On... Religion 2.

Most Trivandrumites know that Palayam is famous for being the point of intersection where there is a church, a mosque and a temple. I had noticed the other day that there were renovations going on at the church and now it is visibly larger than it was. It would have been another event of insignificance in the scale of events had I not noticed a mosque being built nearby a church where there is no significant Muslim population or a temple trying to encroach the street. It brings me to the cardinal question I have in my mind. Is religion bigger than faith? Or, has religion become so much of an identity for the common man that the rest fade into the background?

Till some years back, I knew what a burqa was only in theory. I had seen the pictures, but couldn’t imagine anyone wearing it. It so happened that I could also not imagine Shiv Sena ambulances in the city. I couldn’t understand why a friend said that Hindus need to stay united. It was incomprehensible to me as to why a favourite teacher of mine, who was a Christian, wasn’t allowed to enter a temple. Now, I know. I have also observed that the worship places are becoming larger and bigger. Is it because of the increase in population? Perhaps. But, it could also be due to the fact that religion as a practice has been overwrought with pretension, that spirituality and faith has ceased to be factors of consideration.  The looser your purse strings, the nearer you are to the creator. The hassles of life have given us a new tangential velocity, minuscule perhaps in its magnitude, but definitely enough to divert us to a desired orbit. The illusion of choice is so strong that the individual often ignores the associated side effects. Isn’t this the illusion that is alluded to in the chronicles of medievalist clergy? Heretics were burnt at stake. Those were simpler times. Heretic had only one meaning – one who defied the church’s decrees. Now, the manifolds of differentiation are so huge that even Riemann would fail at categorizing them.

Religion had the ultimate purpose of making sense of the universe. It did not begin with the intention of becoming exclusive clubs where the inquisitiveness was considered evil. But, society has evolved to a point where man being an in group animal, needing the interdependence, has failed to come up with any competent institution which caters to his need for survival, on a large scale. Political affinities can change. But religious sentiments seldom do and continue for generations. A friend once told me how her husband cannot stand Muslims. He has Muslim friends (I wonder!), but refuses to trust strange Muslims. The identity here is not friend. It is Muslim/Hindu/Jew/Christian friend.

Another question I have is whether globalization has something to do with this accelerated need to belong.  With the cosmopolitism typically associated with globalization, the world does shrink to the point where a person cannot perceive his/her roots as strongly as he/she would like to. It creates a vacuum and the need to force the identity further. What further accentuates this void is the capitalized packaging of religion. Religion thus becomes a commodity and the clergy become the shopkeepers. The subject-verb agreement is extremely distorted to the point where it becomes inordinately hard to trace the origin of each practice. This in turn acts as a constant bubble wrap around the ignorance that religion has nothing to do with faith. Or is it a kind of Barnum effect: catering to the subjective validation of the individuals who descended from social animals and using this evolutionary trait to negatively create spaces that are absolutely isolated?

This brings me to another point. An observation based on the Attukal Pongala. Lakhs of women assemble here at Thiruvananthapuram annually, on a specific day to worship the goddess through rice dish offerings. While the media focuses on clicking the images of Parvathi Omanakuttan or film actresses and writing up about how foreigners are turning up in hordes to give their offerings, there is a section which goes unnoticed in this sensationalized glamourous milieu. The ordinary woman of poverty, who wants to unburden herself for a day and tell the goddess all her woes, hoping she will have some relief. The underprivileged are taught to accept that this is god’s will. That their poverty is fair. The poor cannot contribute much to the rising cathedrals, minarets or gopurams and hence they are god’s least favourites. Charity is a fixture of most religious institutions. We do have to ask whether religious philanthropy is altruistic or not. I will definitely be obliged or to an extent emotionally submissive to someone who bails me out of a tough situation. It could also generate a sort of peripheral persuasion enough for me to start inculcating at least some of the values the person hold.   

There is a widely held view that globally, religion as a direct cause of violence is rare. But when you take every ethnic, geopolitical or purely political conflict, you cannot depreciate the role of religious sentiments. Though the groups may not be fighting over theological issues or spiritual practices, the religious-cultural identity markers usually utilize the faith based sectarian symbols which the people are emotionally attached to.  Even the culturalism can give way to a sentiment of religious-nationalism, which we see around us, arising even in India.

This is a situation which is worsening every day. We can easily say that I have my beliefs and you have yours and that our Constitution guarantees us the Right to Freedom of Religion. But we really have to ask ourselves whether it is the right Right or Freedom. Something that distorts the very nature of diversity hardly encompasses the natural diversity. So the next time you make a contribution to your temple or mosque or church, ask yourself whether it is the right thing to do. Or step it up a notch and kindle the thought whether religion is more important than faith or not.

I find no better quote to wind this musing up with, than Stendhal on religion: ‘All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.’.