The sceptic at the puja, the gist

The sceptic at the puja

Standing through a family religious ceremony you do not believe in is not lying, because a lie needs a claim and nobody in that room is asking you to make one, and here is what attending costs, what it gives back, and where the honest line actually runs.

This is the short way in. The essay has the working, the sources and the sky.

In the long form of a household puja, the sixteen things done for the god are the sixteen things any household does for an arriving guest: invite him in, seat him, wash his feet, feed him, wave a lamp, see him off. Hosting has never required the host to agree with the guest.

At the end of a household prayer a small lamp is carried round the room. Each person holds their palms flat over the flame for a second and brings them up to the forehead. If somebody in the family does not believe any of it, this is the minute it shows, because the hands have to do something.

The essay watches hands rather than faces. A doubter's hands do one of four things: stay at his sides; take the tray and pass it straight on, the way you move a hot dish along a table; start the gesture and abandon it halfway; or do the whole thing half a beat late, copying the cousin in front.

Then it asks whether going along with it is hypocrisy, and argues that it is not. A lie needs three parts: a claim, a claim you do not hold, and something you get by making it. A gesture is not a claim you wrote. It is one the room wrote long before you arrived, and what the people who use it every week take it to mean is nearer to "I am here and I am not going to make this difficult" than to any statement about God.

The shape of the ceremony says the same. There is exactly one moment in it where anything is declared, near the start, when the day, the place, the household and the purpose are said aloud by one person. Nobody turns to the back of the room and asks the rest of you to agree.

Both bills get counted. Attending costs an evening, your knees, smoke and a tiredness nobody warns you about: everyone else is inside the rite, while you are managing yourself. Not attending costs something too, because an empty place is read as a sentence about the people rather than about the doctrine. What attending gives back is four generations in one room with nobody holding a phone.

Dishonesty does arrive later, in the corridor: letting a relative tell everybody you have come round, because it buys you a quiet month.

Words decoded

puja (पूजा): a prayer ritual performed at home in front of a small shrine, in which the god is received and looked after like an honoured guest
aarti (आरती): the short closing part of a puja: a lamp is moved in circles in front of the image, then carried round the people in the room
camphor: a white solid that burns with a bright flame; a pinch of it, or wicks soaked in clarified butter, is what the lamp is lit with
the sixteen services: the long form of a puja, set out as sixteen acts of hospitality, from inviting the guest in to seeing him off
sankalpa (संकल्प): the spoken declaration made near the start of a puja, fixing the day, the place, the household and what the rite is being performed for
yajamana (यजमान): the person at whose cost and on whose behalf a rite is performed, as distinct from the priest employed to perform it
prasad (प्रसाद): food that has been offered and is then handed round to everyone present; the Sanskrit word runs through clearness, calm and kindness before it means food
orthopraxy: a scholars' word for a tradition that cares most about doing the practice correctly, as against orthodoxy, which cares most about holding the right beliefs

Why anyone should careMillions of people attend religious occasions they have no belief in, and most assume the only two options are faking it or making a point. There is a third description, and it is the more accurate one: you are present at somebody else's event, which is what people do for each other constantly, and the rite itself never asked you for a declaration. Knowing where honesty actually gives way lets you stay in the room, and stay yourself, without a scene in either direction.

Read it properly, 8 min The sceptic at the puja