Skip to main content

Dancing to Armageddon


Three Muslim girls wearing the hijab and dancing in a public place kicked up too much unsavoury controversy in Kerala.  The irony is that until a few days ago these same men from the Muslim community in the state were vociferously supporting a girl who converted from Hinduism to Islam in order to marry a Muslim youth whose personal credentials are allegedly tainted with IS connections.  When Akhila became Hadiya, the Muslim community called it personal freedom.  When three Muslim girls danced as part of an AIDS day awareness programme, it became a sign of the Armageddon. 

Such double standards make religion absurd.  If you advocate personal freedom when someone leaves her religion and joins yours, why can’t you permit the same personal freedom to girls of your own religion who dance for a social cause?

Why would three girls dancing bring the Armageddon on the earth?  The plain answer is that the menfolk want their women to hide themselves behind the veil, behind the burqa, and live lives without even an identity.  It is not about the Armageddon; it is about imposing the patriarchal order on women. 

A few girls dancing on the street may not bring about any miraculous changes vis-à-vis AIDS.  Perhaps, the girls did not intend to bring about any such miracles either.  Perhaps, they were asserting their personal freedom.  Perhaps, they were demanding certain rights.  The leaders should try to understand the feelings and aspirations of the girls.  Instead of suppressing simple human aspirations, the leaders should see how life can be made more meaningful and fulfilling for the new generation. 

One of the biggest mistakes of religion is to keep going back to ancient rules and regulations and thus making life obsolete and ossified.  Religion should update itself and make itself meaningful in the present day.  Music and dance have their relevance in religion too.  What is life without music and dance?


Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniDecember 4, 2017 at 8:44 PM

    I am glad that you brought up this issue. What is life without music and dance and female empowerment? Well, simply put, life is what the holy books command and anything beyond that is a blasphemy. I don't think that a conventional religion will ever be a religion if it gets updated. And don't you think that science and arts as a religion would fit better with the dynamics of human understanding and appreciations?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 4, 2017 at 8:56 PM

      Do we need a conventional religion or a relevant one? Yes, updating religion will alter its nature. Yet there's something called aggiornamento in Catholic church which sought to make the church more relevant in the modern world. The process was not successful because religious leaders are not interested in such renewals. Vested interests and power games. All religions seem to suffer from the same fate.

      I would rather have science and arts as religion. But people need gods!

      Delete
  2. Shrinidhi HandeDecember 5, 2017 at 4:34 AM

    Hope they don't face any trouble

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 5, 2017 at 6:07 AM

      I too. That religion doesn't forgive easily.

      Delete
    2. जितेन्द्र माथुरDecember 5, 2017 at 4:02 PM

      That religion (and many other religions too) doesn't forgive easily when those aimed at are actually not guilty. The real guilty is the religion itself. However the herd of blind followers makes the religions (or their self-proclaimed representatives) mighty. And finally, MIGHT IS RIGHT.

      Delete
  3. Datta GhoshDecember 5, 2017 at 12:36 PM

    That is what religion was meant to do. Stop individualism so that people could build a civilisation. It was a guiding force in the beginning governed by fear that allowed humans to settle and form a society. With science, arts and commerce, the entire conception of religion is redundant. The concept of religion has served its purpose and now is outdated (Religion is different from spirituality)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 5, 2017 at 7:49 PM

      Yes, there was a time when religion made sense or at least helped people to make sense of the world and the cosmos. But now? Even as you say, when we have much better lights such as science and reason, religion is redundant. Again yes, spirituality is quite a different matter.

      Delete
  4. Goutami NewsDecember 5, 2017 at 9:56 PM

    Religion is getting more blind as time goes by..than ever before.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jyotirmoy SarkarDecember 6, 2017 at 8:12 AM

    Very logically written.
    Religion has lost it real meaning and has became the orders of the dictators...
    Best of luck for the girls.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 6, 2017 at 9:04 AM

      My wishes are with them too. And with all people who want to make their religion more sensible.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
17 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...
5 comments
Read more

A Curious Case of Food

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...
6 comments
Read more