Why Apra very naturally does not make a Difference between Ganesha and other Elephants

If you have read yesterday’s blog entry, you may have smiled and thought that I myself will soon face the situation of having a small child talk about Ganesha and Spiderman in one sentence, as our daughter Apra is growing up in India, too. I can however assure you that this won’t be the case! Why? Because we are raising her in a very different way than the average Indian family raises their children. We will not even introduce her to any of those divine fantasy figures!

Children get introduced to all those Hindu gods by their family members. There is a statue or a picture and when the child shows any interest in it, he or she gets to know that this is Ganesh, Hanuman or another god. Of course that is said with high respect, a greeting pose or another religious sign of worship of that god. All of this shows the child that this is something special.

Apra won’t even get to know their names now. She sees a picture of Hanuman and starts laughing: the monkey is reading a book! She sees a picture of Ganesha and says ‘Elephant!’ They are in no way different than any of the bears, cows, cats, pigs and other animals she sees daily in her children’s books! They are nothing special, just a regular elephant and a regular monkey. The fact that the monkey reads a book is funny – but it is just as funny when a duck goes for shopping in one of her books!

We anyway won’t let her watch any of those cartoons which show the adventures of the gods and goddesses when they were young, presented as religious education for children. Actually, Apra doesn’t watch any other cartoons either. We will of course use modern media but want to do this very responsibly, show her useful things like alphabet songs and rhymes where she can also learn something and keep her away from all those violent cartoons which are unfortunately so common nowadays. The characters talk in very unnatural voices, there is no valuable message behind their story and most of all, they hurt each other as though this was a normal thing to do with others. That’s not what we want to show our baby! When Apra watches her songs and rhymes, we watch, dance and play with her and are there to explain something, when she gets confused.

Apra will thus grow up without knowing anything about that thing called god – at least for some time. We have told the whole Ashram family, including the members of our staff, with whom she of course also plays and who have their part in raising her as well, that they should not say things like ‘Don’t do this, god won’t like it!’ or ‘That is a sin!’ That is a very normal way of educating children here but our baby won’t have to hear anything like this!

Obviously, there will be a point when people from outside will talk about god and she will get to know about their beliefs. Once she is big enough to get such influence though, we will be able to explain her that all those gods are not real – or just as real as Spiderman is.

Until then, she might also recognize Spiderman… when she saw yesterday’s diary picture, her comment was ‘An elephant and a turtle!’ – Ganesha and Spiderman. Yes, I think we are on the right way!