Skip to main content

Religion and Cruelty

Pillar in Vellore Fort commemorating the Revolt
Image from Wikipedia


Today is the anniversary of the Vellore Mutiny which took place on 10 July 1806 when the Indian soldiers (sepoys) revolted against the East India Company for imposing certain rules that the Hindus as well as Muslims did not like. The Hindus were prohibited from wearing religious marks on their foreheads and Muslims were required to shave their beards and trim their moustaches. The turban was replaced with a hat which the soldiers identified with Christianity.

The soldiers would certainly have looked smart and trim with the changes, which indeed was the purpose. But religion, like popular condoms, is extra-sensitive, and tickles too many tissues and issues. Half a century later, a bigger revolt of the same nature would be triggered by very similar reasons in Meerut.

Mindless violence followed the revolt in Vellore. The rebels killed 14 of their own officers and 115 men of their regiment. The revolt was soon suppressed and the rebels were punished ruthlessly.

One of the many punishments meted out to the mutineers was blowing away from guns. The culprit was tied to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired so that the culprit’s body would be shattered to smithereens. The ulterior intention was to preclude religious funeral rites. It was a terrible punishment for religious believers, a punishment that went beyond death.

Religion has been a cause of much brutality throughout history directly or indirectly. While it is understandable that people would not accept the defilement of whatever they hold as sacred, what remains beyond my comprehension is how something like religion which is supposed to make people compassionate actually makes them monstrously cruel.

Of course, the East India Company was not bothered about religion. They wanted power. And servile discipline. The Company was prompt to punish their own officers responsible for the offensive dress regulations. All the senior British officers involved were recalled to England. The Company even refused to pay John Craddock, the Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, his passage expenditure as he was sent back to his country. The offensive rules were revoked.

But why did the Company have to be so brutal in the punishments given to the Indians? I think it was not merely about making the punishments “exemplary” for potential rebels. I think religion makes people more inhuman than any other entity. Would the punishment have been less severe if religion was not involved?

Arguably religion has been the largest killer in human history; at least, the largest perpetrator of violence and cruelty.

We witness religious violence even today in the country. It takes the forms of lynching, raping, and plain shooting. Some of our leaders are openly supporting such acts of violence too. The otherwise loquacious Prime Minister has not condemned such acts of violence or chastised his ministers who support them. Religion lends legality to such acts of violence!

Religion and violence. Their harmonious coexistence is a contradiction that has baffled me time and again. It is one of the things that makes me detest religion. I know I can do nothing about it: except stay as far away from it as possible.


Comments

  1. pushpendra dwivediJuly 10, 2018 at 10:34 PM

    thoughtful interesting story telling

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anita SabatJuly 11, 2018 at 6:39 AM

    Many lives were lost in our quest to earn freedom.
    Had such brave soldiers not revolted, we wouldn't be enjoying our present status.
    'Jo shaheed huye hain unki zara yaad karo kurbani'

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 11, 2018 at 7:08 AM

      I do appreciate the contributions of every freedom fighter. The point is something else.

      Secondly, did violence win independence? The British suppressed every violent revolt too easily. The Vellore Mutiny, for example, did not last beyond 24 hours. It was Gandhi's non-violence that the British could not retaliate.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
16 comments
Read more

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

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

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...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more