________________
FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
cannot however be performed in a simple religious manner-through prayer or worship, for example. They are rituals, and as such require more than a spiritual attitude. They are essentially means for paying material tribute to the administrators of the religious law.
The superstition that the deliverance of the soul of the dead is conditional upon the due performance of certain prescribed rituals having been traditionally ingrained into the popular mind, the expenses necessary for the purpose are matters of obligation, though met voluntarily by the superstitious. To hold them responsible for this ruinous habit, is no more reasonable than to rebuke a drug-addict after having forced him to cultivate the pernicious practice. Like Government, religion also takes tribute; and the greater the ignorance of the faithful, the more the tribute exacted for the protection of their souls. For the Indian masses, the laws of Manu or of the Shariat or any other religious law, not only religiously administered, but often fraudulently interpreted by the custodians of the spiritual law and order, is more binding than the temporal laws of the political regime. These they obey out of fear; whereas religious laws, though no less, indeed more, ruinous economically and coercive socially, are obeyed by habit which, born of ignorance, has been skilfully cultivated through ages by the beneficiaries thereof, and is deeply entrenched in superstition
224
