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Stan Swamy and some questions

 


A lot of people who question the government are arrested nowadays on serious charges that amount to treason or nearly that. The latest is the arrest of Stan Swamy who is a Catholic priest and social activist. Apparently his crime is that he is a Maoist who supported the Dalits in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case.

That is only the apparent reason, a reason manufactured by the government. What are the real reasons?

The first reason is that he is a Christian missionary. After Muslims, Christians are the biggest enemies of the Hindu Rashtra that Mr Modi & Co are trying to create in India. A lot of comments made in various social media by the IT cell of the ruling BJP are about conversions made by Christian missionaries in India including Stan Swamy. So let me take up this issue of religious conversion first.

What is wrong if anybody wants to convert from one religion into another? Why can’t I choose my religion? If I am not happy with the religion into which I was born without my choice, can’t I change it? Who can tell me not to? Should the majority decide what religion I should follow? Should the state do that?

Another popular argument from the right wing in India is that the poor people leave their religion just for some material benefits given by the missionaries. Let us accept that it is true for the sake of argument. If any person is willing to give up his original religion just for a “bag of rice”, how pathetic is the condition of that person? Moreover, it just shows that his original religion didn’t have as much value for him as a bag of rice! What is the use of such a religion? I pity if such a religion, which doesn’t even have the worth of a bag of rice, has to become the basis of a nation of 1.38 billion people including me. Just imagine a religion that doesn’t even have the value of a bag of rice!

And the plain truth is that poor people are not so much bothered about their gods as their basic needs like food and security. And dignity. If a particular religion provides them these vital things they may choose to follow that religion. Why can’t they? Why shouldn’t they? I have never heard any right-wing fighter in India giving a satisfactory answer to that question.

National pride and such abstract ideals make no sense to the starving person. Gods don’t make sense to the girl who gets raped in the name of those gods who created a caste system and gave too many rights to the upper caste people including the right to rape the low caste girls and children before killing them brutally.

India is a country in which the religion of the majority seems to take the side of rapists and killers. Just see the support – popular as well as judicial – received by rapists and murderers in many North Indian states in the past few years. If the poor people get fed up of this system and decide to leave that religion of blatant exploitation and injustice and violence and brutality, who can blame them?

I don’t know whether Stan Swamy was converting the Dalits into his religion. There is no evidence for that anyway. But evidence doesn’t matter in Modi’s India. Evidence is manufactured. Truths are fabricated. History is rewritten. Goodness is vilified and monsters are glorified. Statistics are generated in prehistoric labs that boast of the glory of some civilisation that supposedly existed millennia ago somewhere in some buried archives.

In this new Rashtra, you can commit crimes with impunity if you are an upper caste person and has enough influence over the powerful people. You can rape, kill, plunder, lynch, do whatever you want, and get away. But you can’t change your religion!

Why?

That’s the most fundamental question here now.

Religion in right-wing India serves a lot more functions than spiritual. Spirituality is not anyone’s concern really. Just a casual look at the lifestyle of our religious leaders like sadhus, yogis, godmen and the female counterparts of all these will be enough to convince anyone how disconnected spirituality is from their religion.  Their religion is not about spirituality, in short. What is it about then?

It is about control over people. Religion has been used as a political tool for centuries. India is doing precisely that now. It is a tool, the most potent one, to keep certain people in the margins and dumping lots. It’s not only Muslims and Christians who are to be kept down in the garbage bins of the nation. Even the low caste Hindus belong there. In other words, the whole effort is to make India a nation that belongs to some chosen people.

India is being sold to some chosen people by the present regime. Everything is being privatised. We know who are benefitting from these exercises. It is these beneficiaries who want people like Stan Swamy behind the bars because such people question the whole injustice of the system.

The ultimate question raised by the arrest of Stan Swamy and others like him is whose India is it?

PS. Last post which has a vital connection with this issue: A Disillusioned Hindu

This blog is participating in Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa campaign.

Comments

  1. The Moon's BOYFRIEND October 12, 2020 at 10:48 AM

    This has a true flow, l feel that you gave us a perfect model of writing.The questions look sound, I felt that really well because my innervoice went sharper while reading the questions and lower while reading the rest, I felt like an actor who reshapes his sound...,

    To be frank I hate to talk about politics, but I feel different when I read your blogs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 12, 2020 at 1:46 PM

      Glad that I could make you feel it. And you put it so elegantly: "felt that really well... felt like an actor who reshapes his sound..." The feelings matter more than all words.

      Delete
  2. UnknownOctober 12, 2020 at 4:54 PM

    Well said. Ifeel convertion is not the matter, but he speaks and act against the mine mafias. The poor tribel people are not having any documental support for their land possed by them fforyears now they simply evacated without any compensation. Years ago a settlment was reached that one male member fe rom each family will be given employment. Latter cases were filed against these young pepeople. It is reported that about 5000 young were jailed in few years. Fr. organised people to conduct cases, and to protest againsthese arrest, thus he became the Enemy of the Mine Mafia

    This arest is to make him silent and to weeken his health.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 12, 2020 at 4:59 PM

      Yes, it's not about religion and conversion. They're just red herrings. It's about grabbing tribal lands for the sake of the crony capitalists. Government is a mafia today donning the garb of religious people.

      Delete
  3. Aditi KapurOctober 18, 2020 at 5:01 PM

    Very powerful write-up I must say. Freedom is losing its meaning in new India and that's a matter of shame for all of us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 18, 2020 at 5:19 PM

      Indeed. It's we the people who can make the difference. But the majority don't seem to want any difference!

      Delete
  4. JudyOctober 18, 2020 at 11:48 PM

    I believe in secular India but unfortunately the present India is very far from being secular. It is sad what Stan Swamy has to face.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 19, 2020 at 7:27 AM

      Even the word secularism has become tainted in this country. Secularist is a wicked person now!

      Delete
  5. UnknownNovember 27, 2020 at 12:14 PM

    Problem does not happen when a person is induced into another religion by a bag of rice. Problem happens when members of abrahamic faiths say that theirs is the ONLY true faith and all other faiths are false. They even go a step further by denouncing the false faiths.
    Missionaries are involved in such filthy and blasphemous activities. Some missionaries even have the galls to say that Indic faiths are satanic.

    What steps have been taken by Jesuit organisations to check such blasphemous behaviour by their missionaries?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 29, 2020 at 6:51 PM

      Are you the Unknown who's made another comment above?

      Delete
  6. Bina SimonApril 9, 2021 at 12:02 PM

    Wonderful blog post. This is absolute magic from you! I have never seen a more wonderful post than this one. You've really made my day today with this. I hope you keep this up!
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