A
few days back there was an unusual debate between poet and intellectual Javed
Akhtar, a known atheist, and religious scholar Mufti Shamail Nadvi on ‘Does God
exist?’, moderated by Saurabh Dwivedi of the
Lallan Top. I heard the whole of it and
also read the article on the
subject by senior journalist Yogendra
Yadav published in the Indian Express on 23rd of December.
Though I found the idea of such a debate quite
pointless because I believe that it
is impossible to prove the existence of God and it is
equally impossible to prove the claim
that He does not exist. But the subject nevertheless has always
attracted my attention as I found it
academically both intriguing and
exciting. .
I was reminded by
the debate about the detailed discussion on the subject in my own novel ‘A Fascinating Trip To Humans
Manufacturing Site’, the book that has to its credit the Golden Book Award
2025. Being a hot topic, those who
followed my Blog earlier may enjoy the titbits that the
extract from the book carries.
Extract from novel ‘A Fascinating Trip To Humans
Manufacturing Site’ (pages
47…)
And , now I will send you on earth to hear for yourselves the
discussions that propelled us to initiate this exercise. Mr Zomo got up from the seat and went near
the panels hinged to the wall in a certain order . Out of hundreds of panels he
put his finger on one , which, understandably, denoted “Earth’. It seemed
apparent from the actions of Mr Zomo that the
panels, which came out as fixed on the wall on the push of a button,
related to different stars , planets and satellites. As we saw it happening, the panel marked ‘Earth’, with
a mysterious touch by Mr Zomo,
started opening in a circular
mode, widening gradually, exposing the planet
and bringing it into focus in a moving sequence one after the other ,
the crust , oceans , the mountains, the jungles, the cities , towns and a
terrain of villages on earth. At a certain point , the movement began
to slow down narrowing the process of
focusing, first on a township,
creating an illusion for us to be
walking on the streets and lanes , and then on a halting railway train
which picked up speed after we , the team of twenty, found ourselves sitting in the compartment in
an haphazard manner on seats which , somehow, faced six gentlemen conversing
with each other excitedly.
There was a seventh person who sat
on a solo seat ,silent and alert, hearing every word spoken by the group of six while appearing to
be indifferent and unmindful to what was
happening. He, without any doubt, was
God’s representative. By the time our team joined the group of six
in the compartment , they seemed to have
warmed up to discuss the theme , incoherently though , which was the reason for us to be
brought here on earth for a while.
“What did you say? I could not hear you, Satish. There was so much noise , “ asked the man in his early forties sitting at the corner of the long berth.
“
Ok, Avinash, I said why should we
all the time blame God for everything that goes wrong. After all , we have the
brains and if we do not act wisely ,
what is the fault of God. Why should we
take shelter under the cover of Providence for our wrong and foolish actions? ”
repeated Satish what perhaps he had already spoken before we
landed inside the compartment . He was seated
third in the facing row.
“ And what about things over which
man has no control like the victims of
natural calamities? The hurricanes, the avalanches, earthquakes and tremors, fast winds and heavy rains and such
other calamities which leave behind the cruel ‘ dance of death and agony’ for
no fault of a man ,” contested Gokul, an elderly looking person sitting next to Satish.
“ Yes, I quite agree with Gokul,” joined Himesh the discussion which
had risen to take serious overtones. “
Well, do not misunderstand me. I have as much faith in God
as anybody else. I believe as most of us believe that here is some power
that created us and that governs us. But
the question keeps lingering in my mind that if God is there and He governs the
earth, then why there is so much of misery, woes and pains afflicting
the living beings,”.
Satish seemed to be completely cornered . He did not have answer to any of the queries raised by Gokul
and Himesh . Added to it, Nirmesh gave quite a different twist to whole discussion when he put a point blank
question, “ Where is He? if God is God,
the omnipresent, the omniscient and omnipotent and created the world and the
life on it with all the intelligence, then how was it that there was so much evil and so much of suffering? How could he vitiate his own
creation?” He spoke as if challenging the very existence of God . His skepticism was born out of apparent
contradiction that the God is
there and yet He does nothing when there is pain and agony
engulfing his own created living being.
That amounts to He being not there in the opinion of Nirmesh.
“ Yes, to that extent your question makes sense when you say
why there is so much evil and suffering on earth , if God is there to take care
of us. But if you use the argument to
insinuate that God, or for that matter, Divine Power does not exist, then I beg
to differ,” said Gokul. “That there is some power, we may call it with whatever
name, that created Universe and
regulates it . How did that Power
created its creation and regulates it is
a matter perhaps beyond our comprehension . But
it certainly has the intelligence. ”
“ Well, I do not know. I am simply
confused. I have been trying to seek answers to only
two questions which keep nagging me , specially when I see people
worshipping with deep faith or even talk
about the God or the Divinity with
phrases like ‘ Nothing happens without Him’. And nobody seems to know enough to
answer them,” Nirmesh was bent on raising ticklish issues of philosophy knowing
that none there, for that reason, anywhere had the answers.
“ What are those questions?” asked
Himesh .
“My
first question is: If God created
Universe , me , you and all of us , then who created God? The simple answer that most of the people
give is that God is God who is above everything and hence
He was not needed to be created . But
this is not the answer to my question,” said Nirmesh
Well, you are an atheist and do not believe in the existence of God.
That is why you are raising such baseless questions,” retorted Satish who saw
into the question threat to his own unflinching faith. He was the person who
followed tenets of his faith and religion meticulously and visited nearby
temple regularly for worshipping before the divine deities.
He had visited most of the
prominent temples and gone on pilgrimages, taken holy dips in the Ganges on most of the
prescribed occasions, paid obeisance
at famous Shrines of goddess Vaishno Devi and Sat Sai Baba of Shirdi. Not that others did not have faith or had not gone on pilgrimages or visited places of worship.
There are innumerable people who have gone beyond the realm of their own faith
and paid their obeisance at others’
places of worship, mosques, churches and gurudwaras. But none could match the level of faith that
Satish had nurtured. He was ready to
quarrel if anyone dared pointing to his excessiveness on the matter.
“ Well, if you look to my question with
a sense of logic, you will understand
why I posed the question the way I have done it,” continued Nirmesh.
“Long back my six years old daughter
posed the question: “Papa, you told me that you are my father who had a father,
then your father had a father and his father also had a father and so on and
on,” She kept adding and then , tired of unending ascend of my predecessors, she cut
short by putting the question, “But who was the first father?” I said our first
father was God. Then who was his father? she asked.’ I could understand what was cooking up in
her tiny innocent mind . But I could not
give any satisfactory answer to her
question. But the question kept lingering on.
There has to be a creator of
every creation, whatever the process of creation,” Nirmesh stopped to see if
any of his friends in the group was ready to answer it. He found everyone
thinking with the seriousness of philosophers but, quite expectedly, did not
find them venturing to answer.
We , who were hearing the discourse
with curious interest, were not
surprised at the silence of others. There was no question for them to answer a
question which none so far could answer eversince the first man touched the
ground of this earth. Breaking the silence, Himesh goaded Nirmesh to speak out
the second question , as if he intended to answer both the questions together.
Nirmesh took some time to pick up
the right words and then said “ My
second question is : Assuming God is God, the omnipresent, omniscient and
omnipotent, who created, with the
divine intelligence, the world with life on it in all its
varieties, then how was it that there is
so much evil and so much of
suffering. We are born to
live all the time in one fear or the
other, the fear of sickness, accident, invalidity, pangs of ageing, the dangers
of natural calamities and ultimate
death. We do not know when evil, in its varied manifestations, may take us in
its vice like grip in one way or the
other.” He stopped to breathe and to watch the reaction of his small but highly
enlightened audience. .
Taking advantage of the pause that
lasted for a little too long than usual, Bindan, who was so far only hearing and had not
spoken a word bursted out to give vent
to his pent-up thoughts and feelings
supplementing what Nirmesh was trying to argue. “I have not
been able to understand why God created
us to live the way we live, live in strife, all the time ready to pounce at
others to inflict physical and moral
injuries, rapes , plunders , murders , robberies , skirmishes and full scale
wars leading to large scale naked dance of barbarity and death ?
If evil was created to coexist with good , the way it does all over the
world, then was it created for fun or was there some tangible reason for
creating world full of funny contradictions?
What was the purpose after all ? To me
it seems to be nothing short of a game,
a sport to be played and enjoyed by Divine Power by pitting good against evil.
And the fun is that these two opposites poles are being put at loggerheads
with hundreds and thousands and millions
of twists in the game. I think, the great English novelist, Thomas Hardy, was
right when he concluded his novel ‘The Tess of D’Urbervilles’: with the words , if I remember correctly, ‘As
flies are to the wanton boys so are we to him. He kills us for fun.’ If this is not it then what it is it?” He heaved a sigh
of relief after he was through and
watched his friends for reaction .
But it was too late because the
train slowed down with the approaching station and he and his friends began to take in custody
their suitcases and got ready to get down. As for us , the travellers from the
other world, we found ourselves first in the street and then , before we could
make sense, found ourselves sitting on our seats from where we had vanished
mysteriously and saw the panel on the wall returning to its position. It goes without saying that Mr Zomo pushed the button to make the panel move in reverse
position in order to bring us back to
the conference hall.
****
