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| Beyond bombs, blasts, religion | | | Avijit Pathak
There is a quest for the meaning of existence that is distinguishable from organised religion and its identity politics.
We are living in a world in which the very word ‘religion’ causes suspicion. We have seen how in the name of religion the chain of oppressive rituals becomes overwhelmingly powerful over people’s lives. We have noticed the emergence of celebrity gurus and their not so holy practices. And in recent times we are being perpetually provoked to see a possible linkage between religion and terrorism. In fact, as we begin to digest the news of the Malegaon blast investigation and resultant identity politics, we feel baffled. It is high time we began to see beyond such simplification with all its implicit stereotypes and raise critical questions relating to religion and politics and also explore the possibility of a more humane and spiritual engagement with the world.
An organised or institutionalised religion, we all know, has immense emotive power. Its symbols and deities, its sacred texts and mythologies and its rites, rituals and festivities tend to give a distinctive identity to its followers.
Indeed, religion often becomes an overarching identity that, particularly at crucial historical junctures, acquires the power to devalue the differences (say, the differences based on class or language) amongst its believers.
Not surprisingly, religion has often been used as a cementing force for consolidating the roots of nationalism. Nation, wrote Benedict Anderson, is an ‘imagined community’; but religion (no less than what Anderson regards as print capitalism) often acts as a catalyst to stimulate people to believe that they do constitute a community. That is why, even though nationalism is a modern or secular phenomenon, its inclination to religion cannot be ruled out.
There is, however, a paradox. If an organised religion constitutes a community of believers, it also causes exclusion. It separates others having different faith, but living in the same territory as ‘alien intruders’. As a matter of fact, this discourse sanctifies the cause militant religious nationalists (or, for that matter, terrorists) strive for: annihilating the ‘enemies’ of the nation! It cannot be free from the logic of violence, division and exclusion. The sub-continent did witness this paradox in the growth of the ‘two-nation theory’, the traumatic partition, and subsequent history of communal hatred. Is it, therefore, surprising that we have eventually created an environment in which seldom do we hesitate to equate a terrorist with his religious identity?
Amidst the imageries of Sadhvi Pragya and Mahant Amritanand alias Dayanand Pandey, there are, however, alternative possibilities which we should not forget to explore: the possibilities that speak the language of harmony and inclusion. A major reason for this exploration is that at a deeper existential level there is always a quest: an attempt to locate oneself in the infinite cosmos with awe and wonder, find a meaning of existence, and urge to transcend the temporality and finitude of one’s existence. It is this longing that distinguishes the finest elements of a spiritual or aesthetic quest from any form of organised religion: its tyrannical priestcraft, its excessive ritualism, and its identity politics. It is like having an experience of unbounded love and togetherness.
At this moment of darkness it is indeed refreshing to recall some of the illuminating narratives of this exploration. Reflect, for instance, on the message that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi conveyed in 1946-47 when he was moving from the villages of Noakhali in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to the villages of Bihar and then to the riot-torn slums of Calcutta and Delhi, in a heroic effort to stop Hindus and Muslims killing each other. No wonder, even a text like the Bhagavadgita, for him, became a doctrine of peace. The Bhagavadgita, Gandhi wanted us to realise, reveals the futility of war, and the battlefield of Kurukshetra, is more like a metaphor indicating the struggle going on inside one’s consciousness. We are perpetually fighting the darker forces (greed and violence) to experience the glimpses of truth and light.
Or, think of Rabindranath Tagore. His religion was that of a poet. Knowing Tagore was like internalising the Upanishadic prayer: the search for the Eternal and the Universal. With his poetic sensibility he could experience the transcendental self in the abundance of nature, its vastness, rhythm and beauty. Overcoming the limitedness of our finitude and realising the beauty of the ‘surplus’, that enables us to experience a sense of profound connectedness with the world was what Tagore was striving for. Never did the poet feel comfortable with limiting identities and exclusivist nationalism.
Love, according to Sufis, was the emotive force of life. As Khwaja Muinddin Chisti reminded us, the heart of a mystic is a blazing furnace of love which burns and destroys everything that comes into it because no fire is stronger than the fire of love. Even though religious orthodoxy and its political ambition make us forget and divert from this basic truth, it is not altogether impossible to renew ourselves, and strive for a world in which ideas like ‘Hindu terrorism’ or ‘Muslim terrorism’ become utterly irrelevant and instead of bombs and blasts, the music of harmony widens our horizon and softens our consciousness. |
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