Superstitions in India Essay Example for Free

Superstitions in India Essay Superstitions are based on ignorance and there is no place for superstitions but in the darkness. The best way to remove superstitions is to educate the people and given them light of reason. A true knowledge of Nature and God will take the place of blind beliefs and false traditions and this only can should the death-knell of superstitions. —Samuel Smiles. Superstitions are unreasoned and irrational beliefs of the people living in the past or in the present age. When certain happenings cannot be rationally explained, people assign mysterious and inexplicable reasons for their operation. This faith of the people in irrational things takes the form of superstitions. Superstitions are, therefore, unreasoned beliefs which have a chronic kind of intensity in their evil. In old primitive times, superstitions governed the majority of people. Those days were such that it favored the growth of superstitions. Superstitions enjoyed their hey-day of glory when the civilization and science had not lighted the darkness of the ignorance of the primitive people. Lack of scientific advancement is another cause of the growth of superstitions. They find a rich soil for germination at a time and in a country where science and philosophy have not had their hold on the masses. Unenlightened people always tend to be superstitions. Undue reverence for traditions and customs prevailing in a particular society also make people superstitions in their ideas. This belief in the sacredness of time and old traditions of ancestors, keep people in the pale of superstitious thought. The tricks of the priests also exercise their unhealthy effect and people with a religious orthodoxy are prove to fall an easy prey to these superstitious agencies. Superstitions have continued to exercise their sway on all classes of people all over the world. There are certain common superstitions which are shared by all the people in the world. Belief in spirits, ghosts, and witches is a common superstition among all the people of the world. Even today belief in witches is present in India, Scotland, England, France and many other countries. People, especially in India and other countries of the East, still believe in ghosts. The cries of certain birds like owl and ravenes and mewing of cats are regarded with superstitions all over the globe. There is a very common belief that when comets are seen, they portend the death of kings or great men. When beggars die there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. In India, every activity of life is associated with some sort of superstition. It is supposed to be bad if somebody sneezes behind or calls back a man who is leaving his home for a journey. He must stop for a while to let the ill-luck pass. It is again ominous if he sees an empty vessel or a broom right in front of the house. The story of Ram Chandra, coming across a snake on the left hand side and a jackal on the right hand side while he was coming back to his hut in the jungle is widely known. He at once guessed that some misfortune had befallen Sita. The sight of a dead body or a cow feeding her calf or a full pitcher is considered as auspicious while one is on a journey. Stories of ghosts and evil spirits are very common in all the countries of the world and especially in India. After death, a person changes into a ghost. Sometimes, a ghost molests the other members of the family generally, a pipal tree is supposed to be the haunt of ghosts. The fear of ghosts is so great that some people worship them in their homes without giving them any shape and form. The ghosts are offered sweets, cakes, clothes and many such Other articles to please them and bribe them against doing any kind of harm to the people. Generally, the illiterate and ignorant people believe in superstitions. In villages, the people believe that small-pox, cholera and some fevers all are caused by the displeasure of he-ghosts and she-ghosts. The small pox, whenever it spreads in the form of epidemic, is supposed to be the result of the wrath of the Goddess Shitaladevi. Numerous beliefs of this type are prevalent in villages. Sometimes, such miracles take place in the cure of such diseases that one is surprised at and compelled to believe in these superstitions. Indians have a blind belief in, Sadhus though the cases of cheating by the Sadhus are generally heard. The ashes given by the Sadhus to their devotees are considered as something extraordinarily holy. The tradition of observing Terahvi in Indian families is another superstition. Hindus believe that souls of the dead persons exist in some form or the other for about eleven days in the family. The family becomes free form the impurity of death on the twelfth day. On this day Brahmins are fed and given charities to give peace to departed soul. These acts of giving charities to the Brahmins and feeding them or repeated every year in the month of Kwar. This observance is called Shradha. People have a great faith in palmistry, astrology and horoscope. There may be some experts in them here and there but generally, we come across, cheats, who exploit innocent persons and befool them. Superstitions differ from place to place and caste to caste. In South India, the sight of a black cat, crossing the way in front of one is considered to be very inauspicious. In Punjab, the sight of a Brahmin right in the morning is supposed to bring one misfortune for the whole day. But a Brahmin is not looked upon as inauspicious elsewhere. The sight of a cobbler, oilmen or washer man bring ill-lack to one in U. P. ut not in Punjab, It should not be surprising that some of English superstitions are very similar to certain superstitions prevalent in India. But in England and India the following of a dog at night without any apparent cause is supposed to indicate the presence of a spirit nearby. As in Indian villages, people believe in witches, so do the people of England and Wales who live in remote villages. The only panacea for all the social evils like superstitions is education. To make the backward and superstition minded Indians enlightened, education should be spread widely. Education cultivates reasoning and thinking in a human being and as soon as a person comes under the shelter of reason and scientific outlook, he or she, becomes free from blind beliefs. Indians by nature are fatalists and they do not apply their energy to work for the betterment of their lot. This is the greatest superstition which has undermined and is still undermining the real prosperity of India. People should be properly educated and should be inspired to be hard working and honest. Then, we should judge everything by the strong light of reason, having firm faith in God.

Analysis Of 1984 :: essays research papers

Analysis of 1984 In 1949, an Englishman named Eric Blair published the novel 1984. Under the pseudonym, George Orwell, this author became one of the most respected and notable political writers for his time. 1984 was Orwell’s prophetic vision of the world to come. This creation of â€Å"Negative Utopia† was thoroughly convincing through Orwell’s use of setting and characterization. The theme conveyed by Orwell is that no matter how strong an individual a communist society would destroy any hope that that soul had of surviving, and that no matter the reasons told to the society, that power that the Party seeks is for no gain except for power. The story begins in April of 1984, in a grim, industrialized city called London. London was â€Å"chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania." The dwellings that the people live in, called Victory Mansions, are depicted as â€Å"†¦rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with balks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron†¦.† The setting creates a mood of devastation and hopelessness, fabricated by the Inner Party to suppress its followers. These people live in a society that is ruled by totalitarianism, and the aim is to give the greatest good to the smaller number. As indicated by â€Å"Cliffs Notes,† on pages 34 and 35, the main character, â€Å"Winston, like others, is expected to do his job efficiently and receive no reward but the opportunity to live austerely for the greater good and self-perpetuation of the Inner Party.† Told in third person limited, the reader is only allowed in-depth knowledge of the protagonist, Winston. Winston Smith, a thirty-nine year old man with a varicose ulcer, is a member of the Outer Party. He has â€Å"a smallish, frail figure, the meagerness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the Party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by course soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.† Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, which is concerned with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. He is employed in the Records Department, where his tasks consist of writing and rewriting scripts to fit the present and past which unceasingly fluctuate and add to the dominion the Party had over its members, and the history they believe in.

Article Review Essay

Conducting their study as the transitional funding attached to the peace process in Northern Ireland is reaching its end, the authors examine the role of aid in conflict resolution particularly with regards to intangible outcomes such as identity formation. The idea behind this funding is that it reduces economic disparities between the conflicting groups and that the economic growth started by this funding will continue into the future. These funds come from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), which addressed unemployment and poverty in Republican / Loyalist communities; the Peace I funds, which promoted social inclusion, cross-community contact, and economic development; and the Peace II funds (ended in 2006), which had similar goals to Peace I but targeted local, grassroots (nongovernmental) organizations. The authors also consider the role of external agencies as they intervene in ethnopolitical conflict and the importance of community development in the peace process. The authors are careful to note that economic aid is not a magic cure for conflict as this aid, if improperly administered, can at times heighten underlying conflicts. Indeed, in Northern Ireland, the approach has had mixed results. In designing their study, the authors took both a qualitative and quantitative approach. For the qualitative portion, the authors interviewed 98 community leaders, civil servants, and development officers from Belfast, Londonderry/Derry, and the Border region (Northern Ireland). These interviews consisted of semi-structured questions, including those attached to the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale: â€Å"What are your best wishes and hopes for your personal future? What are your worst fears and worries about your personal future? What are your best wishes and hopes for the future of your country? What are your worst fears and worries about the future of your country? † (page 166). The quantitative data was drawn from the summer 2006 Northern Ireland Public Opining Survey. The sample consisted of 1,023 adults representative of Northern Ireland’s adult population. The study as a whole was designed to look at the respondents hopes and fears about Northern Ireland’s future. Through the inclusion of qualitative data, the authors hoped to demarginalize voices that are often not heard in the official discourses of the peace process. This study yielded numerous tantalizing findings. First, the authors found that more Nationalists than Unionists imagine a future where conflicting groups are able to perceive a sense of shared community. Second, the authors found differences based on gender: more females than males saw the opportunity for building new relationships amongst communities in the future. Third, the authors found two common fears / concerns that extend across religions, genders, and ages: the fear that violence in changing the social fabric of Northern Ireland and the belief that politicians are disingenuous and not interested in serving the needs of their constituency. Fourth, the authors found that more Nationalists than Unionists saw the modernization of the economy and the political structure as means by which to support the peace process. Finally, the authors found that younger adults were more concerned about the potential failure of the peace process and the economy than older adults The authors consider numerous theories about identity formation. In designing their study, they took into consideration geographic differences in identity formation: i. e. Londonderry/Derry vs. Belfast and urban vs. rural locations. They also consider how the Irish view immigration and the infiltration of outside values. In general, this article is not convincing. Its primary strength is the detailed background to the conflicts in Northern Ireland, with a focus on the economic causes and effects of this conflict. This strength does not mitigate the effects of the article’s numerous weaknesses. First, the authors do not explicitly state their hypothesis. While exploratory studies such as this one can potentially reveal valuable information, the authors nowhere state the reasons behind the study. When questions such as identity formation are being explored, the readers need to know the authors’ relationship to the issue. For example, are the authors somehow involved in this ethnopolitical conflict? Or, are they looking at it from the perspective of an outsider? If they are outsiders, does their perspective have a bearing on how the respondents answer their questions? Second, the authors explicitly state that they wish to demarginalize those voices that are not typically heard in the official peace process discourse. However, in selecting the respondents for the qualitative portion of the study, the authors chose community leaders, civil servants, and development officers. It would seem that these are precisely the voices that are heard in the official discourse. Readers are left to wonder why the authors did not include a more representative sample of the population of Northern Ireland for this portion of the study. Third, this does not seem to be a study that was designed specifically to answer certain questions. As noted, the authors nowhere state a hypothesis. For the reader, it appears that the quantitative and qualitative data seems to have been mixed together ad hoc. In other words, the study does not seem to be designed to fit a specific question. Rather, the authors appear to have attempted to answer questions based on the information they had at hand. Fourth, as the basis for this study was largely to examine economic role of the peace process, it seems like a gross oversight that the authors did not provide data on their respondents’ demographics. In the discussion section, the authors indicate that they collected background demographic information (political party, religious views, age, gender, socioeconomic status) on the respondents, but this information was not included in the results section and does not appear to have been considered in any significant way. Finally, the analysis of the qualitative data seems a bit lacking. It would perhaps have been stronger to indentify the common themes and subthemes of the responses, rather than using the responses as illustrative examples. Because of these specific weakness as well as the authors’ failure to mention the limitations of their study and to provide specific recommendations for how their results can be used to generate future studies and/or to impact the peace process, this article is not convincing.

The Bronze And Iron Age Essay - 2093 Words

Classics Essay Question: 1-What Can Homer tell us about the Bronze and Iron Age The Bronze and Iron Ages were 2 of the main periods in Greek History and Homer can tell us a lot about them. The Bronze Age was all about mixing copper with tin or arsenic to bronze hence it is called the Bronze Age. The Iron Age was when the whole of the east Mediterranean was in crisis. In central Anatolia, the collapse of the Hitties opened the gates to invaders who overran the country. Firstly, let’s talk about Homer- a lot of the works that he wrote were set in the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Homer is the first known European poet and of such importance to the Greeks. Homer became the basis for Greek education and is still widely read in high schools and universities today. He is the best primary source for knowing what the Greeks were thinking in the eighth century B.C. as they fought each other and sailed across dangerous seas to found new city states in alien lands. Greeks believe that that heroic society described by Homer flourished at a time corresponding to the 13th or early 12th century in our chronology. Homers greatest works are the Iliad and Odyssey. The both tell the story of heroes trying to survive their way through war and other things. Here is just an example of Homer’s poetry â€Å"He cast on the fire bronze which is weariness, and tin with it and valuable gold and silver and thereafter set forth upon its standard the great anvil, and gripped â€Å". The poems of Illiad depict theShow MoreRelatedEarth s Impact On Earth1201 Words   |  5 Pagesdesirable traits. As the population grew but the resources decreased animals and plants started to extinct. Stone Age brought many changes such as animals and plants started to evolve. Also, Bronze and Iron Ages which brought industrial growth and humans began modernizing and their hunger of making this world a better place haven’t ended till date. 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