The Deity In The Engine

Maramma is the presiding deity here, commonly referred to as Circle Maramma. The circle, in a classic case of self-reference, is usually called Maramma Circle. This is now so much a part of public consciousness that the postal authorities deliver letters to places with the address: "Near Maramma Circle"! Tucked away in a corner under overgrown shrubs, though, is a faded sign with the official name: Sir C.V. Raman Circle.

The official name still resides in dusty bureaucratic records. What has changed is the public’s perception of the place and the appropriation by a goddess of an honour given to a scientific figure. What had always been played out in the background has now become explicit. Modern India, sought to be built on the foundations of modern science and technology, has never fully taken this project to heart. It is perhaps unfortunate that Nehru used the metaphor of "temple" for industries. Or perhaps it was a great insight of his that technology would never escape the grasp of religion in our country.

The crowd at Circle Maramma temple is indicative of the Indian public’s complex relationship with technology. The ritual of worshipping vehicles is not always restricted to Hindus but is manifest in different ways in other religions. It is also not restricted to non-scientific spheres and is commonly followed in science and technology institutions and laboratories.

How do we understand the ritual of offering worship to machines? It incorporates everything, from ‘mixies’ and PCs to big industrial machinery, into the domain of rituals. While this says something about the scope of our religious beliefs, it also says something important about the cultural ways by which we relate to technology.

In the Hindu tradition, offering prayers is common in many activities. Dancers offer prayers asking forgiveness to the Earth goddess before they begin the dance. Chefs offer a prayer to the stove before they cook for certain religious functions. There are rituals at various stages of building a house. In the dynamic syncretism of religious practices in India, such ritualisation transcends inter-faith boundaries.

So, it may be said that offering prayers to machines is part of a larger cultural ethos in our society. However, the significant difference between worship in general and involving machines in worship is that the latter takes technology into the domain of religion. This is paradoxical since technology is intrinsically associated with science, which is, in a fundamental sense, in opposition to religion. Thus, offering prayers in the case of dancing or cooking does not evoke a critical response from us because these activities are seen as part of traditions which have strong religious links, whereas offering prayers to scientific artefacts seems to run counter to the spirit of science.However, prayers to machines shares a cultural root with other forms of worship as manifested during Ayudha Puja every year. While it may have been a day of propitiation to weapons, it is now understood to mean every kind of machine, especially vehicles. Perhaps people have realised that today vehicles are indeed used as weapons of destruction!

The temptation for temples to offer this puja has also grown over the last few years. Even famous temples like the Chamundeswari temple in Mysore is not immune to this trend. At the entrance there’s a board which lists all the pujas that can be offered. Sure enough, down the list there are these entries (as of last year): "scooter and auto puja - 15 Rs", "car or jeep puja - 25 Rs" and "bus, lorry or van puja - 50 Rs". Interestingly, the deities in these temples are primarily feminine, thereby suggesting complex gender and caste patterns in this act.

From the science perspective, what’s the most obvious reaction to the offering of prayers to machines? Firstly, puja for machines seems to associate religion and God with instruments of science. The question science will ask is: what’s God got to do with science and products of scientific knowledge?

For science, all that needs to be known about a technological object are the principles of science and engineering. These, like the principles and laws of nature, are not dependent on God’s will and munificence. So, incorporating technology into the domain of religion is seen as an act of defiance against scientific ideology.

Offering prayers to machines actually says more about the nature of technology and the ways in which we respond to it than about religion. Science would like to believe that technology is like it—universally true and applicable, and independent of who uses technology and where it is used. Surely this isn’t the case. Technology is not independent of the users of technology and the culture in which this technology is placed.

In an influential essay, German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote about the essence of technology and the relationship which we establish with it. In the Indian context, the relation we establish with technology includes the offering of prayers to machines and this says something essential about technology as much as it says about ourselves.

It is clear the way we relate to technology is quite different from that in the developed West, say the US. Americans are much more comfortable with technology than we are. They see it as an integral part of American culture and the engagement with technology as intrinsic to being an American. The capacity of the American mind to innovate is not restricted to ‘high’ technology; in my view some of the cleverest innovations are in the designs of toys, household and kitchen gadgets, games and so on. Nowhere in the world are there more inventors and institutions to support inventors than in the US.

There is a tremendous ease with which old and new technologies are absorbed by an individual and the larger community in the US. In contrast, in India there is some unease in the way we look at, use and understand technology. It is an unease which we have with an outsider, arising from relating with something which we do not acknowledge as being a ‘part’ of ourselves. We have not been able to internalise modern technology into our cultural worldview. Partly, the problem is compounded by the fact that we have learnt to describe ourselves in terms of tradition, which in many ways is mistakenly placed in opposition to modernity, primarily scientific and technological modernity. This is unfortunate for among the most important ancient Indian traditions have been metallurgy and artisanship, both of which reflect a mature understanding of technology.

In the public imagination, technology is still an alien, not something we create or which arises from our own tradition and culture. We don’t easily trust technology and therefore it does not inspire a sense of responsibility in us. Modern technology is largely seen as a product of the colonial era and in the present times that of the neo-colonial US culture.

It’s not surprising then that a country with such a large scientific manpower has contributed little to technological innovation. While there are some pockets of technologically savvy engineers and scientists, we, as a culture, still show no self-assured way of dealing with technological issues.

In this miasma of uneasiness that surrounds our relationship with technology, we look to our Gods for help. To them, we don’t ask for understanding or for the confidence to learn to deal with technology. We only ask for "protection" from this alien creature which has become such an integral fixture in our midst.