Sectarian Virus

The latest statue in India
Image from Orissa Diary

“True religion is not talk, or doctrines, or theories, nor is it sectarianism. It is the relation between soul and God. Religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending public worship. It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in lectures, or in organizations. Religion consists in realization. We must realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion.”

Swami Vivekananda said that long ago. Sectarianism was a virus that ate into the Indian psyche in those days too. We choose to call it communalism. Communalism is the wrong word. The word ‘communal’ does not have a negative meaning in English except in India. What Indians mean by the word is actually ‘sectarian’, dividing people into factions, while ‘communal’ is about sharing and caring among members of a community.

“Class divide, Chauvinism, Social media validation, Alarming increase of criminals in politics, Lack of civic sense and so on.... there's something toxic everywhere around you. So what is that one toxic thing you want to get rid of?” This is the question raised by fellow blogger Amit Pattnaik at Indispire this week. Sectarianism is the most pernicious virus in India even today, I think.

If corruption was the hallmark of the Congress party, sectarianism is that of the BJP. Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of his state for 12 long years and now he has been the Prime Minister of the country for six years. 18 years of power. And what has he achieved? He still has to build tall and long walls to conceal the poverty and misery in his country as well as his state from a visiting foreign dignitary! [How dignified is that dignitary is a different question.] Obviously there’s something terribly wrong.

Sectarianism is that wrong.

Mr Modi has made India a much worse place than it ever was with his sectarian attitudes and vision. He wants to create a religious nation, a nation in which one particular religion has supremacy over others. For that he has played with the religious sentiments of 1.3 billion people. He continues to play with those sentiments. He will continue to do that until his vision is materialised or until he is evicted from his post, the latter of which isn’t anywhere near in sight. Millions of people have been hoodwinked by the pie in the sky that Mr Modi has been pointing at for a long time now. Those millions will hold him in his present position for years to come. India will continue to build walls, both literally and metaphorically.

We shall have a fair share of comic reliefs in between. Like some gargantuan statues whose feet alone can give shade to homeless wanderers. The Irish politician David Trimble spoke about a dark shadow that stretched across his country. He said it was the “shadow of the mountain behind – a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism.”

Religious sectarianism is the dark shadow that Mr Modi has gifted the nation. “We can leave it behind us if we wish,” as Trimble said again. If we don’t leave it behind, we are choosing degeneration and disintegration.

PS. Prompted by Indispire Edition 313: #ThrowAwayTheToxic

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