A TIME OF WAVERING FAITH

“The smallest coffins are the heaviest.”

I’m sure you would have stumbled across this quote in the aftermath of the widely condemned Peshawar attack. A quote that has echoed across social and news media all over the world. A line I personally believe to contain the most powerful and the most saddening set of words that have been used together in recent times. A line that questions the fickleness of one of the very foundations of human identity – mankind’s perception of good versus bad, often concealed behind a veil of religion. A line that indicates we have somehow managed to misplace our faith to a place where it never belonged, or should never belong.

The 16^th of December, 2014 will be remembered as one of the blackest days in modern history, when a misguided group of religious Taliban extremists murdered 134 schoolchildren in cold blood – apparently to teach a lesson to Pakistan’s army personnel, who had dared to launch a campaign against the extremist’s abuse of religion as a means of oppression and violence. The extremists were also angered by Malala Yousafzai being awarded the Nobel Peace prize – “how dare she promote education as superior to unquestioned faith?”
Since they could not extinguish the light of education, they decided to demolish the homes that sought this light instead of blindly following the Taliban’s religious prescriptions. It was not only the children that died that day; every bullet that pierced the heart of a falling child also attacked our faith in our understanding of that obscure higher presence, little by little.

How did humankind arrive at this juncture? If religion was created to serve humanity, how did it change so much to turn against the very people it sought to nurture and protect? Is it a tool that can be modified to anybody’s convenience? If yes, does its presence or absence really matter? Which religious doctrine exhorts pious followers to take up arms to murder children? How many of these innocent children knew the meaning of religion in the first place? What had they done wrong?

These are questions that perhaps nobody is capable of answering confidently. Not even the staunch fundamentalists who launched this dastardly act of terrorism. They might have an objective, but how that objective came into being is a question they have probably never asked themselves.

We are slowly moving to an age where the face of religion is continuously being morphed to suit vested interests or to support various forms of political propaganda. And this is happening not only in one country, but more or less throughout the world – including secular India.

'Hindutva’ as a concept is absent from our ancient Vedas and Upanishads, as well as from the Bhagavad Gita. Lord Krishna, in his sermons, never endorsed the notion of a single Rashtra that should unite all who follow his path and look down upon those who don’t. The supremacy of the Hindu race is a purely political ideology established in the twentieth century, and has never been advocated by Hinduism itself. Yet certain self-proclaimed outfits have often tried to mislead people by giving Hindutva a religious tinge, and using it as a shield for perpetrating acts of violence. At the receiving end of this violence, directly or indirectly, are innocent people, sometimes from their own community.

It is surprising to know that the same outfits are simultaneously leading humanitarian initiatives for social welfare, more in line with the original ethos of the religion. They are driving rescue efforts during natural calamities, setting up primary healthcare centers in remote villages, and sponsoring children’s education. 

How could such contrasting perceptions of duty co-exist? Which one is correct?

There could be numerous ways to find God. Many of these ways are dictated by religion in its original form. As for the other engineered forms, none should carve a path that passes through the graves of innocent children, men and women, and yet only leads to a false illusion of finding a false God.