Thursday, February 01, 2007

RELIGION - SPREAD BY WORDS OR 'S'WORDS?








An angry mob of hundreds marching with pride to kill their brothers, a pregnant woman begging for her unborn child's life, girls being raped at every corner of the road and a child being harrassed because he is either a hindu or a muslim. This was the scene during the Gujarat riots or maybe it was even worse. Gory images of destruction cross my mind everytime I sit to write about this issue. My blood boils everytime I see a movie based on this episode. I have always been a non-believer in religion and day by day I find my belief going stronger.
Religion is the language of God. It is His way of communication. But time and again we have often misinterpreted it for our selfish motives.
Recently I saw this film called 'PARZANIA', which has made my disgust against religious fanaticism even more relevant and just. The movie is about a Parsi family who lose their 10 year old son during the riots and it describes their search for him in these times of trials and tribulations. These people were innocent but still they faced the brunt of this religious outcry. They obeyed the ALLAH, RAM, JESUS and also the MAZDA equally, yet thier throats were cut and thier failies were butchered. Not to forget the other attrocities that were committed for which I have no courage to even write or type.

" Life moves on", yes it does, but at the cost of burnt photographs and burnt memories . These reminiscences still haunt them every time the darkness of a riot breaks on them. It has scorched not only their lives but also thier souls, souls that believed in God and were as pure as God Himself. Let us all pledge to bring back peace and stop encouraging religious fundamentalism. Let us understand religion in our own sense and terms instead of propogating it as something to be more superior than other's beliefs. Thus as the cliched line goes, " lets make this earth a better place to live in" can we?

1 comment:

introspections said...

Well The blood does indeed Boil when we remember those '02 Riots.We can see how it was orchestrated as well.
This is what I had written after the movie released.

Communal Nightmare: Rubber Stamp Religions
On the occasion of India’s 58th Republic Day, a movie called Parzania is released. This raises serious doubts about the republican status of India.
Religion means laws of God as presented in various scriptures, to a variety of audiences according to the time, place and circumstances. The mother of all these tenets or the principle behind these laws is to always remember God and to have an equal vision towards one’s friend and foe. The food given is the same but the way of eating is different. One can eat with a chopstick or hand or a fork. But to get involved in the chopstick only, or the fork only, and to forget the food is foolishness. This has been happening for decades together. Each one claims to be a Hindu or a Muslim, with no knowledge about their so-called religion. Just by rubber stamping oneself as a Hindu or a Muslim doesn’t make one religious in the true sense. As famously said by Srila Prabhupada,the Founder-Acarya of ISKCON,”Religion without philosophy is sentimentalism and philosophy without religion is mental speculation.”
The Hitopadesa states,” Both animals and men share the activities of eating, mating, sleeping and defending but, the special property of the humans is that they are able to engage in spiritual life. Therefore, without spiritual life, humans are on the levels of animals.”But, nowadays in the name of religion, people are ballistically becoming animalistic. In fact, thanks to the various contortions of the word ‘dharma’ or religion, religion is being looked as the main cause of terror. People want to do away with it. Religion is intrinsic and hence, cannot be given up; just as sweetness is to sugar. If the sugar is not sweet, then it’s not sugar by definition. Similarly, to love God and his creation, i.e., fellow human beings and animals as well, is the basic religion of all human society.
Fundamentalism means literal attitude to a set of religious principles. The problem lies in the second part, i.e., intolerance towards other religions. I AM A Hindu doesn’t mean that I should necessarily hate a Muslim. That doesn’t come naturally. But for decades, the politicians and certain spiritual leaders have preached this fact of strict adherence and intolerance that today it’s become an integral part of our mindset. Each one wants to be the lord of all they survey and thus, for their own personal benefits, such beliefs are being propagated widely. What we need is a harmonious or ‘samanvaya ‘understanding of the scriptures.
Communalism is a modern term describing a broad range of social movements and social theories, which are centered on a community. This is a positive term but, in India and south-east Asia, it means something else. It is a name of force separating different communities based on some form of sectarian discrimination. The meaning of communalism has been distorted for a long time, that today it’s not one of the loved words in this part of the world. Even Wikipedia has got 2 versions for ‘communalism ‘. The Indian meaning of the word is equivalent to ‘sectarianism’.
This is seen quite vividly in ‘Parzania ‘, when a man is forced to unzip to prove his faith. The flippant and lackadaisical attitude of the police and the politicians has again been reiterated as in Deepa Mehta’s’1947: Earth ‘. The present day adherence to Lord Jesus’ Love Thy Neighbor’ is shown when neighbors exonerate themselves of communal tags.
Indians won’t value anything ‘swadeshi ‘anymore. A foreigner understands Gandhian principles better than anyone in his homeland as depicted by Allan’s character. Anything from the west is considered cool and there is a hope that the foreigners adopting Indian values would soon send it to India. That’s the only way India can redeem itself.
Everything has been orchestrated by a few for vested interests and in the process several ‘Parzans ‘are lost. As a result, we have a polarized society. Politicians continue to sell sectarianism by merging it with nationalism.