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Wallowing in superstition
Posted: Sunday, December 2, 2001

By Donna Yawching

IF VS Naipaul had written it, we would all be up in arms: how could he-how dare he-expose our primitive stupidity for all the world to snicker at? But since it appeared instead in the local media, that was okay: primitive stupidity was implicitly sanctified under the halo of "we culture" -a pathetic willingness (indeed, eagerness) to succumb to superstition at the drop of a hat.

I'm speaking, of course, of the slightly deformed anthurium that had the misfortune to grow somewhere in the backwoods of Couva, where (according to the front page report in the Express) "it is being viewed as a miracle." It's true that in communities like this one, you probably have to take your miracles where you can find them; but it was nevertheless disconcerting to see, in the 21st century, a knot of people doing reverence to a misshapen flower, and describing it as a sacred sign.

It was a scene straight out of Naipaul, whose depictions of Trinidad's rural life are accurate to the point of discomfort, which is why we resent him so much. I've been re-reading him recently, since his award; and what has struck me most strongly is that, 40 years later, not a thing has changed. Any person, place or event in The Mystic Masseur or Biswas could be found today with very little effort; and as for The Mimic Men, well, in this election season you can hardly avoid them, they're as thick as flies.

The anthurium event was right up Naipaul's alley; were he still writing that kind of novel, he would have had a field day, sketching with a deft and merciless hand the characters of each of the villagers: the pundit, the entrepreneur (there must surely have been one, selling sweet-drinks to the devotees), the naif, etc. But truth is more inventive than fiction: even Naipaul's fertile mind would probably have balked at the idea of creating a sacred anthurium. "No," he would have demurred, "no one could possibly believe that; it's just too much."

It wasn't too much, however, for the inhabitants of Carolina, Couva (and soon thereafter, Valsayn, where one might reasonably expect people to know better). Right away they started making pilgrimages to the sacred spot; and I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the anthurium had started to speak, or cry blood, or drink milk. And needless to say, anything that happens in that village in the next little while, good or bad, will be ascribed to the precious plant. If the plant's owner wins $24 on a Play Whe ticket, or loses a goat or chicken, the anthurium will be invoked, with a reverential nod.

It would all be funny, if it didn't mask a more serious reality-the essence, incidentally, of Naipaul's early writing. It is this underlying reality that concerns me: the atavistic tendency that we, as a people, have to grasp eagerly at the ignorant and superstitious option, in big things and small. Some years ago, the newspapers, with utmost seriousness and a startling lack of responsibility, reported on a case of mass hysteria in a school as an incident of demonic possession. Last year, we read of a crapaud with its mouth wired shut, outside a courthouse: clearly someone genuinely believed this cruel act would influence the course of justice.

Recently, after two young men were struck by lightning while up a tree in pursuit of an iguana, their fellow-villagers vowed, not to avoid trees during thunderstorms (the obvious option), but rather to give up hunting iguanas. Suddenly, it was not difficult to see how animal taboos come about in different folk religions: in a hundred years or so, one could easily imagine a Cult of the Iguana thriving in that region.

Is there any harm to all of this nonsense? It's true that a bunch of villagers lighting candles to an anthurium is no big deal, in the wider scheme of things; it proves only that primitive Hindus can be as hysterical as primitive Catholics, who are apt to see visions of Mary in splotches of paint and beams of sunlight, and who are masters at creating shrines to these chimaera.

The danger is not, ever, in the superstition itself, which after all is merely a figment of the imagination; but in the extent to which people allow these overheated imaginings to dictate their actions. Praying to an anthurium or a statue will not get you a job or cure your child's illness; these are abdications of action, rather than the positive movements needed to take control of one's life.

Superstition, as I've written previously, is not a picturesque manifestation of "we culture"; it is learned helplessness that does its adherents no favours. Just last week, as a few children fainted in another primary school, we had one mother recounting on TV that her daughter had seen a big monster with red eyes, or some such foolishness. Has anyone tested these children for anaemia, or malnutrition? Maybe they're fainting from hunger, or heatstroke. But no: the red-eyed monster is a much more attractive option.

Since mass ignorance is very useful to those in power, our politicians willingly play to these absurdities, and even encourage them. Hence, Mr Panday has recently been quoting obeah women in an attempt to woo the chupid black people, and has taken to denouncing CCN as diabolical and satanic. He knows full well that the very words will resonate with a wide-eyed and superstitious population.

When will we shake off this stupidness? Plants, like animals and humans, are sometimes created with deformities and mutations. Every five-legged calf or oversized pumpkin is not a god, any more than every Siamese twin is. And a politician who spends more time talking about devils than about the economy is one we could definitely do without.

What we really need is a new Naipaul: someone with a piercing, iconoclastic eye. I wonder if we could talk VS into coming home for a visit? He'd find enough material for another five novels.



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