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

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
28 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
9 comments
Read more