God, Please Don’t Come

A 24-year-old Malayalam song gained much attention in Kerala in the past weeks. It is a prayer to God not to come to certain places such as libraries, playgrounds, educational institutions, hospitals, farms, factories, courts of justice, corridors of political power, and a lot more. “Don’t you have enough places of worship to stay?” The song asks God. “We have given you our hearts too for residing. Yet why do you choose to come to the other places as a murderous rage?”

Many newspapers reported yesterday about the disappearance of the Preamble to India’s Constitution from the new NCERT textbooks. It is not surprising that the Modi government has chosen to remove the Preamble from schools and many other places. Modi was quite discontented with the word ‘secularist’ in the Preamble right from the time he worked in a non-existent tea stall in Vadnagar railway station. [Despite the fact that the word ‘secularist’ appeared in India’s Constitution for the first time when Modi was 26 years old and had mastered in “the entire political science.”]

Modi was all set to replace India’s Constitution with one prepared by his own men. To make India a Hindu Rashtra is Modi’s ultimate dream. Unfortunately, the last general elections didn’t endorse his dreams. But Modi never learns the essential lessons. In fact, people like him are too full of themselves can never learn the essential lessons. And so people like him drag God all over.

God is as personal an entity as our innerwear or toothbrush, says one of my favourite columnists in Malayalam. In fact, it is from him I learnt about the above song. Rammohan Paliyath, the writer, concludes his piece in Mathrubhumi with a longing to hear this song being sung as the prayer song in schools every morning. I listened to the song on Facebook and loved it. I share Mr Paliyath’s wish.

It is not more of God that the world today stands in need of; it is much less of. Look at the countries that are religious by Constitution. They are far more violent and savage than the others. From the time Mr Modi became the PM of India, we witnessed a lot of such savagery in the country. Should we now bring in the murderous rage called God too to our public places?