Karva Chauth is an important traditional festival for Indians living in the Northwestern part of the country. This is when women fast for the day and perform rituals meant to keep their husbands in good health and prevent harm from coming to them.
Earlier this year, one of my relatives posted on Facebook a Youtube video of women celebrating this festival. The video showed the rituals and interviews with women who expressed their belief that they were doing it to protect their husbands. My relative presented this video with comments that indicated his thorough disgust with such ancient rituals in the modern world. Needless to say the response was overwhelming with some angry folks (his friends) telling him that this was a tradition and how dare he attack it. “Such rituals are important to bind the society together,” they said.
This exchange made me think of the role of such traditional rituals.
Yes, I agree that we are tribal creatures who need to identify themselves with a tribe and hang out with other members. Traditional rituals such as Karve Chauth provide occasions to do that on a regular basis. Also, when you get together, it is important to do something --eat, sing, dance, pray, whatever. This creates a shared experience and cements the group together. This is all very good.
My problem comes when the participants in the rituals start believing that what they are doing will affect the future. It is fair for a rational person to ask how could that be. How can fasting for a day and performing rituals have any effect on the health and wellbeing of your husband---unless he is fasting with you and taking some weight off will do him some good? Where is the link?
The answer lies in our inability to accept the fact that we have very little or no control over what happens in the future. The need for having control is so strong that we would go to any length and perform any act to create an illusion that we are affecting our future. To prove that we are right, we pull out examples of situations where something good happened because we performed a specific ritual, forgetting to mention countless situations when nothing happened or something bad happened to a person following that very same ritual.
An alternative explanation is that the participant in the ritual agrees with the above answer but has to express his belief as a price of admission to the group. Until all of the members of the group agree that they are performing the ritual just for the fun of it, any belief associated with its effect on future will continue, however irrational it may be.
