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

Comments

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

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...

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...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault. For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy. Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves? Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian. In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically. Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification. In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog