Skip to main content

Religious Tourism?

 


Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the first phase of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in Varanasi recently. A whopping Rs 900 crore was spent on the corridor which connects the classical temple with the Ganga river. The project is expected to promote religious tourism.

I have never been able to come to terms with the view of Modi and his party that religion should play a major role in the running of a nation. My view, for whatever it is worth, is that religion should have nothing to do with politics. Religion is a matter of the soul and it should remain there: with the individual souls. There can be temples and other places that may help people to stay in touch with their souls. But what is a Prime Minister of a country doing in a temple doing what a pujari should be doing?

For centuries now, eminent thinkers have questioned the validity of religion particularly in public life. Too many philosophers and writers have told us in no uncertain terms that a thinking person could be happy and moral without God or gods even in personal lives. But at the same time many of them – right from Cicero – also worried about what the average person would do and feel without religion.

If you have the ability to think clearly and properly, you won’t need religion. That’s what most of these great thinkers say. But some clear thinkers have accepted religion for the sake of going with the herd. If I am not mistaken, it was Dag Hammarskjold who said that it was “loyalty to the tribe” that took him to church on Sundays. Hammarskjold would not need religion for being ‘good’. He had an excellent brain to tell him why it was his duty to be ‘good.’ But for those who lacked such brains, he recommended religions which, in his words, should be “the guardians of the deepest beliefs and the loftiest dreams of man.” In simple words, religions should give human values and ideals and aspirations to people.

Values, ideals and aspirations. Not Kashi Viswanath corridors. Not statues of gods. Not temples and pilgrimage centres. Not the least, religious tourism.

In a country like India which is sliding rapidly down on all indices that matter – economy, GDP, public health and hygiene, education, employment, security – religious tourism is like a palliative drug given to people who are looking for basic things like food and shelter. What do shanti mantras mean for a starving man?



PS. This post is provoked by Indispire Edition 400: Should religious tourism be promoted anymore? #ReligiousTourism

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanDecember 22, 2021 at 9:40 PM

    Hari OM
    'My view, for whatever it is worth, is that religion should have nothing to do with politics. Religion is a matter of the soul and it should remain there: with the individual souls.'
    Hear! Hear! Absolutely everyone is equal to their own choice - but to press that choice upon others, particularly at national level, goes beyond the bounds... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2021 at 9:52 PM

      But the nation is pressing its views on me and a lot many others!

      Delete
  2. magiceyeDecember 23, 2021 at 6:18 AM

    Reminded me of what Khushwant SIngh had written... Religion like sex should be practiced in one's privacy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरDecember 23, 2021 at 2:42 PM

    Tourism is nothing but business and religious tourism is nothing but using religion for business. As far as the Indian premier is concerned, his business is power-linked politics only and he is (and has been) using religion for this business (of his) only. Mankind does not need any religion at all. Still people can practice religions as per their choice and faith but nobody should impose it on others or allow it to interfere with the mundane affairs. Common public interest should unarguably be separate from religion(s). Humanitarian values are above all religions, religious beliefs, religious books, religious symbols and religious persons (of real or imaginary nature).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 23, 2021 at 3:32 PM

      Yeah, religious tourism sounds like an oxymoron. It should be pilgrimage. But then we have a leader for whom even gods are meant to be monetized.

      Delete
  4. Dipak jadhavDecember 23, 2021 at 4:35 PM

    Agreed with your thoughts on this blog!! There is a tourism and there is a business and i loved to see both as a different perspectives and never wanna combine these what political parties now a days doing.
    How to Get Free Diamonds in Free Fire

    ReplyDelete

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
47 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...
10 comments
Read more

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...
16 comments
Read more

Sex and Sin

Disclaimer: This is not a book review The first discovery made by Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God was sex. Sex is sin in Christianity except when the union takes place with the sole intention of procreation like a farmer sowing the seed. Saint Augustine said, Adam and Eve would have procreated by a calm, rational act of the will if they had continued to live in the Garden of Eden. The Catholic Church wants sex to be a rational act for it not to be a sin. The body and its passions are evil. The soul is holy and belongs to God. One of the most poignant novels I’ve read about the body-soul conflict in Catholicism is Sarah Joseph’s Othappu . Originally written in Malayalam, it was translated into English with the same Malayalam title. The word ‘othappu’ doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English. Approximately, it means ‘scandal’ as in the Biblical verse: “ If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around t...
12 comments
Read more