In Damoh district of Madhya Pradesh, a man was made to wash a Brahmin’s feet and drink the same water because of an AI-generated image. Read that again. In 2025—when India is talking about machine learning, quantum computing, and a digital economy—a village panchayat decided to punish someone using a ritual that belongs in a museum of medieval absurdities.
Here’s what happened. Purshottam Kushwaha, a young man from an OBC community, shared an AI-generated picture on Instagram. The image showed a villager named Annu Pandey wearing a garland of shoes. The picture was fake, digitally created—not captured by a camera, not real in any sense of physics or biology. But outrage followed faster than logic could intervene. The post went viral, was deleted, and Kushwaha even apologized. That should have been the end of it.
Instead, the village elders decided to turn it into a religious drama. A panchayat was convened. Kushwaha was allegedly forced to wash Pandey’s feet and drink the same water—an act of “purification” straight out of the dark ages. And to top it off, he was fined ₹5,100. The punishment was recorded and circulated on social media, ensuring that the humiliation was as public as the ignorance.
Let’s pause and ask: what exactly was being purified here—the man, the mind, or the country’s ability to think?
Artificial Intelligence creates synthetic images by using mathematical models, not moral intent. It doesn’t know caste, religion, or ritual. Yet, instead of addressing digital literacy or misinformation, the community chose to uphold caste purity rituals—as if bytes and pixels could offend gods. The result? A perfect blend of 21st-century technology and 16th-century thinking.
The irony is almost poetic. AI, a symbol of human progress, has here become a trigger for regression. While the world debates AI ethics, we’re busy confusing deepfakes with divine disrespect. Instead of asking how AI works, people are asking who it insulted.
The real issue isn’t a fake image—it’s a fake sense of superiority wrapped in religious pride. Forcing someone to drink water from another’s feet is not “culture.” It’s cruelty disguised as tradition. And the village panchayat, which should have upheld fairness, became the stage for collective ignorance.
Science teaches skepticism. Faith, when misused, demands submission. The Damoh incident shows what happens when people choose the latter. It exposes the hollow space where education should have built understanding. You can build smart cities, but without smart citizens, progress is only an illusion.
Until we learn to distinguish AI-generated fiction from social fact, these rituals of humiliation will keep resurfacing. India cannot lead in Artificial Intelligence while drowning in artificial honour.
If washing feet could cleanse ignorance, perhaps that would be a ritual worth repeating. But until minds are washed clean of superstition, no amount of technology will make us truly modern.
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