Skip to main content

Insanity of Religion

 

Catholics protesting Muslim protest (New Indian Express)

A century and a quarter ago, Swami Vivekananda described Kerala as a madhouse. The inhuman horrors perpetrated in the name of religious castes prompted the sage to use that analogy. The people of Kerala were openminded enough to listen to the verdict passed by a voice of sanity. Swami Vivekananda led Kerala to introspection and subsequent reformation. The brutalities of religion gave way to the humaneness of a new civilisation in Kerala.

It is this same Kerala that stands on the brink of a communal clash now because of a thoughtless statement made by a bishop. The Muslims took out a protest march to the Bishop’s House a day after the puerile statement was made by the bishop. The Muslim ire was understandable. No one will like to hear his entire community being labelled as terrorists and criminals because of a minority of such people in the community.

A day after the Muslim rally, the Catholics in the area took out a procession against the Muslims. There was even an order issued to the Catholics of Kottayam district to shun Muslim establishments like shops. How low has Kerala fallen!

Didn’t the bishop know that his statement would eventually lead to a conflagration in the state? He should have known. Otherwise he doesn’t deserve to be in that position. He knew. He is a scholarly person who knows this and a lot, lot more. Then why did he make such an utterance? Whose agenda is he promoting?

The only party that stands to gain by making the Christians and Muslims in Kerala fight each other is the BJP. Is the Catholic Church in Kerala playing into the hands of the BJP? If yes, for what?

There are many answers coming up from various sections of Kerala’s people. Kerala’s church is an abominably corrupt institution and it now faces the threat of being exposed by the dreamers of a Hindu Rashtra and hence it is of existential importance to keep the BJP in good humour. Then there are supplementary reasons galore. The Catholics in Kerala, like many Christians elsewhere, are jittery about the attacks on churches in some parts of the Muslim world by extremists. There is also a strong feeling in Kerala, not without reason, that a lot of the state’s beneficiary schemes favour the Muslims because of certain skewed policies which were made earlier by vote bank politics.

There are errors that need to be rectified, no doubt. But lighting a match near an ammunition heap is not a solution. And the bishop did just that. Maybe he stands to gain something from the BJP as knowledgeable people say. But he should have thought of the thousands of Keralites working in Muslim countries and sustaining the state’s economy. He should definitely have thought of the communal poison that his statement would sow in the soil of Kerala which for a long time now has been reputed for its communal harmony.

Let me conclude this with 15th-century poet Kabir’s lines:

What good is it if the scholar pores over words and point of this and that but his chest is not soaked dark with love?

What good is it if the ascetic clothes himself in saffron robes but is colourless within?

What good is it if you scrub your ethical behaviour till it shines, but there is no music inside?

Previous post: God’s Terrorists

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 13, 2021 at 6:51 PM

    Hari OM
    an excellent addition to yesterday's post... those in power are rare indeed if they are not corrupted by it to some degree - this includes in the religious sense as much as the political. Kabir's words are so apt. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 13, 2021 at 7:06 PM

      Thank you, Yamini. Sometimes you are the only consolation in this space...

      Delete
  2. parwatisingariSeptember 14, 2021 at 1:52 PM

    Tomichan you again bring it to the point. Yes BJP stands to gain. BJP is an association of traders. Their product one is "Hindutva" Product 2 Muslim bashing. So we do not know which product the Bishop bought. The Hadiya case was trying out the product2 which fell flat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 14, 2021 at 5:15 PM

      The bishop won't buy either Hindutva or Muslim-bashing. It's probably something else like saving the Church from raids.

      Delete

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

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more