A lot of recent violence, including policemen entering a library not to read but to be policemen, carries religion in its tightly closed fist. It is as if Creation itself dates back to multiple gods who don’t see eye to eye, exhorting followers to divide and pray, pray and divide. Enough differences exist between man and fellow-man—gender, caste, economic, educational, colour—for all of humanity to co-exist peacefully. These separations are then sealed in fundamentalism, mass-producing a full-blown but delusional brand of superiority.
But somewhere between being a believer and an atheist is the choice to be human, just human, only human, solely human. Humanism has much to recommend it, not least that humanity must not be wiped off the face of earth because of plain stupidity. When we kneel down or sit on the floor or walk-in circles to pray, it is not who we pray to or how that marks our religion but the fact that all of us are praying; prayer only points out our helplessness, our very human plights, and a search for means, any means, to work our way out of our problems and predicaments. It is an equalising act, not a separatist one. Everyone puts their palms together in times of trouble and tragedy. That’s the first basic step.
Prayer provides inner solace, maintains internal strength and serenity. Never is it intended as a weapon. Prayer by its very definition is a positive charge. Most of us are who we are by birth. It is a purely accidental event, however much we’d like to sprinkle celestial glitter on it. Some choose, after studying theology in academic passion or in later discontent or pursuant to pedestrian miracles in their personal life, another religion as adults.
Sister Jesme and Sister Lucy Kalappura have rattled the church’s chains by mentioning atrocities committed against them as women. Thus dividing Christians in Kerala into two opposite camps in their own drawing rooms. So reluctant is the laity to forsake their pews that they’d rather disbelieve the nuns than the men who are priests. Yet, when they set aside their rosary and put their heads down to sleep, a niggling doubt must gnaw at their soul. Divinity is not in the altar, it is in the devotee.
In the name of family deities, families go to war with each other. Rituals and retreats and novenas and pilgrimages can be used as masks to abscond from responsibilities or relationships of daily life. It is always disturbing to be privy to the goodness of a person when that goodness is dependent on religious fervour; it’s good for goodness sake that is believable, dependable, lasting. Charity, in the name of any god, is fine by those who receive alms. Who care nothing about the etymology or origin of the religion of the givers as long as they give.
My faith should have faith in the non-divisive, unifying aspects of all faiths, to transcend the ‘my’ in my faith. Us against them is not just about going with the flow but it’s also heading for whirlpools. It is one’s spirit that has to make sense of external and ephemeral differences. The language of future mythology must not describe incoherent enmity as ‘Modi-ites and Muslims’—the way we mention Pandavas and Kauravas today.
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