Ganesha : The God of democracy ( Public Support)
Probably the elephant headed god Ganesha is the most beloved and celebrated Hindu god worldwide, beyond religious practice or believes. Many people keep an art work of Ganesha as a decorative piece, many stories and mythologies circulate around Ganesha in the internet and everywhere.
I heard an explanation about worshiping Lord Ganesha before beginning of any important activity, when I was attaining a Durga Puja at Bharat Sevashram couple of years back. This explanation has answered a lot of personal curiosity about Ganapati and the answer appeared very convincing also to me, I wanted to share that here.
Vakra-Tunndda Maha-Kaaya Surya-Kotti Samaprabha
Nirvighnam Kuru Me Deva Sarva-Kaaryessu Sarvadaa
O Lord Ganesha, of Curved Trunk, Large Body, and with the Brilliance of a Million Suns,
Please help me to execute my duty without obstacles, and throughout the execution period.
Our scriptures tell us to chant this before starting any important worldly activities, what’s the reason behind that. Why we need to keep in mind to worship that elephant headed god first ? The explanation I got is something like this.
Ganesha represents the public, in democratic terminology, Gana means public, representation of public as a god is Ganesh or Ganapati. We may have a brilliant idea to execute, we may have lots of resources to support that, we may have a thoroughly charted plan to execute the activity not only that, we even may thought of Plan A , B , C ..etc in advance, to take care of any diversion to the original plan, but if we don’t consider to earn public support to execute that plan there is a good possibility to go it wrong some way or other.
In recent past who knows it better than the Ex Chief Minister of Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, when he invited TATA to the state, his plan and true intention was very honest which could really help Bengal to improve its status for industrial development in the Business world, but the initiative went terribly wrong, he thought slowly slowly when the fruits of his plan be received, he will be able to earn the required public support, so didn’t bother to take public with him from the very first step and we all know what happened after that, which didn’t do good for anybody….
But the interesting question is , does Gana ( Public ) cumulatively always take right decision for the group or for an individual ? If we come down to individual’s interest level, we have not to go far to understand, in how many incidents the public decision went against the individual interest, which we glorify in name of democracy. But interesting fact is, in many occasion cumulative decision goes against the right interest of the society too. But we need to accept it, that’s how the nature works. Similar behavior can be easily observed in many many species in the world where the democratic decision making keep things moving, no matter whether its good or bad.
If we watch closely how a school of fishes moves together or how a folk of birds migrate from one place to other we can easily observe a continuous election method is in action to move the entire group to an unimaginable distances. In this process no leader stands up then delivers an elevated speech and propose a plan of action and everybody follows. It goes how most of the individuals are moving very naturally rest follows them, no leader or election commission facilitate the process.
Similar behavior can be observed when a herd of wild mammals moves for finding grass field or water, even insects like bees displays similar decision making process in their day to day activities.
We wrongly try to give credit to modern society for this collaborative decision making process or democracy. Without ignoring the fact it is an effective tool of removing power from a wrong hand, when its necessary with relatively less blood shades, at the same time, it’s a tool like many other in modern society, which helps to spread the illusion of empowering common humble people. Actually in modern day democracy people are being fooled by telling, your single vote can make the big difference, so your vote is very important for the big agenda but the reality is if you have power and tool to influence 1000 voters with out having the right to apply single vote is more important in the election process. Modern democracy is just over glorifying ( without acknowledging it can drive us to the wrong path also ) of a very common natural phenomenon.
Like many other phenomenon of nature we should always aware of this at the time of performing our duty in the world of action. When any individual or entity empowered by something else, forgetting to give due importance to this fact in its world of action, it opes up a good possibility that the initiative may be jeopardized by an un accounted, non-premeditated , non-creative actions spawn from Ganas ( public ). History has plenty of examples to confirm this.
So by remembering to worship of Lord Ganesh at the very first step of commencing any activity, is for helping us to remind, the importance of public support before starting any important execution.
The importance of public support doesn’t ends at the work life, in our personal life also, unless we give due importance to Ganapati there is a good chance of going things wrong.
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