It's Time to Move On...

Hey it’s DiwAli!

It’s that time of the year when the whole nation celebrates the festival with love and happiness. The combo of extra lights, sweets and presents enhances the joy of togetherness. But it saddens me to see the same people bearing the feelings of religious differences which resurface as soon as the festival is over. We still have certain issues because of our over-sensitive sentiments and false beliefs which don’t allow us to be secular though India has become secular over six decades ago. In an era which is supposed to see India becoming a superpower by virtue of progress in its national economy, development in science and technology, our people are stuck on proving the superiority of one religion over other. But how many of those know and understand what religion actually is? And what does any religion teach? If they would have known and understood we wouldn't have fought over issues like Religious Intolerance at all! Let’s get some perspective here.

The renowned anthropologist Clifford Geertz has defined religion very well. He says, “It is a system of beliefs and symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive and long lasting moods and motivation in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

Basically it is a set of rules and guidelines for a better way of living and understanding life. Originally there was no such concept of religion. Neither the Bible nor the Quran have concept of religion in their original language. Everything existed simply as set of rules. Even Hinduism wasn't a religion. Initially the Persians and then the whole world started calling people living beyond the river Sindhu as Hindu. All these people living in different regions of today’s India had different beliefs and styles of living yet they were called Hindus. Thus Hinduism is a family consisting of various beliefs and rites and rituals with different teachings and no fixed rules wherein a person has the freedom to choose to be Monotheistic, Polytheistic, Atheistic Henotheistic, Monistic or even Agnostic. In the medieval period the Sanskrit word Dharma, Arabic word Din (appearing in Quran) meant laws, thus providing the laws of life.

Gradually after that Religions became closely tied to Political Structures during the times of the Kings and the Queens, it was recast as the basis of National (Kingdom’s) Sovereignty and religious identity became less spiritual and more divisive and locally defined. Lack of education and spiritual awareness amongst the masses and the smartness of Rulers, Spiritual Leaders and later on Political Leaders became the major reason for conflicts. People believed the basis of these conflicts to be the Beliefs of their Religion so let’s get some perspective there as well.

Anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just say, “Many of the great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort as the vision of charismatic prophet fires the imagination of people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs.”

Belief is the strongest element in the world. Our world runs on belief, let it be in God, Science, Self or a combination of all of these. People were failing to realize the power of self belief so they were in search of some other form of belief. They failed to realize the power of their subconscious mind as whatever you believe is manifested by the power of your subconscious mind. Now what happens when a person prays to any deity of any religion? He believes in the deity to get answers to all his problems provided he prays, observes fasts (vrats), makes some sort of sacrifices, performs some rites, makes donations, visits some places, well you get my point. This belief instills positive energy which eventually helps the person himself to get the answers. So no matter whether you know the theory or not you get the results, thanks to the unbelievable power your subconscious mind has. I’d recommend the readers to read ‘The Secret’ and ‘The Power of Your Subconscious Mind’ by Joseph Murphy to get a better understanding on this topic. Swami Vivekananda also had emphasized on the importance of self belief through his philosophy: Divine exists in all beings.

But again smart religious gurus and babas took advantage of the belief and instilled fear in people’s mind by adding various unneeded rites and rituals which people follow even today without knowing the purpose behind it and still such people boast of those rites calling them as traditions. History has witnessed such great mix-ups of traditions over the centuries due to colonization. Since those changes were gradual taking places over generations they were unnoticed and people kept changing them happily. But in today’s time when majority people are educated we fail to understand that traditions will have to change with time and now it will happen faster due to globalization. We need to let go of the old beliefs, rites and rituals which are hampering our growth, which are holding us back from living a happy life.

We live in a country which has largest population of Hindus, 3^rd largest population of Muslims, the birthplace of several world religions like Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, where Jews and Christians have come and settled since 7^th century along with Zoroastrians. We must take advantage of such diversity, we must learn about our religion (first) and also about other religions (provided you get time), we must be compassionate enough to understand that every religion teaches the same values of Peace, Honesty, Non-violence, Self-restraint which ultimately leads to a happy and prosperous life. After all, at the end of the day, that’s what we want too, isn't it?

To achieve this our older generation must try to change and let go of some traditions and superstitions and the young people must vow to be secular from the heart and actually start treating everyone alike irrespective of their beliefs. If it happens we’ll actually be celebrating a DiwAli which will bring prosperity and happiness to all of us alike.

Happy DiwAli People!