I do believe

Siddharth Koul
The columns of the newspapers, the headlines on every channel, the talks in the intellectual groups all today are inundated with the information of fights over religion. Firstly, what is a religion?If we search on google, the definition of religion according to one of the results is ‘the belief in and worship of superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods’. The word which grabs the focus in the previous statement is ‘Personal’. Is this word ‘personal’ the reason why people believe in protecting their religions? One important question that pops up is, who are these people actually protecting their religion from? If a religion focuses on belief in a God of personal choice then does it actually need protection. Are the beliefs of people today so weak that they need protection from others?
Then who are these people today fighting over religion? Murders, harassments, fights and a lot of things are happening today in the name of religion. The irony is that the people protecting their religion are beating others claiming that their religion is the most peaceful. Isn’t it laughable that the entire concept of religion that revolves around peace is to be protected using violence? Are we so blindfolded that we are not able to see that the acceleration in the frequency of these fights is leading to unrest in our world?
For realization at all levels let us consider our locality in which people of different religions live. Now the existence of this society has been possible up to this point because of the harmony between these religions. So, what does it take to eliminate the existence of this peaceful co-existent society? It just needs one wrong feeling of being dominated by the other which it won’t be, but is just a mean trick played by someone behind the curtains who doesn’t either like its peaceful existence or has some other personal destructive motives for this society. These threats need not be just external but can be internal too, like a person of a particular religion who has the puny thought of superiority over the other.
People having such thoughts are a cancer and their sinister ideologies are plague for the society. They just believe in their personal authority and control over other subjects of the society. These people make the others of their religion around them feel as if they are being dominated or being wiped out of existence by the other religions, pretending to be their saviours. They spread messages of their evil brainchild in the form of violence which is then captured by media and is shown to the people. We know that the media is there to provide us news of the world but we don’t recognise what would happen if those wretched people gain the control of media. The information provided to us will be corrupted. It would be directed to spread the feeling that the others are evil and that person’s religion is the only ‘One True Religion’. This would create the situation of panic in the society, as of course there would be such wretched people of other religions who would also try to do the same thing. This would lead the people to follow a pattern of accepting violence as the only solution and a panic situation in the country. And we know from the history what happens when there are such situations. Not only the country gets divided as it also takes a heavy toll on humanity. People start to fight for land, money and even existence. All this gives rise to anti-social elements in those parts and hence we all at the end loose not only as citizens of a country but also as humans.
Magma of hatred is engulfing humanity and incinerating our ideals,turning us into a body without soul. The diminution of our species is becoming inevitable as we instead of rejecting these fights, are contributing to the downfall of this species by encouraging the existence of such elements in our society. Religious discrimination-based incidentsare becoming higher as the effects of the ideologies of these malevolent people. Religion is being used as a tool to divert the attention of people away from other evils engulfing the society like poverty, corruption, unemployment etc. Whenever people start asking these important questions there is one or the other religious muddle that starts to take more attention than any other question. In the life of most people religion plays an important role in offering hope, but is fighting over a mosque or temple or church more important than the lives of thousands of people. Is it more important than the survival of our species?
I don’t know if God exists or not but I do believe that the concept of religion was started by the mortals. If we are wiped out of existence, I can’t say about God but I can definitely say that there is going to be no one to fight over these religions. The religious texts teach us that all the existence is because of the God so, let’s ask ourselves “Does God actually need ‘protection’?”. Every religion has its own history and importance in the life of a religious person. By hurting someone of other religion because some people of our religion are prejudiced against them isn’t going to help save our world, but only divide it further.
Flooding our lanes and colouring them red, polluting the surroundings by screaming blue murder of other religions and humiliating humanity by this vindictive violence, are these malevolent people. They lurk in plain sight by concealing their evil plans of social unrest under the cloak of silence or benevolence and wait for the moment to rise to such positions so as to deviate the masses into believing that their plan is the only solution to all the other evils. Religion has become a tool for such people to mislead the people and project other religions as the cause of social unrest. People like these need to be taught that their personal agendas are not superior than the survival of a whole species. People should be taught to respect other religions and not to discriminate others on the basis the religion. We should fight for and not against each other in times like these when there is surplus of individuals trying to break our unity in the name of religion. We should remember that together we can break all social barriers that are presently pushing us in a cavernous gorge of hostility.Hence, the belief in ourselves to rise at such occasions, to make ourselves stronger, to defeat any kind of ruthlessness, to respect the feelings of every individual having right to defend and harmony among ourselves.
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