Skip to main content

The Enemies of Religion

 


The enemies of religion are not non-believers; on the contrary, it is the believers themselves.

Any social organisation or institution is destined to degenerate and even perish eventually when its foundations shift towards hatred of certain people. Religions are social institutions. When their leaders begin to preach hatred, they are sowing the seeds of degeneration within their own institutions. Initially it may appear that they are gaining power over people of other religions by making them appear as enemies. In the long run, however, hatred won’t achieve anything good.

If you are observing what is happening in the social media these days, it must have become clear to you by now that certain believers of every major religion in India (in many other countries too) are spewing poison against believers of other religions. Hindus, Muslims and Christians – all are doing it. These people are the real enemies of their own respective religions. They are killing the very spirit of their own religions. Neither Rama and Krishna nor the Prophet and Jesus will ever approve of what many of their worshippers are doing in their names these days. 

The Catholic Church provides us with a historical example. It became a monstrous religion in the medieval period in Europe killing all perceived enemies more brutally than any diabolic dictator ever did in history. The Church appeared to be victorious for quite some time. But the inevitable collapse happened. A movement that came to be known as Enlightenment swept the Church away like malingering filth. Science and scientific temper flourished in Europe. Today the churches in the West are quite empty.

The present Pope has been relentlessly seeking ways to make the Church meaningful to today’s people living in a world that is poisoned with hatred, particularly hatred spread by religious people. Many ‘believers’ don’t like him for this. He said recently during his Slovakia visit that there are people who desire his death. He appeared to make the remark rather frivolously. But he was not being frivolous. It is Christians themselves who want the Pope dead – ultra-conservative Christians who don’t like the Pope’s progressive views. It is such believers who are the real enemies of their own religion.

These conservatives don’t like the Pope for teaching things like: Christianity is not the only true religion, “It’s better to be an atheist than a hypocritical Catholic,” “God is not a Catholic,” “The poor are the real body of Christ,” and so on. He opposes religious conversions. His God loves homosexuals and LGBTs. In short, he is an enlightened human being. And religions have seldom accepted enlightened teachers.

Religions love hate-mongers. Look at the popular leaders in India today, for example. Listen to their utterances whether they call themselves yogis or swamis or Pracharaks. Or bishops or cardinals. Or maulvis or mullahs.  

The really religious people are helpless in today’s India. Some of them perish in prisons like Stan Swamy. Even his Church did not lift a finger to save him. And you know why. If you don’t, you need to check the meaning of your religion for you.

Comments

  1. Hari Om
    True, every word... so very sad, but very true... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. There'sn't a single word in this article which I can disapprove or disagree to. The really religious people are indeed helpless in today’s India. That's only make me wonder whether the human-beings really need religions at all. This article of yours only make me recall that even the Church didn't do anything to save the life of Father Stan Swamy. Those controlling the strings of power in India have converted the countrymen into two kinds of crowds - 1. The crowd of Bhakts, 2. The crowd of cowards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. American philosopher Barrows Dunham wrote in his book 'Man against myth' that "truth has been suffered to exist in the world just to the extent that it profited the rulers of society." We see how true this is in today's India - particularly the way history is being rewritten to suit the new regime. Religion is just a handmaid of the rulers now as it always was. So your question is very valid: is religion needed at all? But for people like you and me only the question arises. For the others, what religion is doing is the right thing: be a handmaid to political power.

      The Church in India today is a very corrupt institution. There are too many crimes that it has to hide. It requires the support of the political system for that. That's why it won't ever go against the political system. It has to bend down, way too down!


      Delete
  3. Agree with you. Religion is supposed to spread love not hate. Sadly, religion has been used as a medium to propagate hatred through the ages. Its nature (blind faith) itself makes it easy to use.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There was a time when I used to wonder why people are so foolish. Now I know it's no use asking such questions. I've learnt to accept the stupidity and venality of human nature. I write for self-consolation.

      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

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...

Are You Sane?

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...

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...

To an Old Friend

Image by Copilot Designer Dear S, I don’t know if you’d even remember me after all these decades, but I find myself writing to you as if it were only yesterday that we parted ways. You were one of the few friends I had at school. You may be amused to know that a drawing of yours that you gifted me stayed with me until I left Kerala after school. Half a century later, I still remember that beautiful pencil drawing, the picture of a vallam (Kerala’s canoe) resting on a shore beneath a coconut tree that slanted over a serene river on whose other bank was an undulating hilly landscape. A few birds flew happily in the sky. Though it was all done in pencil, absolutely black and white, my memories of it carry countless colours. I wonder where you are now. A few years later, when I returned to Kerala on holiday, I did visit your village to enquire about you. But the village had changed much and your hut on the hill wasn’t seen anymore. Maybe, you moved on. Maybe, you took up your father’s...