Religion has a core value which is thought to raise the moral level of human being. It is supposed to teach to live in harmony with society and nature, to work towards the common good. The sacred scripture of all the major religion is raised on the foundation of morality and peace. No religion incites violence, though they do permits to take up arms, but only in case of self-defense and action against injustice, but never for unjust war or creating unrest in society or on the earth.
These ‘difficult passages’, that permits the use of force, are usually misinterpreted or quoted and understood out of the historical context by many who always takes the text literally so as to suffix their motive and prove the brownie point to incite the ‘religious minded mass’ to use force to overcome injustice or to agitate for a ‘cause’. They use these ‘difficult texts’ to further perpetuate injustices to others for some injustice done to them and thus given it the fanciful name of ‘collateral damage’. These leaders do not see that passages mentioning and calling for peace, moral and justice out numbers those that permits to pick the arms. But they pick these ‘difficult passages’ which are few in numbers in the whole scripture to prove their point of using force. They do not think or refer to the passage that one injustice done to a man is like doing injustice to the whole mankind. They don’t look at the passage that God can forgive the person who at times has disobeyed Him (as He is merciful), but He will never forgive the injustice done against some human being (as He is not unjust).
It seems simply that these religious leaders have no religious motives for their action, but they have are thriving only on politics to be a leader. Political motive to prove that their community is the best, political motive to get at the helm of power, political motive to subjugate the individual freedom in the long run as we have seen in all the autocracy and theocracy in the modern time and in the past.
These curbing of freedom has raised its demon head across the subcontinent in the last few months. First we see that they attack and spread terror in the mind of other community and once they have won the mass support of their own community of ‘religious minded people’, their target gradually shifts to within its own community member who are a bit different from them and who disagrees with their brand of thinking and finally to like minded people once there is no target to hit at, thus leading to complete anarchy.
We need not go very far to see these examples! We have seen this play taking place right across the boarder in Pakistan. Many of the religion group had formed there to fight the other community; first it was Communist of Russia and then Hindus of India. It then shifted to more intense attack within its own community, between the sects. And finally we see chaos is spreading in form of attacks within its own community in form of moral policing. There, they have almost reached the final stage of anarchy where the civil society is on a verge of breakdown.
Let’s move within our boarder and look! Are we also moving in similar fashion where extremism is spreading its tentacles? It all started with communal strife, where the majority butchered the minority, in Gujarat, in Orissa and various blasts like Malegaon and Nanded where the target was other community. This is gradually mixed with attacks on different caste within the same community. And now we are seeing this shift taking place in guise of moral policing where we saw many reports coming in from Karnataka. So are we seeing the same play being staged here in India in name of religion that we are seeing that is being played across the boarder! There across the boarder, they are getting ready for the final stage while here we are experimenting between second and final stage.
For the ‘religious fanatics’ with political aspiration, any opponents of their style and thought are the enemies and have to be crushed at the bud by any means, either through, admonishing, threat, ‘character assassination’ or in the end finally if required, assassination itself.
Since ages religion has been hijacked by the aspirant of power to create mass hysteria so that they can get to the helm of power. The same play is also seen to be enacted on secular front where nationalism gets hijacked, where the enemy is created out of other nation. Religion as well as nationalism has always been exploited by them either to remain at the helm or to reach there. And we silent mass have let this happen. We are only jolted to wakefulness once we have reached the stated of chaos, confusion and disarray, in short anarchy!
Hope so we do not turn our faces and act to be blind, deaf and dumb for long enough to let our respective religion or nation be hijacked by politician to use it as a vehicle to carry us to civil unrest.
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