The fear of ghosts that some of India's leaders harbour may seem funny at first, but it bears grave implications for the nation and its people

A spectre is haunting Rajasthan and Bihar - or so the leaders in both states would have citizens believe. First, it was Tej Pratap Yadav, the elder son of the Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo, Lalu Prasad, who vacated his government bungalow in Patna - half a year after he ceased to be the health minister of Bihar - on the grounds that "ghosts" released by the chief minister, Nitish Kumar, and the deputy chief minister, Sushil Modi, were "haunting" him. Not to be outdone, on the other side of the country, members of Rajasthan's legislative assembly expressed fears that the assembly house might be haunted by "spirits" after the demise of two sitting MLAs. A Bharatiya Janata Party leader is even said to have asked the chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, to conduct a yajna to rid the assembly of such "bad" spectral presences.

The inability of Indian leaders, especially those belonging to the ruling party, to deal with talk of such grave encounters in a sensible manner is not surprising - the BJP's antipathy towards the development of a scientific temper in the nation has been made clear on a number of occasions in the recent past. In fact, this newly-discovered fear of - and, by extension, belief in - the supernatural across party lines might even elicit a few laughs. It is, however, cause for great worry, especially in a nation like India, where superstition is firmly entrenched and has led to untold misery in the lives of people. (Mr Yadav is, in fact, said to be quite superstitious - it was reported that he had closed off the main entrance of the government bungalow in keeping with the laws of vaastu.) The scourge of superstition in this country has allowed practices such as witch-hunting - the victims of which, unsurprisingly, are mostly underprivileged women and girls - to flourish. The situation reached such grave proportions that the Karnataka government passed the prevention and eradication of inhuman evil practices and black magic bill last year, in the hope of putting an end to superstition-based crimes - crimes such as the attempt of a group of men to bury a child alive on the instructions of a practitioner of 'black magic', or the sacrifice of a 10-year-old girl in order to 'cure' a patient of paralysis. The hilarity of adult legislators being scared of ghosts cannot be ignored, but neither can its shamefulness. Given that they wield such enormous influence on the masses, ought their irrational fears to be encouraged?

It is also a matter of concern that the assembly house of one of India's largest states is now rumoured to be 'haunted'. Parliament and the legislative assemblies are a few of the foremost symbols of India's democratic and progressive ideals. It was bad enough that parliamentarians and MLAs across states regularly disregard these ideals by indulging in vandalism and screaming matches during house sessions. Now, to make things worse, these symbols are coming to be associated with beliefs that are in direct contradiction to modern science. It is not the spectre of the supernatural that haunts India — it is the spectre of superstition.