Delusion of Religion

Just look at the mass delusion of religion, it's the embarrassing dark age fiction through which people put faith in and justify their actions. As cognitive and behavioral imperative, religion was born to understand the phenomenon of the nature. It was built around the primitive knowledge and has intermixed the myths and facts with the deep human experiences. With the more and more use of logic in ours quest for explaining nature, we observe religion on a hundred fronts losing the argument with science. Also, a class of people have become priestly clan in the religious camps and grow on the basis of collective fear and paranoia of masses. Thus, religion became authorizing in its claim of knowledge and truth, and there starts its fall.

What can be canceled, logically, must have once had value. And thus, there can be reforms with new generation as new logic will emerge on the basis of time and new human experiences. That's why fraudulent practices or wrong theories are corrected in science through scrutiny with the time. When the religions are aware of the limits of their claim to the truth, when they allow doubt, the chance of reforms develop from inside.

Religion does not grow in the ideology that continuously goes through scrutiny of several groups and individuals. Any ideological bias can be extreme, but they are backing it with the reason. Logic is there in the development of all these ideologies. What mankind often does with religion is often more self-serving and abominable as they are mere unproven beliefs. They are treated as factual by many religions and the extremes to which some followers have taken them. Religion takes the path of extremism without any basis of reason.

Nadeem F Paracha summarized about Extremism extremely well: Extremism is nobody’s friend. It only deals in might gained from coercion. It does not rest after it has defeated its ideological opponents because then it goes on to destroy even those supporters whom it deems too soft or moderate.

Perhaps the world can come to realise that the real war is between those who believe in the ultimate sanctity and value of a human life and those who do not. If you are not willing to seriously investigate your faith and ask questions, then you are at the mercy of others who will define it for you. Isn't searching for truth personally better than bracing false hopes in existing answers? Science, constructive doubt and investigation are the tools while faith is positive suspension of critical thinking.

I will produce here a thought about Dharma perceived by Buddhist monk: Excessive faith without sufficient wisdom leads to the blind faith, while excessive wisdom without sufficient faith leads to undesirable cunning. Too much energy combined with weak concentration leads to restlessness while strong concentration without sufficient energy leads to indolence. But as for Mindfulness (sati), one can never have too much of it, it is never in excess but always in deficiency. We need to cultivate Mindfulness.

What's in a Surname?

I read a book review of 'The Indians' By Sudhir Kakar & Katharina Kakar in the blog of my freind Abdusalaam al-Hindi. I will quote a paragraph of the book as it shows about Indians particularly deep rooted in Hindus.

The inner experience of caste : The preoccupation of the caste system with high and low has been associated with suffering and humiliation for several millions through the centuries. As the Marathi poet Govindraj puts it, Hindu society is made up of men 'who bow their heads to the kicks from above and who simultaneously give a kick below, never thinking to resist the one or refrain from the other.' The hierarchy is so fine tuned that even a low caste will always find another caste that is inferior to it, thus mitigating some of the narcissistic injury suffered by it at being seen as inferior. Thus for instance, 'among those lowest scavenging sections which remove night soil there is still a distinction: those who serve in private houses consider themselves higher than those who clean public latrines.' [pp 27, 28]

Few trends happening in our society are shocking and need immediate attention : Khap Panchayat rulings and rape cases against lower caste women. These are two sensitive news stories traced by me on these issue.

Doomed by Caste Damned by Gender: Rape continues to be a weapon of oppression against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, despite the state having a Chief Minister who is herself a woman and a Dalit. Tracked by Shobhita Naithani of Tehelka.

A Taliban Of Our Very Own: Murder, rape and exile are routine punishments for these parallel Parliaments. Neha Dixit of Tehelka tracks Khap panchayats across north India and covers this burning issue.

There is the bulk of crime happening in the name of honour and caste. Even if the coverage amounts to drive-by journalism generates a ton of anecdote and graphic details about individual case but not a pinch of leavening context to help frame and explain crime and mentality behind it. Let me quote of Dr. Ambedkar in this scenario:

“It is usual to hear all those who feel moved by the deplorable condition of the Untouchables unburden themselves by uttering the cry “We must do something for the Untouchables”. One seldom hears any of the persons interested in the problem saying ‘Let us do something to change the Touchable Hindu.’ ”

When the elite practices social and castiest discrimination in the daily lives, the social order below will follow that only. Bottom up civil consciousness on caste or gender discrimination is absent in our country. Our society is clashing with the struggle between doing the right thing and doing the honorable thing. There should be absolutely no place for traditions that deny another human being dignity.

Mistakes are understandable in this fight. Surrendering isn’t. Whether who will prevail is another matter, there is a limit beyond which law cannot be further broken and conscience further outraged. I have asked a question in the title of the post: What's in a Surname? Its answer is : In A Casteist Society, Everything !

Interview With Jere Van Dyk

It is the most illuminating interview I have yet heard/read on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Jere Van Dyk is a journalist and author who has focused much of his writing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the early 1980s, working as a correspondent for The New York Times, Van Dyk lived with the mujahideen in Afghanistan as they fought against the Soviet Army, an experience that was recapped in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated articles. 20 years later, he returned to Afghanistan to report on the U.S.-led war, only to be captured and held by the Taliban for 45 days in 2008. This harrowing experience, as well as his insights into this "pointless" war, are detailed in his new book "Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban." He is currently a consultant on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and al-Qaeda for CBS News.

I stop for while

Its like a drug
I fall into the abyss
The time ticks on slowly
I fear to be hit by the bottom

Fear grows in me deep
To be hurt at any moment
Dark fathom awaits me
I want to stop for while

A will to survive inside heart
Logic prevails for the death
The beauty has long gone now
Alone awaits ego in the journey

No reason to live now
And I fall into the abyss.

Reforming the Hindus -1

In Indian society one is surrounded by false values right from birth irrespective of religious background. Rare People try to change the notion of modernism and put reforms in this plural democratic nation. Today, the language of secularism and equality is different from ground realities.

Despite faith based flaws of Abhrahmic religion, it considers all humans equal. While Hindu considers and see people in  hierarchical manner. Leave this old theoretical aspect of religion and culture aside. Look into Hindu Law (not obsolete and biased Manu Smriti) through insight of an excellent article of Ramchandra Guha :

Those who want to explore the details of these changes are directed to Mulla's massive Principles of Hindu Law (now in its 18th edition), or to the works of the leading authority on the subject, Professor J.D.M. Derrett. For our purposes, it is enough to summarise the major changes as follows; (1) For the first time, the widow and daughter were awarded the same share of property as the son; (2) for the first time, women were allowed to divorce a cruel or negligent husband; (3) for the first time, the husband was prohibited from taking a second wife; (4) for the first time, a man and woman of different castes could be married under Hindu law; (5) for the first time, a Hindu couple could adopt a child of a different caste.

BJP is termed as Brahmin Bania party in public and it has gained popularity with economic reforms and growing Hindu nationalism. It always jumps on proving the role of Hindus as reform supporting and secular. That is indeed true but not because of them for sure. Now, our RSS and BJP supporter guys should be asking for the constructive role of their party in the Hindu law reforms. I will tell that also ( same source as before) :

In the vanguard of the opposition was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In a single year, 1949, the RSS organised as many as 79 meetings in Delhi where effigies of Nehru and Ambedkar were burnt, and where the new Bill was denounced as an attack on Hindu culture and tradition.

A major leader of the movement against the new Bill was a certain Swami Karpatri. In speeches in Delhi and elsewhere, he challenged Ambedkar to a public debate on the new Code. To the Law Minister's claim that the Shastras did not really favour polygamy, Swami Karpatri quoted Yagnavalkya: "If the wife is a habitual drunkard, a confirmed invalid, a cunning, a barren or a spendthrift woman, if she is bitter-tongued, if she has got only daughters and no son, if she hates her husband, (then) the husband can marry a second wife even while the first is living." The Swami supplied the precise citation for this injunction: the third verse of the third chapter of the third section of Yagnavalkya's Smriti on marriage. He did not however tell us whether the injunction also allowed the wife to take another husband if the existing one was a drunkard, bitter-tongued, a spendthrift, etc.

Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B.R. Ambedkar are the reformers who pushed the limits of high caste and class oriented Hindus towards reforms. There was opposition from upper caste leaders of  congress but that were brushed aside by charismatic and soft dictatorial nature of Jawaharlal Nehru. Again quoting the same article:

These three great reformers were Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi and Nehru, working together, helped Hindus make their peace with modern ideas of democracy and secularism. Gandhi and Ambedkar, working by contrasting methods and in opposition to one another, made Hindus recognise the evils and horrors of the system of untouchability. Nehru and Ambedkar, working sometimes together, sometimes separately, forced Hindus to grant, in law if not always in practice, equal rights to their women.

I will like to express one more blow on the defenders of new Hindutva forces. Like any other religion, they also shed their brains in the matter of faith (as defenders of Islamic forces shouted on the ban of the veil in France). Around 1987, BJP insisted, that if a widow volunteers to burn herself on her husband’s pyre, her choice should be respected. Look in the Hindu article for details.

It is most difficult to enact resides where our old, entrenched interest have grown deep, stubborn roots. The strength of any culture will always be reason and flexibility, not dogma and posturing. That had helped in past and will guide Hindus in the future also. Hindus don't have to be brilliant to see this but must be committed towards equality of gender and cast, seeing the initiative through. And upcoming this requires massive popular will. The inability to argue out issues without being tagged with labels has allowed a cobweb of ad ideas to persist in our approach to democratic discussion.  Don't know what I will be tagged as after this post. :)