Can the State Outlaw Superstition?

After simmering for more than a decade, a debate over  superstition bubbled into full boil in India last month. Legislators in Maharashtra -- a huge state on India's west coast, which includes the nation's most populous city, Mumbai -- prepared to consider a bill that would  make superstition and "blind faith" criminal offenses.

The bill would outlaw not only animal sacrifices, supernatural cures, and healing practices not supported by science; it would also ban the sale of charms, potions, amulets, and other objects purporting to bring good luck or magic powers.

Maharashtra's anti-superstition effort dates back to 1999, when a similar measure was indefinitely tabled. The most recent bill has been languishing in the legislature since 2003. It finally passed in 2010, but requires approval of the central government to take effect. And that's what the current brouhaha is all about.

Supporters of the anti-superstition law see it as a public-health and consumer-protection issue. Opponents -- including many devout Hindus, Janists, and Muslims -- say the definition of  superstition seems too broad and would outlaw certain religious rituals.  The Indian press reported widespread public protests in Maharashtra in December, as the central government prepared to consider the law.

Besides showing that religion mixes with politics in places other than the United States, the proposed Indian law highlights a key question: what's the difference between religion and superstition? Between a rite of faith and an act of magic? Anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists have wrestled with the question for well over a century. To the Indian officials now struggling with it, I say: Lots of luck. You'll need it.

Meanwhile, where would you start to separate the two?