"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the masses." - Karl Marx
As I write this, an entire country is anxiously waiting for the verdict on an act by a bunch of religious fanatics 18 years ago, and praying that history will not repeat. Religion, by its true nature, should not take a form where it harms people, but sadly it does. I am trying to evaluate what is the actual purpose of religion in the life of humankind, what it is in the contemporary world and suggesting a few changes that I feel is inevitable for a harmonious future.
Dearest Reader, there is nothing new in this article; the views expressed here have been proclaimed time and again by many eminent people who were depressed by the animosity in the world over something non-existent. I am doing my small bit in spreading the message, by repeating their words.
Dearest Reader, there is nothing new in this article; the views expressed here have been proclaimed time and again by many eminent people who were depressed by the animosity in the world over something non-existent. I am doing my small bit in spreading the message, by repeating their words.
What is the purpose of religion?
Even as man is intellectually superior to the other beings, he is not clear of many aspects about himself; or rather he has numerous doubts because of his superior intelligence. It deceives him, to understand the vastness of this universe, how complex life is and what the purpose of his existence is. The function that religion serves in a man’s life is to provide answers to these unending questions he has – regarding his place in the world, purpose of life, what after this..
And that search to oneself is completely individual - One came alone in this world, he is alone in his search of the meaning, and he leaves alone. He might or might not realize the ultimate truth, but definitely he is alone in his spiritual search. Religion thus helps the lonely man to search for answers, during his life. He does not have to search anywhere else for this. The answer is within himself, but obscured. He can find the answer by introspection. Religion provides a framework for it.
Swami Vivekananda says that various religions are like the different pathways that lead to the same mountain top; the paths vary in the looks and terrain. But all paths inevitably lead to the same mountain top. Individuals can take whichever path they are comfortable with. It is immaterial which path you take, as the destination is the same.
Now, what is collective religion?
It is pretty obscure what is aimed at by the concept of collective religion. Finding a good teacher who can guide one in the search is still understandable. When the search for ultimate truth is individual and requires lot of introspection, what is the purpose of aggregating people on the basis on religion?
Now don’t say that religion groups people so that they can collectively introspect! That is not logical, and even it was so, it not what religion does currently!
We are given a collective feeling right from childhood. We project statistics like India has 80% Hindus and 18% Muslims – based on what religion they were born at. Has anyone asked these 1.2 billion people whether they are actually influenced by the ideologies of the religion to which they are categorized into? I am sure that majority of people who proudly claim to be Hindus have no clue about what are the fundamentals of the religion. They just remain so and are chauvinistic about it because they were born to it and were trained to believe that way. No religion is an exception to this.
Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Vivekananda and Mohamed were all great leaders. They all proclaimed the same ultimate path – the realization of God within oneself!
None of them wanted a religion to take collective form or be organized and oppose the other religions. They offered frameworks and guidelines so that an individual can explore himself and realize his place in this world. But comprehending this ultimate truth is possible only for the educated and thoughtful ones. So they delivered it in simple forms like stories, which could be understood by the masses. Masses have to be initially convinced about a God, separate from themselves whom they would be looking up to, until they could be made ready to accept the ultimate aspect of searching the ultimate god within oneself. And these stories got misinterpreted or were interpreted literally by the thoughtless followers.
Christ never employed Church to be an intermediary between himself and the people. All religious institutions are self- appointed middle-men who claim to be closer to God than the common mass and through whom alone the common man can reach God.
It was the need of the religious institutions to deify these leaders, lest they do not have an existence. And it is exactly in the name of these misinterpreted verses and deified leaders that people kill each other now.
It is because these institutions existence are based on these hyped stories that the Church has to warn people about the devil which has made Dan Brown write Da Vinci code and hence shouldn’t be read by any believer. Vishwa Hindu Parishad feels agitated when an artist of a different religion paints Sita as naked or as having affair with Hanuman. They took it as a national issue and got the artist exiled. All these for mythological characters whose existence is as obscure to the fanatics as is to the artist!
A different question is, was Mr. Hussain running short of characters which could be painted as naked or as having extra marital relations, for him to choose as sensitive a character as Sita ? Anyways VHP did a good job of marketing those pictures (with captions and explanations), which would otherwise have made no sense to the eyes of a common man ;)
Why shouldn’t religion be collectivized?
Two-thirds of the Jews in Europe (Six million innocent people) were systematically exterminated during the Holocaust.
British used the Hindu –Muslim divide as an easy tool. The cross border migration and the killings which ensued resulted in death tolls estimated to be between 5 lakh and 1 million. People found it better to leave their own land and migrate to a far off place and be with the ones of “their type” than being with their neighbors for a life time. Indian and Pakistan gifted each other with train loads of mutilated bodies of immigrants. The enmity is still far away from being solved.
India also witnessed a situation where a political party sponsored a massacre of innocent people belonging to one community for no fault of theirs. Fundamentalists felt like pulling down the temple of another religion (which should have been protected as a National monument) to build a temple for their own God! We also saw a Chief Minister giving silent approval for women and children of a different religion to be raped and butchered by fanatic mobs.
Thaslima Nasrin, in her brave work “Lajja”, gives a very vivid picture of the anti-Hindu sentiments in Bangladesh after the Babri Masjid demolition. Bangladeshi Muslims felt it necessary to take revenge on the Hindus in their country for what happened in Ayodhya – they felt more allegiance towards the unknown people in a different country whom they have never met and remorselessly took revenge on their own countrymen who stayed across the street.
All these are situations which led to deaths of thousands of innocent people, just because they had a religious identity!
What we need to notice here is that the madness of religion is not limited to a country - a religious riot in some part of the world will definitely have reverberations across the globe and has the potential to destroy a country or the whole humanity itself.
What was the rationale behind these acts – because they chose a different path towards knowing themselves than the perpetrators?
The problem lies in the act of Collectivizing religion!
People are kept in dark about the true purpose of religion. They are projected with a religious identity and asked to see others to be of a different type. Who is benefiting from this - the people? None of the religious institutions actually serve the purpose which it should actually do – help in people understand themselves. Instead they inject people with prejudices about themselves as well as others making them kill and harm others who apparently have done nothing to them.
Violence is always initiated by the fundamentalists and it is the common man who has to pay for it.
Collective religion is as harming as it is meaningless.
What change is required?
I feel that this is a very important change that has to happen, that to as soon as possible. When religion is a path that one chooses to identify oneself or to realize god, how can parents or the society decide it? And what right does the school authorities or rather government has, to demand for the religion of a kid when a kid is joined to school.
Let the kid be joined to school without any religious identification. Let him be taught about the various religions and schools of thought across the world, including atheism and let him make an informed choice of the path that he wants to follow in his life. This would raise the brows of quite a number of parents who want their children to be brought up in a particular faith. Fine, Parents can bring up their kids in their own religion. But that doesn’t need it to be mentioned in official records, does it?
Such a change is highly imperative in the case of a secular country like India. Why should a secular country keep a record of the faiths of its citizens? Does it make any significance in ones career or life? If the answer is yes, it means we are not truly secular.
It is when religion is in numbers that some organizations feel like pumping funds to ‘Save’(euphemism for ‘Forced Conversion’) the hapless from underdeveloped nations to boost their numbers. It is then that some feel it is their purpose of life to indulge in holy war and cleanse the world off infidels.
Epilogue
I don’t intend in any means to say religious faith is wrong. The path provided by any religion is the best when people follow it individually. When it is organized and collective, it takes the nasty form. People should understand that each religion represents different paths to self realization (or God) and we should respect every religion. If this realization is obtained, it will make no sense to see another human being as different or fight and kill each other over mythological figures - and the world would be a better place to live in.
As I already said, there is nothing new that I had to say. If I could make you pause for a second and reconsider your convictions, my purpose is served. Thanks for going through my blog :)
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