There is no story out there which says Krishna did not eat eggs. Or that he was against eating eggs. But many in India believe that Krishna hated eggs and will cast into hell all those who serve eggs to children. Worse, any association with eggs, it is believed, will prevent Labh-Lakshmi, the goddess of profit, from entering the house. Try convincing these people otherwise. It will not work. What makes total sense to non-believers makes no sense to believers. Such is the nature of myth.
The same is the case with other faiths. Historians assume the Buddha is historical, yet he endures on the basis of popular tales — 40 versions at last count. No Catholic will accept that Jesus could not have been born of a virgin. No Muslim will accept that the Prophet is not a historical concept.
Yuval Harari, who wrote Sapiens, calls such beliefs and stories fiction that enabled humans to collaborate. But he assumes that Homo sapiens can live outside fiction. We cannot. Even he cannot. He just refuses to admit his own fiction that he pushes in all his talks.
But myth is not fiction. Fiction is individual fantasy. Myth is cultural fantasy endorsed over generations. Transmitted as stories, symbols and rituals, it establishes an operating system in the mind: a series of metaphors that grant meaning to life. We inherit these metaphors in the first few years of our lives from our family and modify them as we go along.
Humans need myths to survive. Animals do not. That is because humans need to justify human behaviour. No other organism needs to do that. We need to justify our borders, our spaces, our property, our values, our choices. Because we have imagination, we conjure up concepts, problems, solutions, ideas like marriage, which is technically unnatural but culturally necessary to enable property transmission. Property itself is a cultural concept. In nature, there is territory. No one has right to territory — you kill for it. But property rights shape human society.
We need stories to justify why a rich man can own a forest. We need stories to justify why mothers — but not fathers — have to cook and clean. Why monogamy is ideal. Even why it is okay for some revered figures to have many wives.
Children do not distinguish among fiction, mythology, and history. They do not need to. A child hearing the story of Aladdin does not distinguish it from the story of Rama or Krishna. But his parents gradually inform him-her that one is entertainment but the other is sacred — real, historical. Is Raja Rama as historical as Shivaji Raje? Did either of them eat eggs? The question itself can lead to outrage. Even political turbulence. A social media storm can follow. Did Aladdin eat eggs? No one really cares. Children ask questions. We respond with stories, not answers, to silence them.
For most of human history, nobody thought much about these categories. Stories were simply stories. Some were understood to be about the past. Some belonged to no time at all. The distinction that mattered was not between true and false, but between stories that shaped how you lived and stories that merely entertained you. That distinction collapsed in the nineteenth century when science emerged as the dominant mode of knowing and was applied not just to the natural world but also to the world of culture.
Science demanded evidence, measurement, scepticism to distinguish truth from falsehood. Applied to physics and chemistry and astronomy, it worked brilliantly. Applied to inherited stories, it created a crisis that has not resolved itself since. Should you accept a story that tells you your ancestors came from Brahma’s head and someone else’s from his feet? Should you accept the story that god punishes humans for eating a fruit without his permission? These are not trivial questions. Wars have been fought over it. They have justified enslavement and erasure of tribes.
Consider what happens when someone asks when the events of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata actually occurred. The answer depends entirely on what kind of response the enquirer is prepared to receive. The faith-based answer accepts what teachers (not necessarily texts) transmit without critical analysis and makes people vociferously certain. The fact-based answer is limited by measurable and verifiable evidence and makes people cautious and doubtful.
Dayanand Saraswati creatively translated the Rig Veda. Even Aurobindo Ghosh did the same in the nineteenth century. Their followers insist these versions are the truth — not the exact translation of Max Mueller. Creative translations, using Sanskrit etymology, can turn deer into pumpkins, horses into cucumbers, the flesh of animals into pulp of fruit. These metaphors are considered better than colonial literalism. They subtly enable dietary practices of some caste groups to dominate Hinduism.
Culture is based on tools and tales. Engineers create tools. Poets create tales. Tales justify human action — even genocide. In a court, two stories are told. A judge decides which story is true. A judge has the power to jail an innocent man based on a well-argued tale. We call that justice. In Arabia, you can be killed for being homosexual because of a tale. In America, a girl who is raped cannot abort the unwanted child because of a tale. Harari thinks if we remove all tales, or tell a good tale, all will be well. He does not bother to explain why diverse cultures have diverse tales and how nation-states privilege tales that help the powerful stay powerful.
And why no one knows the ideal tale that works for all.
Facts work in the world of material sciences. They fail in the world of humanities and social sciences. This is why debates end up as screaming matches. Because no one told us to listen to and respect one another’s tales. Children are being exposed to all kinds of stories. They always have been. The medium has changed today. The problem is not about access to tales. The problem is we want them to believe our tale. When they don’t, we feel helpless and powerless. Then we turn into tyrants. Parenting becomes indoctrination.
We need to teach ourselves, more than our children, how to live in a world of multiple tales. No tale is objective. All tales we believe to be true are just convenient ideas that make us feel safe, even powerful. Not giving eggs to children makes many feel pure and pious. But in the eyes of the deprived children, these people may not be kind-hearted. But who hears the child’s tale?
Devdutt Pattanaik is the author of 50 books on how myth shapes culture
