result in things “getting done” that would otherwise take a long and tortuous process. I guess even access to Gods is easier for the rich and powerful.