Reading about secessionists separatists everyday in news papers and magazines and discussing about them in different platforms is not a very happy endeavor. I am sad, I am unhappy.. I feel helpless, with the paradoxical presence of multiculturalism and intolerance presence in my society, my country. My fellow countrymen, due to innumerable reasons suffer everyday, due to aggression, artificial unrest created by those who never want people to coexist those who want to capture power at any cost, even at the cost of their fellow men or their own people.
Since the very beginning , from time immemorial, according to different researches, Indian subcontinent has witnessed a blend of cultures, not just like a salad but also somewhat like a melting pot. Different cultures and religions have been preserving their identities as well as mingling with each other time and again , creating even more vibrant cultures not known to any other country in the world. There are debates and discussions , researches and studies on who are endogenous and who are exogenous to a territory. Why? Just to claim superiority? or to capture power? what?? why?? what is the need? Why can't those, who have this much strength to hamper the peaceful existence of people, put in efforts to maintain harmony amongst people. Why there seems no way of creating a tolerant society.
The role played by religion in Indian society or for that matter in the world, questions the very birth of religion. Religion was supposed to be there to regulate and discipline the lives of people and of common man. Since the purpose of human beings being born is unknown even till now, there was a need of a force and a strength to regulate man's life for healthy and productive co-existence of humanity. But what religion is doing today...?? Is it playing the role of a regulator? and guide? providing vision to man? No. it largely is not. Rather, religion offers a form of identity to man, which he is emotively attached to. He is trained by the process of socialization to fight for and to be violent to protect the honor and status of religion.
Men are fighting amongst each other to prove the superiority of their religion. Same religion has different interpretations of its teachings in different boundaries of territories, different preachings, different rituals, different norms and values. Who defines anyone as the custodian of any religion. Man is born as secular, with no religion, no identity....His birth attaches an identity which is multiplied manifold due to the process of socialization. Family decides, what a person understands about religion, how he is going to look at society and others and other religions and societies.
My heart cries at the condition of my society and my country and my countrymen and fellow human beings everywhere. When God has made us humans and gave us brains to develop and grow and live happily by using our brains our ability to think and our creativity, what we end up doing is fighting on petty issues? creating issues of nothing and making them futile grievances? Making issues for even the not yet born generations to ensure their involvement in violence, hatred, tensions and an unnatural society and unnatural world, which is not worth living in. Why do we not use our creativity in collective well being ...by making best use of the limited resources? Why do we not teach our children to be happy and make others happy? Why do we teach our young ones to stick to our identities rigidity and striving hard to sustain them.
I believe tolerance is not as such a big deal, but due to the magnitude of our country and the extent of diversity in it has made it nearly impossible for people to co exist and tendencies like separate territory and autonomy for people associated to the same culture and religion and like expressing superiority of one religion or cult over the other have become indispensable.
Education, knowledge awareness, understanding is imperative in making people realize the materialistic nature of religion as is being perceived today and what exactly it should be, a driving force to just govern and discipline people from becoming inhuman. But what comes in way of imparting this awareness, this knowledge is the religion again. Dare anyone teach or tell anyone that religion should not be taken so intensely that it is, the person will be torn into bits and pieces. So the cause itself comes in the way of solutions of the problem, making it a self recurring problem.
Our constitution aims at making India a secular state, but it forgot that like religious texts have been interpreted and re interpreted and even misinterpreted, so will it be. Now the conflict between Western interpretation of secularism vs Indian interpretation of secularism. France is being criticised of not allowing people to follow their religion freely, but does religion anywhere distinguishes between public and private lives of people? It is the duty of state to so that. If religion entering in the public sphere is acting like a menace, then its the duty of the state to ensure that it distinguishes between the two and directs its subjects to practice religion peacefully in private life and let public life be free of religion and make it secular- that is equal respect for all than an unending contest of proving the superiority of one religion over the other.
Directive Principles of state Policy direct the Government to facilitate people to practice their religion freely, and the philosophy of the state guides it to be equal to all religions. There is no provision of solving the dialectics between the two. And no minority is minority in the exponentially growing population in India today and any policy affecting any religion positively or negatively has a huge protest from the same community or the others. There seems to be no end to this dialectic and the pitiful condition of communal disputes in my country .This dispute which is not restricted to the territory in the era of globalization, it affects people across te borders of a country .
