Opinion

Over-religious societies can hardly be secular…

Religion – or popular religion – demands mob thinking, belligerent faith and rejection of other religions. All religions have jealous gods. And even more jealous priests and clerics.

religionA secular nation in a highly religious society is a contradiction in terms and, as recent developments in today’s India prove, a near impossibility.

Modernism, technological access and globalised economies do not arrest revanchist growths and chauvinism. The result is that secularism is never a reality.

Secularism demands acceptance of other faiths and cultures, respect and tolerance for universal values and a deep, reflective understanding of the essence of religion – your own and that of others.

Religion – or popular religion – demands mob thinking, belligerent faith and rejection of other religions. All religions have jealous gods. And even more jealous priests and clerics.

Even as western technologically advanced modern societies have balanced out or diminished religious involvement, older eastern societies have modernised on the surface but have gone backward to old rituals and beliefs.

What the fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims are doing today is radical thinking as has not been seen before.

Hate and fanatical rubbish

We talk secularism because the word is in our Constitution, but the vibrations of hate and anger and separateness are sparking like wild electricity.

Behind this is the lust for power, funding from corporations and foreign governments and the overall economics and business of religion today in India and the world.

Religions today are multi-million dollar corporations now and back terrorism and revolutions.

Secularism does not have as much chance as a snowflake in hell. Unless…unless very strong and effective and also unpopular initiatives are taken to override all dictats of all religions when they impinge on state laws that are secular and constitutional.

For 70 years in secular India we have endorsed a religious Muslim personal law. This was done by a secular Congress.

Now recently, the BJP, which runs an avowedly secular government in a secular nation, has banned beef because the cow is considered religiously important and sacred.

This is state secularism. And how can there be a secular environment when Hindutva and radical Islamist rabble rousers are allowed to run radio and TV channels bombarding gullible impressionable minds with religious hate and fanatical rubbish!

Goodness must not be a mask

I have always found it quite difficult to understand how and why perfectly well educated, intelligent and otherwise very humane people can suddenly turn into combative furies when it comes to religion. It is strange but that is the history of the world.

It is the highly intelligent who create conflict over the supremacy of their religions.

The others, masses of people, just follow. And the great tragic irony is that, both among the leaders as well as mobs of followers, nobody can ever be certain of what they destroy or die for.

On the face of it, all the best and most gifted people of high attainment are self-avowedly secular and gracious to all and very international in their thinking.

But the moment there is social stress or tension among two groups of different religion, the masks come down and they are trapped securely in their irrational, sectarian and myopic beliefs.

Scratch the surface of a Hindu or Muslim or Christian of high status and intelligence and you will see a chauvinist who has no respect for any religion but his own.

Well, all that one can say is that it is good to believe in you. But if all your sense of Who You Are, your Total Identity comes only from the religion you happen to belong to, then you do not have an Identity of Your Own.

A person’s true identity is his thinking, his behaviour and actions and his or her whole life as it is lived.

No person of any intelligence can or should turn a blind eye to the good in other religions and to the bad and evil practices in his own.

I believe there must be cross-cultural and inter-religious studies for students of all religions so that they understand religions and don’t pick up fanaticism by hearsay. Drastic problems need drastic measures.

(Vijay Shankar is a veteran journalist and writer based in New Delhi.Views expressed are personal)

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