Concatenation of Calamities

Just outside New Delhi, in low bamboo enclosures paved with dried cow dung, 400 Hindu pundits and priests have gathered this month to recite the Vedic prayer Gayatri Japan 10 million times. Night and day, squatting under TV lights beside shrines and ceremonial fires that they feed with the liquid butter called ghee, they raise their voices, powerfully amplified by loudspeakers, to the circling planets above. For according to India's astrologers, under the conjunction of the planets due early next month, the earth will be shattered by quakes, floods, air crashes, revolutions and wars, in what could be the worst concatenation of calamities in the last 5,000 years. At best, the prayers will only mitigate the situation.

Into Conjunction. In Hindu astrology there are nine planets: Saturn, Mars. Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, the sun, the moon, and the moon in its ascending and descending nodes. In their orbital paths, two or more of the planets occasionally conjoin, meaning that an imaginary line from earth into space would intersect them. But rarely are five planets conjoined; and a conjunction of five planets and the sun (which will simultaneously be eclipsed by the moon) will take place at 5:47 p.m. Indian time on Feb. 3 (7:17 a.m. E.S.T.). Moreover, astrologers note that this zodiacal rarity will happen in Capricorn, one of the "unfavorable" signs of the heavens.*

Indian Astrologer Acharya Keshav Dev predicts that Feb. 3 will be the beginning of an East-West nuclear test competition that should lead to war by 1970. The astrologers of Nepal foresee more immediate consequences. Mani Prasad Ti-wari predicts political changes in China, possibly a revolt in Nepal, natural disasters in Russia, and "civil disturbances" somewhere southwest of Washington, D.C. Nepalese Field Marshal Kaiser Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, an amateur astrologer, expects at least an earthquake near by, and foresees another disturbing possibility: "I would not be surprised if this heralds the coming of a new age in which women will have more rights."

"Makers of Destiny." Indian leaders have scoffed at all the talk of doom, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has twice said publicly that the conjunction of planets will not affect him. "Don't be panicky about these predictions," he said. "We are the makers of our own destiny." But the man in the street of Nepal and India is not so sure. Business on the New Delhi stock exchange has slowed down, as big investors who buy and sell according to the advice of their astrologers have been told to play it safe for a few weeks. The people of Katmandu have built straw huts on the city's parade ground, and propose to spend the night of Feb. 3 there to avoid being trapped in earthquake-toppled houses.

Indians know the stargazers have not always been wrong. In January 1934, there was a conjunction of seven planets just before the great Bihar earthquake destroyed 13 Indian and Nepalese cities and killed 10,000 people. Seven planets also came together in 3102 B.C.--the year of the Mahabharata war, which the old Hindu epics say brought bloody death to millions of Indians and, with their deaths, the end of an age.

*Astrology divides the zodiac (the central band of the heavens that contains the paths of the sun, moon and planets) longitudinally into twelve successive parts, each named, like Capricorn, for the most notable constellation in it.

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