What is ‘religion’? Most people who
consider themselves secular in their outlooks as well as tolerant monks and
priests of a few tolerant religions, give it a convenient definition,
convenient to buttress their secular credentials: “Each religion is a road leading to God”,
like the proverb “All roads lead to Rome”. Yet the followers or the descendents
of the ‘three cousins’ of the desert lands, will never agree to this simple
‘secular definition’; because they have been brainwashed to look at humanity in
two blocks: those who follow one cousin’s religion are ‘believers’ or the
‘faithful’ and the rest are ‘non-believers’ or the ‘unfaithful’. Each cousin
has his own ‘god’ and proclaims with conviction that his god is the only God
and the gods of other cousins and other pagans are not gods but demons! I am
sure you know these cousins: the Jews, Christians and the Muslims who all have
their origins in the deserts of Arabia and the Middle East. For them, only
their individual road leads to ‘Rome’ and the rest to ‘hell’! So, the
oversimplified definition is not accepted by most of the human beings, though
it may be good to adopt that definition in order to inculcate tolerance amongst
people belonging to varied beliefs and thereby ensure peace in the society.
I am not an atheist nor am I a very religious person. I believe in God’s
existence more as a form of ‘force’ or
‘energy’ with which one can align
oneself and stay in unison with It. That notwithstanding, I find Richard
Dawkins’ “God Delusion” to be a convincing book in many parts. I shall restrict
myself here to the part which is germane to the topic under discussion. If a
child is born to a Christian or Muslim parents, is the child a ‘Christian
child’ or ‘Muslim child’ as the case may be? In today’s society and the
societal systems and establishments we have evolved over centuries, the answer
is ‘yes, the child is a Christian or Muslim depending upon its parenthood’.
Does the child feel so at the time of birth or in the initial years? No. The
child is just a child; we start indoctrinating the child depending upon what
religion we as parents were asked or ‘conditioned’ to follow by our parents and
the society around us. Dawkins very clearly exposes how a child born to parents of a specific religion is forced to
believe that he/she also belongs to that religion. This part from this book, I
liked most, for no one can contest the fact that no new born child carries with it a sticker
that he/she is supposed to follow the dogmas and rituals that his/her father
and mother have been following without ever questioning them, because they were
handed down to them by their society or community or clerics! Amy Chua’s memoirs,
‘The battle hymn of a Tiger Mother’, which has recently hit the stands, brings
this out very well: We were told that our parents knew what is best for us and
so we followed what they told us, blindly. We never applied our mind – if we
did, we were chided; we were told that the priests/clerics/ hymns/psalms have
ordained that we follow what we have
been told. Anyone who questions commits a sacrilege! This is what Amy brings
out in her book: how with the iron fist her mother imposes upon her and her
sister everything including what courses she and her sister were to study and
what games they should play. Because she knew what is best for them! If they tried
to oppose they were made to stand the whole night in the cold outside the house
half naked! (Equivalent of the religious ostracism that takes place in almost
all the societies or the ‘fatwas’ issued by the
Muslim clerics to murder the perceived blasphemer!!) At the end of the story,
the daughter rebels and shouts at the dictatorial Mother ‘I hate you; you
ruined my life’.
In a broader sense, by indoctrinating the innocent child with our beliefs and prejudices --the basis
for which we are ourselves unsure except that they were time honoured societal
cum religious norms-- are we not killing the ‘instincts’ of imagination, creativity and curiosity of the
child? If we say we (meaning our ancestors or the priests and clerics who have
laid down the dogmatic rules and rituals) know what is best for the child, so
did Stalin impose his prejudices and preferences on almost the whole of Slav race;
so believed Hitler, Mao and innumerable dictators! Religion thus is a
codification of dictatorial dictums, threatening the people who oppose with
punishments, violence and indignities by a collective body called ‘the society
or religious community’. Is it not boorish and primitive existence? How can
therefore ‘religion’ be the road to God?
A child when born is irreligious. If he/she is allowed total
independence of thought, then the child will start questioning the various
forms of existence, the process of births and deaths, the variety of forms of
manifestation of Nature and then evolve
his/her own religion or ‘road to God or Truth’. He/She will never have any
intolerance to others following different routes in search of ‘God or Truth’,
for he/she will understand that there is no single way in which all communicate
with God (I use this term to refer to the ultimate Energy of the Total Consciousness
of entire cosmic manifestation which includes we
earthlings as well) and be in communion with Him; in fact, because the child
was allowed to grow in an atmosphere of ‘free thoughts’ without any dogma or ritual superimposed on
him/her, he/she when grown up is comfortable with whatever method each
follows to seek ‘the ultimate truth’, the objective being just one and the same. Only, if such freedom
of growing up is allowed in the entire society, we can accept the secular
definition: ‘all religions lead to the same God’. In that sense if we are six billion people on the earth
today, there are six billion religions
and all of them lead to the same
point of zenith—call it “God” or
“realization of the Truth”. I dare say that there may be groups attending mass
in churches, praying(doing ‘namaz’) in
mosques and attending ‘bhajans
and poojas’. But the individual in each of these groups even as he/she is
engaged in the ‘combined activity’, is communicating with God in his/her own
way .Each has a way to plead, implore, seek God, rituals notwithstanding: that
is what is called the unison of the soul
with the ‘total consciousness’. The greater the unison, the greater is
the resonance. That is why the degree of ‘realization’ each attains varies from
person to person. The ones who achieve the greatest resonance become the Swami
Vivekanandas and Mother Teresas.
Permit me to digress a bit here. I shall return to the topic at the
close of the paragraph: Before the
dogmas of rituals and ‘Manu’s rules’ were imposed on the human society in the
geographical territory that we call the ‘Indian sub continent’ today, the child
who was born ‘free’, was allowed to grow
up in total freedom. He was merely taught to be grateful to his parents and
teachers and hospitable to the guests: ”Mathru Devo bhava, Pithru Devo bhava, Acharya
Devo bhava, Athithi Devo Bhava” (Mother
is your God, Father is your God, Teacher is your God and the Guest is your
God).Beyond that he was not put to any indoctrination: He was not asked to
worship X God or Y God, nor was he told
that he belonged to A or B religion. By the time he was five years old, he was
sent off with the teacher to the forest school called ‘gurukul’. Here the
teacher taught him academics, arts and
crafts and above all allowed him to be
with Nature so that he learnt the art to survive, he saw the
Nature in its various forms ,hues and seasons and so was able to understand the “Brahma”(the
Truth).That is why this stage of growing up was called
“Brahmacharya”(Brahma acharya-- self teaching of the ‘Truth’, the truth of
existence, the truth of cosmic manifestation and benevolence and the connecting
cord between the individual soul and the common ‘total Consciousness’ or say “God”).
That was the way of life called
‘Hindu way of life’, before it was seized by the priests and clerics who in their anxiety to regulate the society , brought in dogmas, rules and rituals. If you
look at ‘Hindu way of life’ in its purest form, you will realize (if you are
able to think objectively without any prejudice of your conditioned mind) that
each child when born is a ‘Hindu’ free to choose his/her own methodology to
communicate and stay in communion with God.(Please note that I am making a
clear distinction between “Hindu way of life” which is the basic, unadulterated way of
existence of the human soul and
“Hinduism”.) When it becomes “ism”, it also becomes a mundane religion like any
other having its own set rules, unexplained and illogical dogmas and
superstitious rituals.
So, to my mind, religion is not a
path to God. It is depicted as one so as to instill fear—literally ‘the fear of
God’. Any religion is basically a code book/ a rule book for its followers.
Such code books were necessary in order to bring orderliness in the society so
that as a community the followers followed a certain set of rules. And these
rules have been interspersed with certain spirituality so that the rules are
invoked by the ‘will and command of God’. As Voltaire said ‘if there is no god,
let us invent one!’.
Religion is the aggregation of the
thoughts of a philosopher, who incidentally is also a mass leader. Obviously,
the thought process of any one as relating to ‘existence’ is kindled by ‘Nature’ and so also in case of the
originator of a religion: Inasmuch as
Judaism, Christianity and Islam
were enunciated by the ‘messiahs’
who were born and grew up in the harsh
deserts, their thought process was
based on ‘uniformity’(Nature manifesting
itself in unending expanse of desert sand).That is why all these religions
indoctrinate the people that those who follow their religion are ‘the
believers’ and the rest ‘non believers’. Because desert conditions are very
harsh, these religions also believed in conversions through coercion, force and
violence. These religions were born to lay down code rules for warring Arab
tribes; so there is always an element to force and subjugate the unruly and the
opposing tribes.
As opposed to this, Hinduism, even
after it became a ‘religion’ with its rituals and prejudices, was not the
thought process of any single individual. It is the aggregation of the thought processes
of many persons who saw ‘Nature’ manifesting itself in diverse forms: as snow capped
mountains, lush green river valleys, breezy sea shores, thick forests and also deserts, with varied flora and fauna. That is why, even
when the ‘Hindu way of life’ got itself ‘ismed’ into ‘Hinduism’, it has
remained a pacifist religion, believing in diversity. It is one religion which
does not believe in ‘conversions’, least of all through violence. This position
of course is slowly changing with ‘religious fundamentalism’ being preached by
some ‘misguided’ Hindu chauvinists.
What I was trying to explain was that
if we remove the external veneer of ‘the religion by birth’ that has been
thrown as an uneasy cloak on every human being, we see that the individual soul
is irreligious and is always yearning for ‘freedom of space and thought’, so
that the soul can find in its own way, what is its link with the entire
Cosmos.. And, as I said in a previous paragraph, that is the ’Hindu way of
life’. If we are thus able to see the souls in the humanity in their purest,
innocent forms, they are all ‘Hindus’. There is no need for all the religious
wars, ‘jihads’ and the so called ‘clashes of civilizations’. If our forefathers
had been as wise, there would have been no crusades, no colonization and no
conversions through missionary zeal or through bloody wars.
It is still not late for us to save
our souls! Let us, to start with accept that ‘religion is a private affair’ of
an individual. Let us not intimidate the masses with the fear of God’s wrath or
through the brutalities of fundamentalism. Let us have our rules to run our
societies, just as the laws of land passed by the people’s bodies such as the
Parliaments and senates. Leave ‘religion’ unto each self.