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

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

    ReplyDelete
  3. 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. 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. 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

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser