Skip to main content

When symbols replace values

Symbols

“Are you a good Muslim?” A student asked Ziauddin Sardar.

Ziauddin Sardar is a writer born in Pakistan and living in England. He is a multi-faceted personality who has made a mark as a scholar, cultural critic, and an intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought. [Now don’t ask me whether Muslims think. Some of them do, I assure you.]

The above question was hurled at Sardar when he visited a madrasa in Pakistan in 1985. Let me quote a part of that conversation from his book Desperately Seeking Paradise. [The quotes are not verbatim.]

Student: Are you a good Muslim?

Sardar: I am a Muslim. Good or not, I don’t know.

Student: If you are a Muslim, why don’t you grow your beard?

Sardar: A beard is not a necessary mark of a Muslim.

Student: The beard is an essential part of the Prophet’s Sunnah. Those who disregard the Sunnah are not good Muslims.

Sardar: Do you use a camel for your travels? Do you ride on a camel’s back?

Student: What do you mean?

Sardar: The camel is Sunnah because the Prophet used the camel for his travels.

Student: But we have cars and buses today. Why would I use a camel?

Sardar: Exactly. If there was a safety razor in those days, the Prophet would have shaved off his face hair too.

All gods and their scriptures belong to specific periods of history. What the Prophet said and did in his time is no more valid today than what Jesus or Krishna or the Buddha said and did in their times. The time has changed. The old gods and their prophets have become outdated. No scripture can ever be eternally valid. No religion can make sense to intelligent people unless it adapts itself to the changing times. Most parts of the Bible and the Koran and the Upanishads or the Gita or any scripture will be rubbished today by any thinking brain.

If those ancient and outdated and absurd scriptures continue to rule us today, it is because we haven’t learnt to think. We are still idiots. We are governed by idiots who love riots and wars. Idiots who wear fancy dresses. Idiots who want to capture nuclear stations. Some idiots have teashops to boast about. Some have Rasputin. Most have a god, one god, their own god, their own ego.

Egos of certain individuals replace the essential teachings of religions. That is how a religion dies. The hijab is a symbol. The saffron is a symbol. It is very easy to make people fight in the name of symbols. Idiotic leaders do just that: make people fight in the name of symbols.

Tail question: Why doesn’t the world ever go beyond stupid leaders?

Answer: No leader can be greater than their people.

Comments

  1. Pandian RamaiahFebruary 26, 2022 at 7:56 AM

    Religions are weapons. It achieve different things when different people handles it. Gandhi used to infuse a sanctify any tasks he was doing/he wanted others to practice. The same tool is being used now to deviate people from real time issues by relevant parties.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 26, 2022 at 8:45 AM

      This post was written in some frustration and so there are exaggerations. Gandhi was a great leader who towered above the masses. But there are so few leaders like him in the entire human history.

      Delete
  2. Prasanna RaghavanFebruary 26, 2022 at 11:56 AM

    Where the population doesn't evolve in thinking, past rules them and leaders become their Gods.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 26, 2022 at 2:10 PM

      True. We make tremendous progress in science and technology, but not one step ahead in evolved thinking!

      Delete
  3. Pooja MahimkarFebruary 26, 2022 at 8:53 PM

    I think having an open mind and access to good education is key when it comes to changing the inert way we think and perceive things

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 26, 2022 at 9:09 PM

      The problem with education is that the educators themselves may be perverse and bigoted!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

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...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more