In one of his last interactions, the recently deceased peace activist Swami Agnivesh told his friend and ally, the controversial former principal of St Stephens’ College of Delhi University, Valson Thampu, that he thought “religion has become a pestilence, it needs to be eradicated for the sake of humanity.” From Agnivesh, who wore ochre robes, took blows for pledging multifaith pluralism, this was telling, almost tragic, commentary.
The happenings in France once more signal the Sisyphean condition of organised religion. Sure, many social, religious groups, including Islamic ones, and some governments, have condemned them. Still, it makes one ponder about the individual’s relationship with God. How do middle-of-the-road moderate believers treat acts of extreme violence while staying true to the spirit of their faiths? Is their centuries-old religion so brittle that it can be undone with a cartoon there, or an interfaith marriage, here?
As a non-believer, maybe it isn’t my place to be speaking about this. But my ethos won’t let me be. There isn’t a second in the life of Indian society, when there is any respite from religiosity. My rights get trampled upon all the time. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Bombay, and I still recall the knocks on the door to my family’s tenement-like flat for the Ganesh Chaturti collection. The local Shiv Sena shakha ran it; the request felt like a threat. Even my religious family – where some youngsters turned irreligious – wasn’t amused. We caved since we wanted to be part of the wider community. It was not uncommon to find the Shiv Sainiks tipsy every other evening of the festival. Members of the borough thought their money was guzzled. Sometimes, I wished my family would refuse to pay up. It would have cast them out, I would have lost friends. Teenagers may have the brio to rebel against their parents, but against the groupthink of God-fearing friends? Little chance. Some of these Sainiks played no small role in razing the UP Muslim-run barbershop across our flats in 1992-3. Avowed Hindu moderates of my locality gaped on.
It may have happened in France, but there have been non-violent provocations against many other religions in different parts of the world. No matter how offensive the trigger may have been, organised religion – of all systems – cannot be enabling bloodletting and should not be perceived doing it either. It’s the most ineffable aspect in the history of the major religions: that force has been used to crush a God’s castigating, lampooning, or caricaturing by somebody. And yet, with such a red record, masses of the world’s population retain belief in some god. Some may argue, that’s the reason why religion reinforces its hold on the human psyche. Even while one may think it implodes, it actually grows; it’s the ultimate identity giver and the most personalised government for the commoner.
No matter how many religious associations condemn violence claiming it isn’t part of their faith, it sounds untrue. Dig into the past of many of the major religions in the world, and you will find grisly things done in the name of God.
Religious people and groups who condemn religious violence often like to state that one shouldn’t tar a whole faith due to the acts of some. They say, in their faith – or in the version they follow – there is no sanction for murder, even under the worst circumstances. They often summon their individualised association with their religion to glorify their pacific practices. Religious extremism as “it’s not something that we do or condone at all – we are not like that.”
Essentially, they attempt to restore the public image of the faith, knowing evil has been done. Indeed, even non-political religious people, like moderates of each faith, are driven to talk about how peaceable their mores are. When the moderates of a religion worm their way out to defend and redeem their religion when acts of radical violence take place under its name, you know that the extremists have beaten them. The malaise of the religious moderates is that when things get bad, they must defend their faith, and when they often quietly work for peace, they get limited credit.
In the fingertip Internet age, many of the world’s major faiths are flattening out their variances and homogenising as never before. Along with it, some other things may go. One of them will be the private relationship between the individual and their God, which is a common attribute among religious moderates. One could say spirituality is a private matter, but now, what about religion? Can religious people claim their religiosity is a private matter when their faith is used for violence, and commerce? With the spirals of strife that obtain in the world, the faithful peacenik, the committed moderate, looks likely to be a relic.
(The Jindal Global University academic believes we are living through the apocalypse)