“एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति |(Ekam sadvipraa bahudhaa vadanti)” – Rg Veda, Mandala 1, Sukta 164, Rk 46
“The Existent is One, but the sages express it variously”
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not bow down to them or worship them, for I the Lord your God, am a jealous God” – The Holy Bible, Book of Deuteronomy 5:6
“Lâ Ilâha Illallâh, Muḥammadur Rasûlullâh” – ‘as-Shahada’ – Muslim Declaration of Belief
“There is no god but God (Allah) and Mohammed is His Messenger”
These are the interpretations of the world’s three largest schools of thought, of the existence of the ‘One‘, whom each of them calls by a different name(s). Through canons of doctrines called ‘scriptures’, they talk of His omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience and tirelessly sing praises in His glory. Nine in ten people of the world happen to believe in Him and adhere to one of hundreds of precepts like the ones above. They all think of Him as the ultimate and the only truth and call Him GOD. These schools of thought are what the world calls Religions. And these Religions, apart from describing and defining an abstract idea of a supreme power/being that is beyond the comprehension of the extremely limited human faculties of perception, also speak volumes, quite literally, on norms and rules of human conduct. These norms and rules, they claim, discipline human life and give purpose and meaning to it. Thus, Religions have transformed from being schools of thought into systems of belief, each claiming to be brightening the right path to the ultimate truth.
OM
After writing that heady, philosophical kickoff, a question lingered at the back of my mind – Do we really need to instill a fear of some supremely incomprehensible super-human power/being in order to establish discipline and make our lives more meaningful? Far from finding an answer, I stumbled upon a slew of more unanswerable questions. In medieval Europe, so much as a thought leading to such questions would have committed me to the stake and placed me on Hell’s menu as an exotic ‘Heretic’ or an ‘Apostate’ or an ‘Infidel’ from the East! But, thankfully, in a more tolerant modern world of today, I’d only be judged as an ‘Atheist’ or a ‘Non-believer’ or perhaps an ‘Agnostic’ for being confused. But, I hate being typecast and thrown into such categories. Let me assure you that I am none of the above, nor am I a blind believer leaving no scope for an argumentative, skeptical view-point. Expressing skepticism and argumentativeness over established religious dogmas has claimed the lives of many a great thinker in the past. Even today, although such extreme punitive measures are rare or non-existent, such thoughts and acts are still not encouraged. But at least, we are at liberty to explore these aspects of questioning and learning and thus nurturing that fundamental human urge to know. I think inquiry and skepticism are the two keys to all knowledge.
Since the dawn of civilization, Religion, despite all the rationales behind its establishment, has divided the human society and stratified it more than unite. Ironically, it served as the reason for humans losing touch with humanity and humaneness. The thought of one’s beliefs being superior to others’ has spawned conflicts and history bears witness to their terrible outcomes. Kingdoms, empires and nations have risen and fallen to the whims of faith and altered the course of human history several times. Religion has wrought havoc on earth by breeding radical, intolerant, fundamentalist ideologies. People have slaughtered one another in the name of the one supreme being, who, ironically, dictates that killing another human being is tantamount to sacrilege and is punishable with eternal damnation in the fires of Hell or being born as a parasite in the next life or some other penalty, as the ‘faith’ may be! Do we have to brainwash a person with these ‘consequences’ in order to enlighten him to the fact that killing is wrong and immoral? Do we really need that fear of the divine to scare us from wrongdoing? Don’t we, as humans, possess that faculty to judge right from wrong without the intervention of divinity? Can we not be humane without squeezing in something or someone from outside the known universe into the equation of human existence?
Crucifix
Another aspect where religion amazes me to no end, is in its claims on creation and sustenance and their absolute disconnect from reality. Religion fails to provide any amount of credible evidence to substantiate its claims and any attempt to question this failure is regarded as arrogance and in many cases, a sin. We are expected to believe everything without dispute or reason. Therefore, Religion meets its nemesis in Science, which is blind to and skeptical of anything that cannot be proved. Science today, is taking quantum leaps into the future, what with the radical change in the way people think and perceive. This is the age of reason. In this age, should we still believe that the Universe was made in six days by a long bearded man seated on a colossal throne surrounded by extremely good-looking men and women with wings, and that they all rested on the seventh day OR that a four-headed, four-armed man born on a flower sprouting from the navel of another four-armed, dark-skinned man reclining on an enormous thousand-hooded snake, created the Universe? Meaning no offense to people of any faith – Hell No! These are wonderfully imaginative narratives, rife with people, magic, strange beings and creatures, but not textbooks on Astronomy! They are a testament to the prowess of human imagination, but not evidence of reality. These tales certainly cannot replace ‘The Big Bang Theory’ or ‘Theory of Evolution’ in schools. Finally, I think it’s high time some faith-based groups stopped propagating that humans and dinosaurs had a live-in relationship just 6000 years ago! For the last time, ‘Flintstones’ is not a documentary and ‘Jurassic Park’ never happened!
as-Shahada
As a child, I grew up amidst orthodoxy and a staunch belief in the supremacy of rituals. A consequence of this is the ritually invested three-pronged white thread, the yagnyopavitam, that hangs from my left shoulder and runs across my chest to come a full circle. For long, I blindly believed in everything I was taught and accepted it without question. Mind you, I was always ‘taught’, never ‘brainwashed’. My family gave me the liberty to frame my own opinion and accept belief the way I saw fit. But it took me an awfully long time to become aware of the freedom I was given. So, religion, ritual and God played a very important role and had a very special place in my life. They governed the way I thought, the way I perceived the world around me. I measured everything in life with a theological yardstick. I led a life of absolute subservience to the divine power, which bordered on sycophancy. Today, for an absolutely unknown reason, I think I am undergoing a phase of transformation by questioning the very fundamentals of faith and the rigidity of enforcement of its doctrines. This is not to mean that I’m rejecting them altogether, but I’m only exploring a new perspective on faith. I once ‘believed’, and now, I want to know what exactly it is that I believed in and whether it was worth believing. Words like renunciation or apostasy are too harsh to describe the state of my belief right now. Whether or not I will ever be able to get to the bottom of this quest and face the ‘truth’, is something I really don’t know. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to know if I’ll ever get to the bottom of it. I’m content with the way I think and investigate into the truth, or the lack of it. As I think and ponder, the off-white three-pronged thread serves one of its many noble purposes – as a great back-scratching tool! While I think….and think….and think!
