[world-vedic] If Jesus can walk on water, Why can't Hanuman fly over it?

10-12-1999, 01:44 PM

By A. Ghosh
If Jesus Could Walk On Water, Why Could Not Hanuman Overfly It?

The year was 1935 and the place was St. Paul's School at Calcutta, once
the bastion of the Anglican Church that had introduced itself in India
in the wake of the advent of the British. I was a boy of eleven then
and used to study in class six of the school which was and still is
located on Amherst Street.

The incident that I am going to relate actually took place in our class
while we were being given lessons in Geography by our teacher.

The school was part of the huge CMS or Christian Missionary Schools
organization. It had a lot of land for boys' play-grounds, a big
laboratory for the science students, a workshop where we were taught
carpentry (Jesus' family profession) and a swimming pool. The number of
boys in each class was limited to 25 to 30 and thus there was no
overcrowding which implied, but was not necessarily true, better
education.

In addition to all this, there was a fairly big sized church with pews
and naves and arrangements to seat at least three hundred attendees at
one time. The services were held everyday on a regular basis. Near by
was the St. Paul's College which too had big play-grounds of their own
for its students: tennis courts, swimming pools, etc. On match days, we
school boys had the privilege of having our teams play on the grounds
of the college. These were special occasions. Otherwise, it was
'verboten' for us school boys to frequent the college grounds.

The school boys were all required to attend the morning church service
every day before the classes started. The church songs and sermons were
of the Anglican variety of the Protestant Church. The Bible was written
in Bengali. The Bengali equivalents of the Biblical names still had
their archaic froms. Thus John, Andrew and Mathew were written in
Bengali to sound Johawn, Andrio and Mothi etc. Obviously the holy book
had been translated by the missionary fathers who were still grappling
with our language and many of whom came from countries other than
Britain. They still did not have the home-grown battalions of brown
fathers to give them a hand. We did learn a lot of the Bible, both the
new and the old Testaments. The life of Jesus and his miracles were of
great interest to us.

Most of the boys were Hindus from middle class Bengali families. The
few Christian boys that studied with us were also Bengalis but from
outlying areas and came from very poor sections of the community. They
were mostly boarders and lived in the Boarding Houses attached to the
school. All boarders were Bengali (converted) Christians. Many had
their full expenses paid for by the school authorities. The teachers,
excepting the Sanskrit teacher whom we used to call Pandit Mashai, were
too all converted Christians; they were all Hindus prior to conversion.
They were good men who never flaunted their different religion in front
of us and to us it hardly ever occurred that our teachers were
different from us in religion. Our Pandit Mashai was a devout Hindu; he
used to sit by himself in the teachers' room in between classes.

Thus we had Suren Babu (Suren Das) who taught us history; Prabhakar
Babu (Prabhakar Mandal) taught us Bengali. Most of the teachers again
were from poorer classes of Bengali community except of course Hem Babu
(Hem Chandra Bhattacharyya) who hailed from Bhatpara, the stronghold of
the Bengali Brahmins. Later in life, I often wondered what made Hem
babu give up his ancestral religion for an alien faith!

Although these teachers had a Christian (Baptismal) first name that
they had acquired at the time of giving up their ancestral faith, they
did not mention it and in fact we did not know what were their first
names. Suren Babu was Suren Babu to us and not say Michael Suren Babu.
However, there were one or two exceptions and those were the young
Christian students that studied with us. Their first names were very
much in evidence and they used to write and use their first names most
of the time. But they too had the Indian part of their names there. It
was not what we see these days. The names such as George Fernandes or
John Stephens do not indicate their Indianness at all. It was not quite
like that in those days and our common Indianness was never questioned
by anyone, the Christian and the Hindu students alike.

The parents of the Hindu students were attracted by the wholesome
uncrowded condition provided in the school. Their games, their
boy-scouts facilities and other amenities that were mostly denied to
students of Hindu Indian schools, were obviously great temptations for
the parents who wanted the best for their children.

Although it was a Christian school with strong emphasis on foreign
manners and customs without question, surprisingly enough, it was
always the Hindu boys that stood first in all the subjects including
the Bible. There were no instructions on our holy scriptures though.
The knowledge of our own Ramayana and Mahabharata stemmed from the
teachings imparted in our respective homes. All our teachers had a good
knowledge of the Hindu scriptures and mythology but they looked at the
subject from a different angle; which fact dawned on me after the
incident that I am about to recount.

It was just after the lunch or 'tiffin' hour and the classes had
started. That day, Hem Babu was teaching us Indian Geography as the
Geography teacher was away for some reason. Normally, Hem Babu used to
teach us the Bible. Hem Babu had a way of mildly denigrating Hindu
mythology in a very refined 'scientific' way which was difficult to
find fault with, as he was often extremely funny at the same time.

For instance, he often criticised the Hindus' apparent apathy with
respect to our cows. His point was that our cows are abandoned and not
looked after. That they wre dirty and uncared for. They are allowed to
roam around in the streets creating dangerous situations for themselves
as well as for pedestrians and vehicular traffic. Is it the right way
to treat a sacred animal? The conclusion was of course that the Hindus
are hypocrites. That they say one thing but do another. Look at the
Dutch for instance. They eat beef but they also look after their cows
well. Their cows are clean and well-fed. In fact, their skins were so
smooth due to constant cleaning that even if a fly happened to sit on
the cow's back, the fly would slip down and fall to its death. We all
laughed at this impossible situation of a fly falling to its death. But
the conclusion always seemed to be final and that was the fact that the
Hindus WERE hypocrites. We, little Hindus, became immunized by such
jokes and never thought much of them.

The subject that day was Ceylon (known as Sri Lanka today) and its
proximity with the southern tip of India. All of a sudden, Hem Babu
broached the subject of Sri Hanuman and his crossing of the sea between
Ceylon and India. He ridiculed the Ramayana and said that this was an
example of the impossible exaggerations of Hindu mythology to fool the
ordinary people. How can a monkey jump over a great sea? What actually
happened, according to Hem Babu, was like this. Long, long ago, what is
now a sea or a big strait between India and Ceylon, was very narrow and
not wider than a canal. Geographical changes like that happen all the
time. It was thus possible for the monkey to jump over the canal and
the foolish Hindus wrote in their holy book that Sri Hanuman jumped
over a great sea.

We all felt very bad. I don't know about the few Bengali Christian boys
among us but both Sushil Das, my fellow student sitting by my side and
I felt outraged. The precepts constantly hammered into our little heads
by our elders in our homes that children should never contradict their
teachers and superiors kept us from saying a word. But then, Sushil was
always a 'bad' boy, a disobedient kid and perhaps a little less
self-controlled. Suddenly Sushil stood up and, to our bewilderment,
told Hem Babu that Sri Hanuman's story was exactly like Jesus' walking
over water. Hem Babu asked him what did he mean! Sushil said: "Sir! The
Bible too has grossly exaggerated the story of Jesus' walking over
water. Actually, I do not think that Jesus could walk on the water and
not sink. He must have been standing in a bucketful of water and that
inspired the writer of the Bible to say that Jesus could walk on the
water. All these books are the same. So, why do you blame our Ramayana
only?"

Well, that made Hem Babu shut up and he got back to the Geography part
of the lesson leaving aside Hindu mythology, in a hurry. As for me, I
stopped looking down upon Sushil from that day on and began to admire
him for his straightforward attitude and courage to stand up for his
religious beliefs handed down from our ancestors.