Since I have been talking so much about God, the next obvious increment would be religion. There are two things that happened in the last couple of weeks that got me thinking in a all together different directions about religion. One was obviously the discussion about my previous blog with Tanno where he said that he was a Muslim and his view of the world is based on the Quran. The second one was a shrine that Rahul created in the conference room at the ECM office.
I guess I have hinted on my position on religion in previous posts. I was born into a religion but i don't practice it. So far I don't believe religion has helped me with anything whatsoever, neither spiritually, emotionally nor socially. It has been used to discriminate against me right from the time i needed to go to school. I am not especially proud of being a Hindu. You can argue that I really don't know much about Hinduism or what it represents and you won't be wrong, I don't know much. Probably I am not happy with the way it is represented today and the I am not happy with the people who claim to be the leaders of the religion.
I am tired of the fundamentalism and the intolerance that all religion has come to represent in the so called modern world. It has become a tool to acquire power and status. Bombay has become Mumbai and Madras has become Chennai but the legacy of divide and rule doesn't seem to be going away anywhere soon. People can be divided along a lot of lines but religion seems to be the most potent. As I have discovered religion can be a very touchy subject and I am slowly discovering the meaning of "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes", though definitely not in a communist way.
I am not opposed to the idea of religion per se but I definitely have deep reservations of the way it is being practiced and I have become so cynical about the concept that there is this tremendous inertia to learn about it. I think that religion should be a personal affair and I really don't think it should be overtly advertised. Most people, I have come to realize, don't even have the slightest notion of the religion they practice and I really have no qualms in saying that this is true even in my house. I have asked many a times for the significance of particular ritual or a verse and I have never got a straight answer for any question. It all seems to be second hand knowledge and religion seems to be practiced without understanding or questioning.
I have started reading the Quaran and even though it is a very difficult to read I am still sticking to it. As I read I am learning more and I am quite intrigued by the idea of religion in general and why it came about. I hope to read the rigveda and the Bible next. The idea definitely is to find out with an open mind when and how these religious texts came into being, why they are revered so much and why people follow it blindly, millennia after they have been written.
As it stands today though, I don't believe that I need religion to provide me with an identity in society. I would rather not be part of or be associated with a religious group or sect. I don't want to announce to the world or to the government my religious preferences. I would rather be nonreligious, if that is at all possible.
That said I cannot ignore the deeply communal society we live in. The majority of the people around me are attached and are more often than not proud of their religious identities. Their sensibilities are hurt and sometimes deeply wounded by the tiniest of pin drops. Everyday morning when I walk to my room in the office, I pass the shrine in the conference room and I have to ask myself in a land where even Ayappa and Venkateshwara have not learnt to coexist, is this not an invitation to trouble? Why give the company a religious identity? What purpose does it serve? Is this not talking a side? Is this not communalizing the fabric of the work place with such an "in your face" location for the shrine? Doesn't the location amplify the message unreasonably? The question really is should we as a business establishment be making such a statement when it can so easily be perceived as intolerant? I would think not!
5 comments:
Can perfervid secularists, resolute in their belief that there is no God to whom we must answer and no morality except that which human beings devise, be good and loving people? Sure they can. Now lets say, Can a individual with strong belief that there is ONE God to whom we must answer and follow a morality as mentioned in the holy scripts, can be good and loving non judgmental person too? (for eg. My or your parents?)
Religion doesn’t make you intolerant. People are born and bread into intolerance, if its not Religion it will be something else. Religion is the only social practice which protects the weak from the evil selfish capitalist world we have created.
The world in which religion is banned -- is a world of people who selfishly suck the planet dry for their personal gains.
A lot of wrong has been done in the name of Religion. You don’t hate the theory, you just hate the practice. It may not give you and me our identities, but it gives a face to all those issues that society chooses to brush under the carpet. Remember, when acts of charity and goodness are most needed, it isn't generally groups of New Atheists who are seen answering the call
Kavi, when i quoted Marx, the first thing that came to my mind was you! People are not born intolerant, bread they are. I never said religion is a bad thing, I only said that today it has deteriorated to a state where I am cynical about it. The stall worths of all religion seem to have become power and money hungry and our politicians spare no chance to create religious divides. I am sure religion and socialism would be pillars of an ideal world. But the world is not ideal!
PDR (Public Displayed of Religion) is avoidable 100 %.
Doesnt really bring anything to the individual other than caressing of relgious ego of the self.
Religion is strictly a matter of personal choice.
On the lighter side, probably the reason why it is said that there are 33 Crore gods in Hindu religon, is, somebody in good old times realized that Hindus would need that number looking at the possible population growth in 'Kalyug'
Sure Rushi, one god per person. No multitasking should yield better results :)
We should probably begin with the question: what exactly is this 'religion' thingie and is it (as kavi rightly pointed out) the culprit? Surely not... human beings love to have an identity, we love to join networks, and we love to quote and stick by our favorites. Well, we take certain stuff very seriously. In such a structure, it is only natural that axes such as language, religion, caste, colour, etc. exist to align us within them. For these are all axes that divide us and are all axes that have been used to rule us since 'God' knows when ;) and the status remains such that xenophobia is a phenomenon that is much more rampant than it is acknowledged today and is so deeply entrenched in us that we have lost the capacity to even recognize it. We constantly confuse/veil it with terms that lull the significance of our behaviour. (So much so that, that it is so 'extra kind' to be good to people who are different in identity than you. Should that not be just - erm - normal?)
Then it seems that, human-greed capitalizes on all that talent for xenophobia with in the human-works; religion used as the front to rout another bunch of people (countless examples), which has brought us to the point of revenge, counter revenge, and the stew of memories of hate without resolutions. Like the montagues and the capulets we are all houses divided for ancient reasons, reasons we do not remember very well and more so, reasons that the power-minded will not let us forget. It is just so easy and convenient to rule us with all this divide, it is only natural (if human-greed is a natural thing) that this fire is kept ceaselessly fueled. And thus, the rifts take on a fractal form, starting at the level of individuals and reproduced as we up the size of the collective.
So looks like, part of the reason that makes religion such a great tool of control stems from the fact that it gives identity; which ushers in the question - why are we all hankering for an identity so desperately? And why is it that the human-identity -- the most basic of it all -- lies submerged under all these other layers of constructed identities that have been lumped upon us... also, I think, the success of religion as a tool of control lies in the fact that many of them lay out a way of life; they define what 'sins' are, and ways to accumulate good karma and how we may redeem it. This combined with the fact that most them also actively encourage -- if not, mandate -- explicit forms of xenophobia (we are all kafirs in each others eyes) it relieves one of morality between any bunch of 'us and them'. All this is fine, but why does it come so naturally to us?... surely, a lot of constructive stuff has been born out of these systems of fear and faith but all this just clubs them under experiments in social engineering. And they should be treated as such, like experiments outdated, evolved, accepted, or -- horror of horrors -- rejected. What remains, howevr, are such levels of hypocrisy that it makes you laugh and then cry. Hmm... and from all this poor God can be derived to be a extremely myopic, chauvinistic being, given to severe amounts of red-tape. So much for being super human.
We need to unravel these issues carefully. Perhaps, the first step would be to classify and call each thing by its proper name; what is murder, what is greed, what is religion, and what is stupidity.
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