What Makes Us Superstitious?

And why it is more dangerous than believing in a lucky number or the evil eye

- Amrita Tripathi With Sunalini Mathew

Have you thought, long and hard about what your lucky number is, but can’t risk revealing it? I’ve been wondering whether my prayer beads falling apart had something to do with bad energy directed at me. Of course, you might say the breaking of two sets of my beloved beads had more to do with the wear and tear on the thread than a bad omen, but I’m hardly alone in worrying about the evil eye. From young mothers to CEOs, truck drivers to entrepreneurs, film-makers to doctors, we are enveloped in superstitious beliefs in varying degrees. We barely notice touching wood or our heads, with relief and hope when a situation is simply out of our control. Only, if the grim consequences of superstition did not stare us in the face.

A study by the University of Kerala found that 48 per cent of post-graduate students responded positively to superstition—this in a state that claims 94 per cent literacy. There was no difference in students from the social science stream and those studying science. Also, students from rural societies had shown lower superstition rates than urban, so education and exposure seem to have little to do with rationalism. Superstition is, in fact, a cross-community preoccupation in India.

What is It Anyway?

According to Dr Kamala Ganesh, a leading sociologist in Mumbai, “Superstition encompasses different practices, some cultural or cosmetic habits with no harmful consequences, some that are downright harmful to health and well-being, and others that discriminate against certain categories of people.” Many of these, she explains, have evolved from times when the uncertainties and dangers of life and threats to survival actually made people create symbolic and metaphoric ways of dealing with them psychologically.