COVID-19 and rise of superstition

If there was one narrow streak of sunshine that gleaned through the lugubrious and menacing cloud that blew in from the East, it was the conviction growing among people that it was a virus that caused the disease, that the nature of the virus was to multiply fast, find living hosts and making them sick . The Virus itself keeps evolving, as evident from the information given by scientists that the strain that infected people in September in Sri Lanka, was different from that which had caused the earlier outbreak. Into this healthy growth of confidence in science the government led by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has now asked the bhikkhu sangha to recite ratana sutta, jvara sutta and jaya pirita to work against SARS-CoV-2.

This practice is without any validity as we had seen in March 2020, when pirit chanting went on a large scale and the epidemic went on its own deadly path.

Now, another minister of his Cabinet has taken on the bizarre practice of throwing pots of water into which mumbo-jumbo has been uttered into a flowing river. Some five centuries ago a migrant brahmin charlatan, in roughly the same area as the water was thrown into a river, is reported to have done some mumbo-jumbo and well aware of the charlatanry that he was practising near a river, is reported to have said ‘raja ho ma ho ganga ho’- the king or the river or me. The king was appeased. In the present circumstances, the king-pretender is unlikely to be pleased.

Let us kill this superstition much like a vicious serpent that can poison one to death.

USVATTE-ARATCHI