Corrupted Into Cults

Hindus and Muslims, said Gandhiji, were like his two eyes. It is a searing shame that in the Mahatma'sland, one eye is trying to gouge out the other. The scandal of Modi's Gujarat should not have happened. Ithas. But it will be a worse scandal if we do not learn from, and act upon, this horrendous human tragedy.Gujarat did not simply happen. It is what we have done to ourselves, through our omissions and commissions.The Sangh Parivar's barely masked intention to repeat Gujarat in other parts of the country will succeed if wedo not learn the lessons from this tragedy and retrace our steps to collective disaster.

Gujarat is on fire. But fires are of two kinds. There is a fire that burns and destroys. There is adifferent kind of fire: one that purifies and gives light. It is up to us to decide what kind of fire Gujaratshall be. We must redirect the river of blood in Gujarat towards the cleansing and healing of our society.Nothing short of this will suffice as our spiritual prayaschit (penance). The innocent lives lost there shouldnot go in vain. The alternative is to wallow for a while in sentimentality, overlooking the lessons of thismassive tragedy, and wait for a bloodier Gujarat elsewhere in the country.

The Gujarat crisis has visited us along the route of religion, through which we have been herded by themanipulators of our democracy. In varying degrees, we subscribe to the suicidal dogma that religion is asphere of blind faith. The Sangh Parivar's assertion that Ayodhya, being a matter of faith, is beyond thecompetence of the courts to adjudicate is only a virulent form of this shared superstition. Those who equatereligion with blind faith should share with the Sangh Parivar the blame for the communalisation of ourcountry. The priestly class in all religions have a lot to answer for in this regard. Neither the founders ofreligions nor religious scriptures demand blind faith. Instead, both encourage responsible scepticism. It isnot a spiritual achievement to create a society in which people are led by the nose. It is a spiritualdisaster, the like of which stares us in the face in Gujarat.

The exclusion of rational enquiry from the framework of religious loyalty turns a religious community intoa pliable and pathetic tool in the hands of their manipulators. It degrades religiosity into irrationaldevotion, waiting to be exploited by communalists. In this respect, all religions are identical. The communalmanipulators of people, irrespective of the different religious labels they wear, feed on each other. TheMuslim communalist is the ladder by which the Hindu communalist climbs to power. And without the Hinducommunalist, the Muslim obscurantist cannot project himself as the saviour of Islam or remain a parasite onthat community.

We have got used to swallowing on trust anything packaged in the name of religion. We refuse to recognisethat this is not the logic of religion, but of cult. Cults seek to manipulate and enslave. The business ofreligion is to liberate and empower. Cults are driven by falsehood; spirituality, by truth. Cults are allergicto debates; true religion, being an unending quest for truth, welcomes it. Cults thrive on cruelty,spirituality on compassion.

There is none who does not know this to be the case; but only in theory. Not enough people are seen,though, to be upset when barbaric cruelty is unleashed in the name of religion, especially if the atrocitiesin question are expected to turn, somehow, into a religion profit! As communal atrocities were unleashed onChristians in Gujarat nearly three years ago, Vajpayee called for a national debate (later modified into adialogue) on conversion.

The Sangh Parivar since then has proved in Gujarat that the need is not only to debate an aspect of aparticular religion, but also to debate religion itself, forthrightly and radically. Such a debate must haveat least two essential focal points. In the first, the spotlight must be on the nature and scope of religion.We are a deeply religious society, and we need to be clear about what religion is and, even more importantly,what it is not. What is the authentic spiritual core of religion? What is the quintessential religious goal?

The second issue to be debated is that of the relationship between religions. Peace between religions is aprecondition for peace in the society and peace among nations. It is also basic to national integration in amulti-religious society like ours. The communal agenda of the Sangh Parivar cannot flourish if a spirituallywholesome framework for inter-religious cooperation is evolved. Powerful vested interests conspired in thepast to situate religions in a framework of mutual suspicion, competition and conflict. This degradedreligions into theatres of negativity; so much so, hating other religions became the popular expression of one'sreligious fervour.

Hating Mohammad is all that a person has to do, in a climate of communalism, to prove that he loves Ram.Once corrupted by this cult of negativity, it is easy to mislead even well-meaning people to believe thatbuilding a temple in Ayodhya, merely to spite the Muslims, is the issue on which the destiny of Hinduismhangs. Those who, on the contrary, have even a nodding acquaintance with the Vedic faith recognise this to bean aberration and an insult to that faith.

The fascist fungus grew on the edges of Hinduism where it came into contact with the materialistic culturesof the West. It is not an accident, hence, that the cult-figure that the Sangh Parivar reveres is Hitler, notLord Ram. Under the pretext of building the Ram mandir in Ayodhya, India is being turned into a sanctuary forthe spirit of Hitler, displaced from Europe through World War II.

In the absence of a genuine and open-minded debate on religion, the field is left free for the religiousobscurantists and fascist-fundamentalists to play havoc with the destiny of a billion people. Those who thriveon the indefensible and the irrational are sure to be allergic to such a debate. But the rest of us need to beclear-minded that barbarity, crime and sacrilege can never be part of any religion.

(The authors are president of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front and faculty member of St. Stephen'sCollege respectively.)