Skip to main content

Grow up into Secularism




Jawaharlal Nehru gave India a slightly different version of secularism from what the west practises. Nehru’s secularism not only dissociated politics from religion but also gave full freedom to all religions. In other words, while the west sought to discredit religion altogether, Nehru accepted religions and let them be. But religion should not be a matter of any importance for the government as long as it does not pose any threat to peace, to law and order.
Nehru was not a believer. He was of the opinion that religion prevented the intellect from developing. The religious approach is dogmatic and authoritative. Such approach will breed superstition, bigotry and intolerance. That was Nehru’s view. But he also knew that the majority of Indians would not understand his enlightened view. So he let religions be.
Religion is an infantile need, as psychologist Freud said. Like children needing the constant care of parents, the religious believer seeks god’s protection all the time. The believer refuses to grow up.
To some extent, religion may help people to avoid egoism and cultivate certain virtues. However, religion is not essential for anyone to cultivate any virtue. You can be good if you realise the simple truth that goodness is better than evil. I guess one doesn’t need much brain to understand that. Try spreading goodness around and see the difference, if you still don’t understand. There’s no need of any god for you to be good. Goodness is your choice. Evil is your choice too.
Anyway, with all these religions around the world hasn’t become any better a place to live in. On the contrary, religions seem to make the world a worse place. Look at what is happening in India these days. Just imagine if those two guys who have created a gigantic mess in India now were secular. If they were, probably India would have been the best nation by now.
I have seen good people who are religious too. But I have always felt that they would be good without religion too. Goodness is their choice. God is just a convenient addition.
PS. Written for Indispire Edition 304: Is secularism a bad idea in India? #Secularism


Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरDecember 24, 2019 at 10:57 AM

    Bhagat Singh also nurtured the same views and had a clear vision for a better India even in his tender years. Me too endorse these thoughts. I consider it a lousy practice to keep the column of RELIGION in various forms being filled by students, candidates and citizens. It's superfluous, ridiculous and oppressive at the same time. Why the hell an individual be compelled to follow any religion ? Why shouldn't he/she just be allowed to live as a good human-being ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 24, 2019 at 2:22 PM

      The country should do away with that column for religion. It should enable people to be good human beings. What's happening now is alarming. India has failed miserably on all fronts, including economy. Yet the government enjoys popular support because of religious sentiments.

      Delete
  2. John SmithJanuary 9, 2020 at 11:30 PM

    McAfee.com/Activate - McAfee offers all-round security for every major platform such as Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS as well. In case you are looking for sources to learn how to download, install, and activate McAfee on your system, then here is the list of requirements that you need to match before installing it. 
    mcafee.com/activate

    ReplyDelete
  3. John SmithMarch 4, 2020 at 12:48 AM

    Hey, I’m John. I’m a web developer living in 145 Kelley Blvd, Millbrook AL 36054. I am a fan of technology, writing, and web development. You can read my blog with a click on the button above.
    mcafee.com/activate

    ReplyDelete
  4. John SmithJuly 3, 2020 at 12:39 PM

    Hey, I’m John. I’m a web developer living in 145 Kelley Blvd, Millbrook AL 36054. I am a fan of technology, writing, and web development. You can read my blog with a click on the button above.
    http://blog-search.co.uk/mcafee-activate/
    https://true-antivirus.com/
    https://broad-blogs.uk.com/

    ReplyDelete

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
44 comments
Read more

Ashwatthama is still alive

Fiction Image from Pinterest “I met Ashwatthama.” When Doctor Prabhakar told me this, I thought he was talking figuratively. Metaphors were his weaknesses. “The real virus is in the human heart, Jai,” he had told me when the pandemic named Covid-19 started holding the country hostage. I thought his Ashwatthama was similarly figurative. Ashwatthama was Dronacharya’s son in the Mahabharata. He was blessed with immortality by Shiva. But the blessing became a horrible curse when Krishna punished him for killing the Pandava kids deceptively after Kurukshetra was brought to peace, however fragile that peace was, using all the frauds that a god could possibly use. Krishna of the Kurukshetra was no less a fraud than a run-of-the-mill politician in my imagination. He could get an innocent elephant named Ashwatthama killed and then convert that killing into a blatant lie to demoralise Drona. He could ask Bhima to hit Duryodhana below the belt without feeling any moral qualms in what
7 comments
Read more

Do I Dare?

Alfred Prufrock was sitting in a dimly lit café when a young boy, who was yet to reach adolescence, walked in. The boy looked as inquisitive as Prufrock looked flurried. ‘Hello,’ the boy said. ‘You look so… lonely. And sad too.’ ‘Sad? No, not sad. Just… contemplating. I am, as they say, measuring out my life with coffee spoons.’ ‘Aw! That’s strange. On my planet, I measure things by sunsets. I love sunsets. How can you measure life with something so small as a coffee spoon?’ ‘Did you say “my planet”?’ ‘Well, yes. I come from another planet. I’ve been travelling for quite some time, you know. Went to numerous planets and asteroids and met many strange creatures. Quite a lot of them are cranky.’ The boy laughed gently, almost like an adult. Prufrock looked at the boy with some scepticism and suspicion. He was already having too many worries of his own like whether he should part his hair in the middle and roll up the bottoms of his trousers. ‘They call me Little Prince,’
16 comments
Read more

Live Life Fully

Alexis Zorba, the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek , lives life to its fullness. He embraces human experience with his whole heart. He is not interested in rational explanations and intellectual isms. His philosophy, if you can call it that at all, is earthy, spontaneous and passionate. He loves life passionately. He celebrates it. Happiness is a simple affair for him. “I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing happiness is,” he tells us. “A glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.” You don’t need a lot of things to be happy. Your possessions don’t bring you happiness. All that money you spent on your big house, big car, big everything… It helps to show off. But happiness? No way, happiness doesn’t come that way at all. Zorba loves to play his musical instrument, santouri. He loves to sing. To dance. But don’t get me wrong. He works too. He works hard. There’s no fullness of life without that hard w
10 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
15 comments
Read more