 |
| No conversion, only posing |
The New Year witnessed some attacks
on Christian churches in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district. Religious
conversion is said to be the reason. I came to know from a personal source that
the problem started as a family feud and burgeoned into communal violence. Many
such attacks on religious places happened in the past in India and many more
will take place in future too. Because religion in this country is not about
spirituality but about power and manipulations.
The most
fundamental question that arises is whether we need religion at all. The answer is quite obvious.
Very obvious to those who think clearly. If it is the spiritual meaning of life
that you are seeking, religion may help but it is not the best means. Your
personal enquiries and spiritual exercises will help you much better.
Spirituality is a personal affair in the first place. Unless it touches your
heart, it is not spirituality at all. Religion and its institutions may help
you in the process of discovering and refining your heart. But the effort is
all yours, absolutely personal. The hard truth is you don’t any institution for
that. You need the will to do it. You need the courage to face your heart. The
courage to face the god that resides in your heart. And the demons as well – more than the god,
in fact.
Secondly, is one religion better than
another for your spiritual journey? I believe religion should be a
purely personal choice. Though people often say that every religion teaches
more or less the same things (to cultivate virtues and shun evil), I think
religions have fundamental differences. The Semitic religions, for example, are
quite different from most oriental religions like Hinduism in their theology,
rituals and outlooks. It is possible that one Kamala Das finds Islam
more spiritually satisfying than Hinduism and hence becomes Kamala Surayya.
[Whether Islam made her any happier is a question worth probing. But this post
is not about her.] A Javed
Akhtar may be disillusioned with the same Islam and become an atheist. Religion
should be a personal choice. Why should anyone, including the government (especially
the government), interfere with people’s relationships with their gods?
Ideally,
Caesar and God should remain separate, as Jesus
implied. They have nothing to do with each other except that both survive
on taxes extracted from people. In practice, however, governments are forced to
put some reins on religions because the latter are seldom about spirituality.
If we check the material
assets of certain religious institutions, we will be shocked to discover
that some of them can give Mukesh Ambani or Gautam Adani a run for their money.
Mata Amritanandamayi’s assets, for example, are estimated to be 19
billion rupees. Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have 15 billion rupees
each. There are Christian congregations with similar material assets in India.
Where there is money, there will be government’s presence too. Gods are not
beyond taxes. Jesus was not totally right.
Government
interference is not about taxes alone, however. Where there is so much wealth
at play, there will be all sorts of manipulations. This is where conversions become controversies. Most
religious conversions are not about spirituality at all. Look at the kind of
people who get converted. They are the people living on the margins of
societies. The poor and the downtrodden. The social outcasts. People unwanted
even by government’s welfare schemes. Governments are not even aware of their
existence, in fact. Such people are easy prey for religious gurus. God is their
daily bread. Give them a bag of rice and they sell their gods. Who do you blame
now? The government could give them more than that bag of rice, couldn’t it? And save their gods! But the government will
do no such thing. For the government, the poor are just fodder for electoral
politics. The government knows that missionaries of all sorts will cast their
nets for trapping the poor. And the poor like to be caught in those nets too
because they get their rice bags or whatever. And then the government can make
that an issue for getting more votes from one particular religious community.
This is what religious conversion is all about in India. Quite a silly but
cruel game.
PS. Written for Indispire Edition 433: Who's afraid of religious conversion? #ReligiousConversion
It's really difficult for people to convert to the religion of truth. Hence, the problem of conversion.
ReplyDeleteSpirituality is absolutely personal. One should be daring to face both the God and the demon inside or within oneself. True yet very challenging.
Religions should start doing their job seriously. There's a joke about a man who stood on his balcony blessing all passers-by. On being questioned he said, 'Since the bishop is in my bedroom doing what I should be doing, here I am doing what he should be doing.' Today religion is doing anything other than what it should be.
DeleteWell said!
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteWell said, sir! Making one's own way to a particular faith structure or philosophy is one thing, being actively 'hunted' and 'flipped' is quite another. Every religion, at its highest knowledge base, does teach essentially the same thing. The problems arise when those who hold the knowledge also seek to convert that into power and filter it down throught doctrine - the dos and dont's of practice, the punishiments and shames lain upon one for failing to follow the instruction; and in this each religion may differ - yet are also the same. And most certainly, as political as religion can become, it ought to keep itself out of Politics! YAM xx
If religions actually do what they should be doing, the world be a Paradise.
Delete