The hackneyed title out of the way, let’s get down to business. Fairly, dirty business. The business of religion. None is worse.
7:00 am ish. One text message received. Pastors killed in Orissa and a bike used for transportation burned. Not exactly the best kind of information you want to wake up to but, since sharing is caring, the garden full of religious neophytes I have made acquaintance of in the last few years help me commence my day on such a striking note as this.
The text sender wants me to pray. I remember a rather poignant scene from an otherwise mediocre United States of Leland where the mother is desperately pleading to Gods as well as the prison authorities to let her have a brief communique with her murderer son. Niether relents. Prayers aren’t always useful. Empty prayers, rarely so. My prayerista of sorts(yes, I coined it right now in lieu of sufficient cafeine in my system) wants to ably employ this tragic news to kindle some kinship. I am not an easy sell but mindless destruction bothers me too.
Before I begin any spiritual tete-a-tete with the one Above, I feel a surge of anger.
I’m appalled. At the news, not as much at her. She is milking a tragedy. It doesn’t concern me. Brutal murders do. Not because its religious persecution. Religion was never really my cup of tea. My resentement and anger stems from the human degradation that seems to have wrapped the whole of Orissa is the last couple of days(months, possibly). Killing is not cool. That’s my 12 year old superbrat of a sister’s favorite adage. Its pretty simple. Its pretty powerful, too. The local government requires more than few raps on the knuckles. Its requires a whole lot of serious rattan styled whipping for letting things get this out of hand.
Why are people driven to such acts of extreme violence? I don’t entirely comprehend. Yet, I can’t help draw from own experience to extrapolate just a little. This culture of religious extremism. On both sides. And this can be offensive. Very, in fact. Politically incorrect and perhaps, a little inflammable too. If you sick up your collective lattes after reading it, don’t seek me for an apology. I won’t oblige. Just like I never have!
The sender of the text belongs to a new age, bible thumping variety of Christians I thought only existed in Texan trailers. Apparently not. They have managed to pervade our ecosystem too. The kind that would make Christ cringe at their despicable hypocrisy by raising nausea inducing godbags to the status of cult deities. Every religion has the same kind of extremists. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, yada, yada, yada. Hell, I have known of militant Buddhist monks. And thats an oxymoron, I figured. The question that begs to be asked is how do you restrict this suddenly rising percentage of fanatics? Especially in a culturally and communally homogeneous society such as ours. Bigotry has suddenly become the new black. People seem to have rediscovered the (im)potency of hiding behind cliques in order to feel a sense of belonging. It’s a always existed, this herd mentality, probably in the shadows though. Now, its suddenly made a strong comeback. Much like 70s fashion. Argh.
Returning to our text sender’s history. The lady was a wild child with as few inhibitions as the clothes that adorned her svelte frame when she painted the town crimson and more alluring shades of red. Then, a detour. She fell in love with a “bad Hindu boy” who admittedly was the biggest pockmark on the face of the male of any species. This sod left her with enough anguish and all permeating sense of dejection. I don’t know if his “badness” came from being a Hindu or just being a Delhite. If I had to blame it on anything, I probably think being born and raised in Gurgaon had something to do with it. Next came a fairly attractive(by her own account), genial sort of boy and she stared to fall in love again. Good for her, we thought. Not exactly. The gentleman soldier couldn’t possibly get together with a divorcee. Yes, she’s been divorced. The easiest way to describe her first marriage is a to compare it to a longish, forced stay in a Turkish brothel. To cut short the complication, after a rather disatrous turn with three consecutive relationships, she turned to *God* for sustenance and that eternally misplaced emotion – Love.
This particular kind of homophobic, Hindu hating, extremely vindictive *God*(who rejoiced frying people in oil for their “sins”) turned her into to a chest-beating-verse-quoting -anti-Harry Potter and Lord Ganesha photos, type of zealot. Its a different kind of rabidity. Politely spoken odium. She went from being the life of the party to staunchly anti-partying in a matter of days. Not a bad thing, you’d say. It takes a different shade when you have a pipsqueak stop you in the way and reprimand you for attending a birthday celebration for your kith and kin. Anti-God. All celebration is. Her new skin was as uncomfortable for her as for those around her but no one would utter a peep. She was a friend, after all. A long suffering friend. Perhaps, a religious bent would help liberate her? Yes, one does tend to believe in utter garbage at times, with or without being under influence. What commenced, thereon, was a phase of liberal amounts of venom spewing against everybody else’s faith with the steady proclamation of superiority for her own. A constant derision of the Hindu pantheon and the Buddhist ideology. For my benefit and that of a rather close compadre of mine. This is where the junta must be divided. As a Hindu kid raised in North America and subsequently in India, I have been taught tolerance. The only blasphemy is unrequired preaching, my mum would say. This is not just me but a whole bunch of my friends too, raised in a similar enviornment. Today am hardly concerned with religion – in a 20 hour workday, Excel is my new and fairly demanding God - yet I lacked the patience to continually grin-and-bear with her ornery BS, day in and day out. The matter was escalated to our management team because there are only so many unwanted articles from Bible.com that your mailbox can handle in the 8 hours that you are expected to apply productively at work. Of course, we were asked to be more tolerant. Not her. We. This little incident, eerily enough, seemed like a home made replica of what goes on about in this nation quite frequently.
I’m tired of everybody espousing a million-quotes-per-minute about militant Hinduism in India, whether its those inconsequential screamers going hoarse about the burning of the Valley, sorrow inducing as that is, and blaming “Indians Hindus” for its current state of ruin or the Born Again community in my vicinity that insisted on my mother “repenting for her sins” when she legally separated from her husband. As a Hindu in India, I am expected to acknowledge, empathize, hell, heavily commiserate when a particular ethnic “minority”(really now!) is under attack but I have to stiff upper-lip it when I am told, quite frequently, that my little Buddha or Shiva idols are demonic or that I have earned myself a one way ticked to a boiling cauldron in a particularly egregious version of hell because I refuse to convert myself.
I’m trying not to cross the line here but you are nudging me a little too hard. There is only so much protection that education and a progressive upbringing can provide. I believe that faith is exactly that. A value system, a belief in something or someone and it doesn’t allow you to look down upon or demean someone else’s value system or beliefs. My faith allows me to observe the holy month of Ramadan because a close associate at work is doing so and I want to support her through it. And I relish the spiritual aspect of the fast too. This friend stopped fasting in a day but I haven’t. My faith also lets me buy mini Virgin Marys for my friends when I buy Shivlings for myself. But do I really have to get into this pitiful spiel to further my point? I shouldn’t have to. My faith extends far and beyond idolatory and vendetta. For most part I am an atheist with borderline Buddhism thrown in for good measure. Yes, I condemn violence against any community. Yes, I am mad as hell because a bunch of ignorant hoodlums thought it necessary to burn people alive to make a point. Anyone in their sane mind would be angry. But, are you equally filled with wrath when they rape teenaged girls and pillage the homes of Kashmiri pundits? I know its not a trade so we shouldn’t barter, yet, is it fair for this one-sided exchange to continue forever?
Its a human thing, not a religion thing. I choose not to disrespect or denigrate, not out of fear, simply because I respect the divinity within me and others around me. Om Namah Shivay.
Its not that difficult a job.
