Astrology

Solar eclipse was witnessed in India on 15th Jan this year. Scientists all over the world attach great importance to this event from the point of view of scientific research on the effect of sun on earth's atmosphere and it's inhabitants. Interestingly there is a general perception in India that solar eclipse brings misfortune, calamity, natural disaster and so on and so forth. Pundits, astrologers, fortune tellers use this as an opportunity to create panic and hysteria among general public through their predictions. Their numbers have increased in the last couple of months courtesey Indian channels. Vast majority of Indian people including some of the educated ones believe in astrological predictions. Superstition is deep rooted in Indian culture and traditions and pundits, astrologers, tarrot readers, numerologists exploit this belief to their advantage.

On the day of solar eclipse, star plus was showing a program in which it had called the group of astrologers, scientists and intellectuals to participate in a free discussion on whether astrological predictions have any scientific base or not. I was somehow not aware of this program. I came to know of it while I was surfing the channels randomly. When I came across with this channel, the discussion was going on. There were 7-8 astrologers including 4 women, 3 intellectuals and only 1 scientist. From this statistics, you can imagine astrologers far outnumbered other participants. They came in full strength to prove their point. For some time, I could not make out what the hell is going on. It looked like a big fight on the sets. Everybody was trying to say something and prove a point and the host was nowhere to be seen. After some time, the host who had receded in the background appeared and gave briefings to the audience as to what is going on the sets. It was then only I knew what the program is all about. I decided to view this program till the end and so decided to stick to it.

One of the participants who seemed to be a senior executive of a company challenged the astrologers if they can tell about him anything which is verifiable.
He gave his date of birth, place of birth and time of birth. An astrological chart was made instantly with the help of PC which was then given to an eminent astrologer for interpretation. He was initially reluctant to predict anything saying astrological prediction is prohibited in a hostile environment like this. But when he was pressurised , he said that according to the horoscope, his relations with his wife should not be good. His wife was immediately contacted on phone and she was asked if her relations with her husband was good to which she replied she had absolutely no problem with her husband. Astrologers were not willing to accept this statement. The argument given was that no woman would like to disclose her relations with her husband in public.

The point I am trying to make here is that astrologers are very cunning people. They are expert in understanding human emotions and exploit weaknesses. They will always talk about the future which is not verifiable . The only way to expose them is to ask them about the past which has already happened and which is verifiable. According to me, astrology is complete nonsense. It has no scientific base.Those people who are defeated,reconciled to their fate, lack self confidence run after astrologers to know their future. The common sense says that if we want to build our future, we should concentrate on the present.