Quack Goes the Astrologer

Danish Siddiqui/Reuters A man touting his fortune-telling machine to potential customers on Juhu Beach, Mumbai.

NEW DELHI â€" A minister in the state of Karnataka, home to the Indian infotech industry, has announced that the state government will set up a committee “to find out ways to eliminate black magic.” It is considering whether to require astrologers to register with the state authorities, apparently to sort out the legitimate fortune-tellers from the frauds.

Last month, during its 4th International AstrologicalConference, the Karnataka Astrologers Association adopted a resolution to ban “dishonest astrologers in public sphere.” It was responding to predictions based on the Mayan calendar that spread fears the world would end on Dec. 21. The association’s vice president reportedly railed against “fake astrologers” out to make money peddling “mindless prophecies” for damaging “the reputation of astrology, which is traditionally viewed as a science.”

That’s “science” as in hard science â€" but political science, too.

The principal guest at the opening of the astrology conference was the deputy chief minister of Karnataka from the rightist Bharatiya Janata Par! ty. B. S. Yeddyurappa, once the state’s chief minister, recently broke away from the B.J.P. to found another party and advanced the date of its inauguration from Dec. 10 to Dec. 9 because astrologers told him the later date was ominous.

During its years governing at the national level, from 1999 to 2004, the B.J.P. sanctioned the study of astrology as a science. At the time, Murli Manohar Joshi was minister of human resource development, a portfolio that includes education. Physics professor or not, Joshi ensured that the University Grants Commission, the body that controls higher education in India, asked universities to submit proposals for how “to rejuvente the science of Vedic astrology in India” so that it might then reach “society at large” and even be “exported to the world.” The idea wasn’t to study the role of astrology in the Vedas in order, say, to assess the state of astronomical knowledge in Vedic times; it was to encourage the study of Vedic astrology as a science in its own right [pdf].

Several universities started such courses, and some still offer them. The Congress party was expected to reverse this policy when it came to power in 2004, but it didn’t. Arjun Singh, the Congress leader who took over from Joshi, was known to seek blessings from a slew of seers and oracles. Asked as minister of human resource development whether astrology should be taught in schools and colleges, he replied, “Whoever wants to learn it should do so.”

The B.J.P. and the Congress party may have different views about the role of religion in public life, but they both give superstition a central role. Whatever their persuasion, most prominent Indian politicians organize public appearances according to advice from personal astrologers; party functions are often scheduled on dates deemed auspicious.

In 2004, the B.J.P. called early elections based partly on such predictions. Fake astrology and mindless prophecy The party suffered an unexpected defeat and has not controlled the central government since.

Hartosh Singh Bal is political editor of Open Magazine and co-author of “A Certain Ambiguity.’’