Celestial squabble

Wednesday 13th March, 2024

Sri Lankan politics is turning red in tooth and claw, with several presidential hopefuls going for each other’s jugular. While their campaigns are getting down and dirty, a ‘celestial battle’ is likely to eclipse the ones being bitterly fought on the political front. Politicians are promising the public the moon in a bid to garner votes, and astrologers are fighting over the sun, so to speak; they are protesting against the official auspicious times or nekath for the upcoming traditional New Year celebrations, which, they insist, should be held before sunset. If the officially-declared auspicious times are observed, the country will certainly have disastrous consequences to contend with, the warring astral diviners have warned. The question is whether one can think of a worse predicament for this country than the one it currently finds itself in!

The battle of the self-proclaimed experts on electional astrology is likely to intensify in the next few weeks, with the government coming under increasing pressure to cancel the nekath at issue.

It is seldom that anyone takes a critical look at stellar prognostication or planetary divination in this country, whose leaders, tasked with settling the ongoing nekath dispute, are themselves sticklers for occult practices. One may recall that at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the then Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi and some of her Cabinet colleagues made a spectacle of themselves by dropping pots containing some charmed liquid into rivers in a bid to rid the country of the runaway virus. Worse, a carpenter-turned shaman, named Dhammika Bandara, duped Minister Wanniarachdhi and Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena into swallowing some herbal concoction he touted as a cure for Covid-19. Several ministers of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government bashed the critics of the shaman, arguing that Sri Lanka could overcome its foreign exchange woes by exporting the untested herbal syrup, prepared according to what was said to have been revealed to the crafty dukun by a goddess, in a dream! This may explain why Sri Lanka is lagging behind the rest of the world.

We do not intend to deride anyone’s beliefs, but we cannot help wondering why prosperity continues to elude Sri Lanka despite its obsession with auspicious times, which govern all aspects of most Sri Lankans’ lives and are believed to bring good luck. Governments of this country are apparently guided by the advice and prognostications of astrologers or occult practitioners rather than the Constitution. A hospital orderly-turned self-styled seeress in Anuradhapura has had Presidents, Prime Ministers, ministers, military commanders and business leaders of this country on a string; they seek her blessings and advice to achieve success in their chosen fields. She is known as Gnanakka to her devotees. But all her occult powers could not help contain the 2022 popular uprising. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s book, The Conspiracy, should have contained a chapter on her. Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the presidency in 2015 by advancing a presidential election at the behest of his palace seer. The insecurity of political leaders is reflected in the layers of multi-coloured, charmed threads they wear on their wrists, and the apotropaic objects they carry wherever they go.

Interestingly, Pluto lost its planetary status in 2006 thanks to a formalised definition of planets decided by the International Astronomical Union. It has been downgraded to a dwarf planet from its previous position as the ninth planet from the sun. But the search is still on for the ninth planet. While astronomers are trying to figure out the actual number of planets in the solar system, astrologers are monetising the movements of the already discovered planets and conjectures based thereon.

The ongoing astrologers’ battle over New Year auspicious times reminds us of Voltaire’s words of wisdom: “Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.”

The present-day government leaders have undertaken to promote science and technology and turn Sri Lanka into a knowledge hub in the region. It will be interesting to see how they reconcile their much-advertised commitment to that mission with their blind faith in occult practices.