Something happened the other day. I was in class when there was a sudden discussion about something in Islam. The Professor turned to a guy and asked him to explain the term since he was a Muslim. When he couldn’t, the jocular response was, ‘You are supposed to tell Us people about Islam, Us people are not supposed to tell you’. Needless to say, it made me uncomfortable. Quite true that such remarks cannot be avoided by most and are considered in sync with the social norms. Us and Them. In this occasion, Muslim and Hindu. Just one doubt though – where do I fit in? I am not a Muslim, am definitely not a Hindu. Not by any compulsion through inter religious marriage, but by choice. Where do I, an atheist, who does not identify with any of the religions, but identifies with my multitude of friends who practice various religions, fit in? In Us or Them? What is the logic here? It is a bit like the binary code. If it is not 0, then it has to be 1. But am neither. What about millions of spiritual, but non religious people? Will a Hindu be the center of attention if he didn’t know the Vedas?
Let us jump to another scene. The lecturer and his much talked about hand! I happened to tell my friends that he had no common sense. Apparently it is pseudo secular to criticize the culprits but also comment on his lack of common sense. I don’t quite understand. I do not in any way condone the incident. But is it pseudo secular if I feel that the sentiments of a community were rightly hurt by the question in question? I find that very peculiar- maintaining that members of a community who have been pushed to the margins and hence volatile, should preserve their peace and calm when all around their identity is being questioned. Now, you may ask why I am bothered if I don’t believe in the oh-my-spaghetti-god. Valid query indeed. The answer is that I see a system feeding itself on polarization, a system which uses force and security to change attitudes (foolish!) and works on an entirely negative feedback, hence amplifying the output in the opposite direction. My dear ‘secular’ Malayalee friends should be thankful that Christianity is shrewd enough to understand it should limit itself to ‘idayalekhanam’ (apart from loosening their purse strings) in order to wield the same power and that Hindus in the state are led in two ever warring groups by a senile fool on one end and on the other, a guy who though hasn’t seen much of school still has an engineering college to his name.
When it comes to Muslims, nobody wants to talk about poor Muslim students being denied the opportunities to open bank accounts or get loans. Nobody wants to talk about why Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar became the face of moderate Muslims in India or about the ‘encounter killings’. Nobody seems to wonder over the increasing presence of burqas in the society or the Shiv Sena’s desperate attention seeking by rambling on about ‘love jihad’. Or Sweden, Belgium or France for that matter. It feels ridiculous to not expect ripples across the pond when there is a crackdown on Islam all around the world. And when suddenly there is an upsurge of idealistic extremism in an incident: congratulations, we were right to think of Muslims as terrorists. Anyone who points out the obvious is pseudo secular. I don’t like Islam for many reasons. For that matter, I equally despise Christianity and Hinduism. I do think Abrahamic religions have a way of tight control over believers which though initially were supposed to act as a coherent system for development, stagnated in the face of modernity. (Chile’s bishops are asking for clemency in the case of Pinochet’s generals.) I believe that Islam and Christianity sustain themselves through interconnected intellectual cannibalism and ethical necropsy. I am also wonderfully amused by the fact that Hindus have evolved to a point where they actually forget they originated from a region, rather than a religious ideology in particular, diving more and more into ignorance. Fascinating, actually. But do such beliefs of mine justify any prejudices towards Christians, Muslims and Hindus that I may have?
Definitely not! We have had our share of controversies regarding the Muslim Diasporas. I think no other community has been subjected to such extreme alienation, driving them more and more into seclusion. The typical view of the post modern religious tolerance amounts to Oriana Fallacci’s famous words "sons of Allah breed like rats". It is in this context that we should see the West attempting to strike a balance between being too tyrannical and lenient or refraining from blandly expressing the xenophobia which acts as both cause and effect of marginalization, as could be summarized by Fallacci’s words again, ‘Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense’. No Obama could undo what has been achieved by his predecessors. Laicite does not amount to undermining the need for change from within rather than imposing it on any section of the society. We need an identity campaign, on all repressive forms of authority and ignorance, including those stemming from religion. Any other course of 'action' tantamounts to disrespect of the second person. But, i do guess it is allowed in this society of structural conflicts. Something that is woven with the fabric of social framework and has merged with societal evolution cannot be undone by simply opting to pick out one or two threads. A paradigm shift is needed, by immersing the entire fabric in lukewarm water and letting it loosen up.
I want to write more. But I feel that as always, it is better to extrapolate as necessary rather than write a thesis which is not flexible.
To quote dear old Russell,
"I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it."
I attack religion. But I refuse to attack a particular group of people without understanding the dynamics.
