Skip to main content

What scares me the most


I am scared of religious people. 

Source
Come to think of it, the world has never become a better place for all the religious people it has had for centuries.  From the time Moses gave the ten commandments to Yahweh’s chosen people or Manusmriti revealed the sanatana penal code to the chosen race a little more eastward, god’s people have been trying to make man’s world better.  A few thousand years of preaching.  Thousands of gods.  Millions of laws.  Countless places of worship. 

Burning candles.  Smoking incense.  Inspiring sermons from infinite pulpits. Religion comes home round the clock on satellite TV channels.  Our very breathing is regulated by religion.  Our food is becoming religious: Prakriti ka ashirwad, for example. 

So much religion all around.  So many gods.  Too many gods’ own people.  But dark matter continues to dominate the universe.  

Darkness explodes like bombs in the alleys where live people who are as innocent as circumcised foreskin.  For whom do the bombs explode? 

I wish there were no gods.  People might learn to love then. 


Labels:

Comments

  1. Gita MadhuSeptember 15, 2016 at 7:51 AM

    It's much the same with science, alas. I don't think it's the "gods" or the precepts of science that are at fault but rather, maybe, we should look at what business interests are served by fomenting ignorance and strife.
    Loved your piece.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 15, 2016 at 8:16 AM

      Gods can't be at fault, I know. Nonexistent entities can do nothing. It's people who convert such entities into commercial commodities that need circumcision of brains or hearts.

      Delete
  2. Durga Prasad DashSeptember 15, 2016 at 8:42 AM

    Of course the statement of Marx when he said Religion is the opium of the people has merit. At the same time, religion has its own place. I think the prophets who propagated these religions never thought religion will be used by people with vested interests for their own selfish and power hungry ends.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 15, 2016 at 9:05 AM

      Today religion is a threat to human civilisation. Even in the past it was no better. More wars have been fought for gods than anything else.

      Delete
  3. Anupam PatraSeptember 15, 2016 at 9:29 AM

    Coming to admire your crusade by the day. It was about time we got one

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 15, 2016 at 11:43 AM

      Every time I hear about a religious assault somewhere I feel anguished.

      Delete
  4. Rakhi JayashankarSeptember 15, 2016 at 10:40 AM

    The way we interpret religion and religious practices is a problem. for example in temples there is a lot of positive energy from the mantras but people go to temple and chitchat there breaking the positive rays.
    When my new born son was in ventilator I continuously chanted Mrityunjaya mantras which enabled me to gain the strength to face the inevitable. I never dropped a single drop of tear which I believe provided positivity to him. Likewise if we use the religious practices in the right way with right intention it can do magic in your life

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 15, 2016 at 11:45 AM

      If people stop hurting others for the sake of their gods, there will be no problem. Personal practices should remain personal.

      Delete
    2. Rakhi JayashankarSeptember 15, 2016 at 12:19 PM

      That's true. Hurting others is not religion. It's fanaticism

      Delete
  5. Amit AgarwalSeptember 15, 2016 at 1:13 PM

    For whom the bombs explode..Moses' commandments, Manusmriti's penal code, and innocent foreskins' quandary!!
    A dazzling gem, Tom sir:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 15, 2016 at 3:02 PM

      Thanks, Amit ji. I'm trying to sweeten my sadness with humour.

      Delete
  6. Fascinating QuestSeptember 15, 2016 at 5:59 PM

    Another well-written piece, Sir...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Renu VyasSeptember 15, 2016 at 10:55 PM

    Fanaticism in any form is deplorable..at the same time I fully agree with you, personal practices should remain personal. A meaningful write-up Sir :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. जितेन्द्र माथुरSeptember 16, 2016 at 11:14 AM

    Your views are agreeable. Actually whenever some leader propagated a new religion or faith, it appeared to be like a torch spreading light. However what the people don't realize that the flame of that torch was nothing but the life of that initiating great man only. The moment he died, the flame went off. And what remained thereafter was nothing more than the lifeless rod devoid of any flame capable of generating light or warmth. However the so-called followers of that person keep on roaming around with that rod only for eons. That's the tragedy of almost all the religious faiths.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 16, 2016 at 8:09 PM

      I have written about this in my latest post, 'Human Pursuits.' Enlightenment is a personal experience, it cannot be taught by gurus and gods.

      My own personal experiences with religious people have been very depressing - in every way.

      Delete
  9. Swati BatraSeptember 16, 2016 at 11:21 PM

    You have expressed your anger very well. But it is we the people who misinterpret things as per our whims and fancies. We do manipulate even the good for our personal benefits. We politicize everything.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 17, 2016 at 7:44 AM

      Since I can't find anything good in religion, at least the way it has affected my life for so many years, my "anger" will continue to find its expression.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
16 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more