At the initial stage of my six-year involvement in uplifting society through skill-based initiatives, particularly by promoting handicraft work and teaching students to think creatively and independently, my efforts were partially jeopardized by deep-rooted superstition and resistance to rational learning. Superstitions exerted a deeply adverse impact by encouraging unquestioned belief, fear, and blind conformity instead of reasoning and evidence-based understanding.

In society, superstition often sustains harmful practices, social discrimination, exploitation by self-styled godmen, and resistance to scientific or social reforms, thereby weakening rational decision-making and slowing progress. When such beliefs penetrate the educational environment, students gradually lose the habit of asking “why” and “ how,” accep ting explanations based on fate, omens, or divine intervention rather than observation and logic. Initially learners became hesitant to challenge me despite my wrong interpretation of any law, less capable of evaluating information critically, and more vulnerable to misinformation and pseudoscience.

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As a result, genuine efforts toward social upliftment were obstructed, and the transformative power of education – which could empower individuals economically and intellectually – was weakened by fear-driven beliefs that stood in direct opposition to progress and rational thought. In many communities, illnesses are still attributed to evil spirits or curses rather than treated as medical conditions. I have witnessed educated people postponing important decisions—marriages, journeys, even hospital admissions – because an astrologer pre dicte d an “inauspicious” time, showing how fear governs rational minds. While teaching students science and mathematics, I have clearly observed how superstition acts as a hidden barrier to........

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