by Marco Moretti
"We have too many IT engineers, you have more chances to find a job studying astrology" announces the cover of the educational supplement of the Indian Express, the popular daily newspaper of South India. This is the technologically most advanced part of the country, the area creating the best engineers, the mathematical geniuses and the entrepreneurs climbing the hit parade of the rich and famous of Fortune magazine. The South - specially the State of Karnataka and its capital Bangalore, main base of the information technology industry, top producer of software, top destination for the outsourcing, house of the most famous Indian polytechnic – shows the most pragmatic and business-orientated side of India. But the headline in the Indian Express is more insightful than it might seem at first glance, because in the South Asian industrial superpower of India, no decision is taken without consulting an astrologer. Indians consult the stars before they marry, buy a house, change a job, sign a contract, start a journey, make an investment and even take a political decision. Be they the poorest man or the Prime Minister, nothing is done on a day not deemed to be propitious.
You can have your horoscope read by a wise man in a Hindu temple, by a charlatan at a street corner, or on the internet. Even the financial newspapers publish – amid stock exchange numbers and economic analysis – the daily destinies of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Perhaps none of this is overly odd, considering the particularity of India, but the oddest thing - for rational Westerners anyway – is that astrology is taught in the faculty of Sanskrit at seven Indian universities, and in some of them you can gain a doctorate in astrology. This in itself is nothing new though, as Indians have mixed astronomy and astrology for centuries. The first approach to the issue is in the Rig Veda, the holy book of the Hinduism, in the 3rd century B.C.
On an Indian street I consult the first fortune teller I come across, most likely a charlatan, who, after looking at the palms of my hands and then my feet and my astral chart, looks strait in my eyes, holds my hand, asks me for 200 rupees and predicts "you’ll get rich". I pay and I ask where he learned the art of foretelling. "In the Varanasi University, the best of India," he answers, shaking his head.
I head for Varanasi, the holy town by the Ganges, where every Hindu wishes to die, and spread his ashes in the holy waters. I reach the huge campus of the Benares Hindu University, a masterpiece of town planning with beautiful colonial buildings spread in a tropical garden with towering palms. It is an extraordinary contrast to the city of Varanasi itself, a dramatic boiling pot of naked skinny bodies, of suffering, shit, prayers, hopes, deliriums and very bad smells. The University hosts the most famous faculty of Sanskrit, the ancient language linked with the studies of Indian philosophies: and this faculty is in charge of teaching astrology.
I knock on many doors before I learn that the person to meet is professor Shriniwas Tiwari. "His lesson starts tomorrow morning at eleven and it lasts till the afternoon, you can come when you like, you don’t need an appointment," the University porter told me. The next day I find the professor seated with crossed legs on a mattress, teaching twenty students using a couple of astral globes. I apologise for disturbing them and I introduce myself. The professor and students get very excited, happy to pose in front of my camera but – as often happens in India – understanding comes with much more difficulty. Professor Tiwari speaks only Hindi, some students work as translators, and my questions about the scientific aspect of the astrology teaching get only dogma as answers.
The same night, walking in the alleys above the cremation ghat by the river, among incense smoke and smell of roasted meat, I pop in to the Universal Astrological Centre. I walk into a couple of grotty rooms to discover that the Centre is run by the professor Umashankar Tripathi, Head of the Department of Astrology of the Shastrarth PG College, another University of Varanasi. Tripathi looks at the palm of my hand (in India, all astrologists are palmists as well) and predict with a smile that I will enjoy "richness and long life". I pay 400 rupees and I thank him for his propitious forecast for me, but, once again I don’t find out anything about the scientific aspect of astrology. Apart, that is, for another tip. "You must go Jaipur, in Rajasthan, for centuries an important astrologic centre. It is the town where Jai Singh rationalized the astral studies building, the Jantar Mantar, the astronomical observatories," Tripathi said.
In 1720 the Maharajah of Jaipur, Jai Singh, built five observatories in North India; in Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Ujjain and Muttra. They are still working, apart from the Muttra observatory. At that time it was the largest astronomical network in the world; with the main goal of foreseeing the future. Jai Singh was given that task in Delhi by Mogul Emperor Mohammed Shah, who was unhappy because his own astrologists were too approximate in foretelling the future, and he wanted to build new scientific tools to read the stars.
Before leaving Varanasi I visit the observatory by the Ganga River. I find instruments built in bricks and metals to seek out the coordinates of planets and stars, the distances between celestial bodies, and to calculate sidereal time. It is a miniaturized version of the observatory in Delhi, still there in the shadow of the capital's skyscrapers.
But the most spectacular one is Jantar Mantar is in Jaipur, in the complex of the City Palace, between the Palace of the Winds and Maharajah's residence. In the past it was surrounded by astrologist shops. Now it is a national monument, but in Chandni Chowk, close to its gate, there is the office of Vinod Shatri, head of the Rajasthan Astrological Council, deputy president of the Indian Astrological Society, and professor at the Maharani’s College. He is one of the most famous Indian fortune-tellers. His assistant works out by computer the astral charts that Shatri foresees; and the charge climbs as the prediction goes further in the future.
The assistant prints my astral chart and gives it to Shatri. I am more interested in the interview than in foreseeing my future, so I ask Shatri why astrology is a science? "Because there is a close relation between the universe and the body of the human beings. Astronomy and astrology are linked by the intuition, by the insight, the most important skillfulness in the art of foreseeing, a talent developed with yoga, meditation, teaching, and knowledge of the human being and of his social contest," answers Shatri. "The stars influence us because they are our father (the Sun) and our mother (the Earth). The stars, also the most far away, condition us because are part of our body; the Sun is the heart, the Moon is the head, Saturn is the lungs, Jupiter the liver, Mars the blood, Mercury the stomach, Uran the hair. Our body is a replica of the Earth layers; the hairs are the plants with the roots in the soil (the flesh), kept alive by the water (the blood), with a stone base (the bones), supported by an internal fire (the heart, the sexual energy). The alternation in the oxygenation of the heart is the replica of the cycle day and night," Shatri says.
When I display some doubts about the scientific aspects of this theory, Shatri doesn’t answer but returns to my horoscope. "You are lucky in material things, you will have a long life, you will get rich, but everything you do is not useful because you are superficial". This is his answer to my doubts. I swallow and I ask him "did you get an horoscope done?". "No, because if you want to foresee the future of the people, is better don’t know your own future," answers Shatri.
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