September 12th 2007 was an exceptionally unique day in the history of India - the government of a country with an 80 crore Hindu population said that the greatest King in Hindu mythology may not have actually existed!!
Pheww..for a second I thought I was hearing a forecast of the news in 2027!! My happiness was shortlived; there was nothing unique about Sept 13 - within a day, we degraded back to common place politics with the Law Minister making unlawful, sweeping statements about Ram.
The Ram-Sethu project, in all probability, might be off and Tamil Nadu may lose a lot of business. But to me, this misadventure by the government is one of its best achievements so far. It has set the ball rolling on one of the oldest and most vital debates of all time - Myth vs Reality in particular and science vs religion in general.
From times immemorial, the three-letter word GOD has instigated more hatred and love, peace and violence, passion and mithya than what the rest of all concepts could cumulatively manage.
One of the first words to be taught to a child is GOD; and the last word most people try to speak before they die is GOD..not to forget the innumerable times GOD is spoken, taught, read, heard and thought of, in between!!
It is not my aim here to prove the existence/non existence of GOD. I am just intrigued by what is in store for the human race because of the dichotomy in approaching religion(or GOD) and everything else.
As the world becomes smaller, flatter and smarter by the day and as institutions, people and societies are scruntinised in every possible way, how can religion and faith remain untouched by rationale and ridicule? And how long will it continue?
When you talk about religion and God, all other things are trumped over - a fact the self proclaimed cultural saviors of our nation have successfully institutionalised in the last 2 decades. People become emotional, hysterical and extremely irrational when you question anything about their faith.
Douglas Adams had this to say on the trump card that religion is......."Religion..has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about; you are just not. Why not? - because you are not!' If somebody votes for a party that you dont agree with, you are free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I must not move a light switch on a saturday', you say, 'I respect that'."
An extension to this in the context of the present issue..
ASI says "The characters of Ramayana are fictitious and there is no evidence to prove that Ram existed and the Ram-Sethu is a natural formation and not a man-made construction".
SPCB(Self Proclaimed Cultural Brigade) says "You dare not say that".
ASI asks "Why not??"
SPCB says "You just cannot".
A famous shloka from Bhagavatam in Telugu says "Never doubt if GOD is present here and absent there..GOD is all-pervasive..you just need to look around, he is present everywhere!" Well Ram is omni-present and why the hell are we making a fuss about just the Ram-Sethu project?? Why not the Bangalore International Airport? In all possibility, Ram might have made his foot impressions there!!
Given this ambiguity, I think SPCB would need the validation more than anybody else - they would know precisely when andwhere to object :-)
I like many characters of Ram and so do millions of Indians...Ram is a legend that does not need any physical existence to inspire and amaze.
But it is time we understand the difference between a myth and reality.
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3 comments:
nice one bro!!!
Its a very good blog. I am not very worried if Ram existed , or if Ram sethu is build by him. I dont need anyone to defend my faith, like the sangh parivar. Ram is very strong inside me.
But what worries me is the hypocricy, which the present govt follows, in pushing through developmental projects. If a mosque is in the middle of the road, the govt will change the alignment, without even a second thought, so as not to hurt RELIGIOUS sentiments. May be they beleive that the only religions which exist in India are that of the minorities. Thousands of years and generations of an entire race, beleives in RAM and the governemet has enough guts to question the beleif.
I request the govt not to push the ordinary hindus in to extremism
I dont completely agree with you. In India, we saw riots involving massacre of thousands of minorities - Hindus were also killed, but time and again, we have seen the governments taking the side of the Hindus in 84 and 03. We are not overtly sentimental about our minorities as we make ourselves feel!! Govts do tend to take sides many times and nobody can disagree on this.
But the whole point of my article is not identifying the specifics of one particular religion. My endeavor is more of a rational look at the question of faith, religion and god. I really expect the govt to do exactly the same thing when there is a mosque or church in question!!
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