RELIGION AND FANATICISM

I had heard a lot about Taslima Nasreen’s novel Lajja, so finally after so many years the book finally came up and I have just finished reading the so called controversial novel. I really didn’t understand why was it called controversial, just because it put into words what was a reality? (I guess reality is considered controversial nowadays) just because it mentioned about the brutalities committed against one set of humans by another set of humans who had the numerical superiority in Bangladesh. Somehow I found that the book is not at all anti Muslim or anti Hindu in isolation it is rather anti communalism and pro patriotism and carried a message of peaceful coexistence of all humans irrespective of their religion. It was rather a statement of facts giving out a explicit and very detailed account of how fanaticism in any religion weather Hindu or Muslim or any other, breaks the very fabric of secularism and nationhood. It describes how a systematic degradation of a patriot takes place in a communal setup, weather he is a Hindu in Bangladesh or a Muslim in India. Also how religions can divide and create walls between humans, how humans can lose their humanity and humility in the false sense of being religious and go to the extremes of behaving in a animalistic manner par excellence. One of the readers of this novel, who happens to be my wife, before I started reading this novel, warned me “it is a very disturbing novel, I could not finish it because the atrocities mentioned were too much to handle”. With this presupposition I had started reading the novel. I had thought to myself that I can handle all this. But to my surprise, I was very much effected and pained by the reality of the things that would have happened and those that found their mention in the book, but I did manage to finish the book. The thing which pained me the most while reading the book was the description of how helpless young girls and women were subjected to rape and murder during these riots and the emotional trauma their family member’s went through. However, the fact of the matter remains that women have always been the victim of such lawless situations and mindless rioting irrespective of which country it takes place in, irrespective of religion, irrespective of age, there are no holds barred when it comes to rape. Rape is not only committed during riots or lawless situations, we witness it in our day today lives too, it is only committed so vehemently and openly during riots that’s all. It is quite a other thing to hear of rape being committed on so and so girl or woman and quite another when it happens to us or to those whom we love. I cant even imagine the trauma a woman goes through when she becomes a victim of such a heinous crime. It sends shivers down my spine to think of it when I realize that I am father to two beautiful little daughters and some day, few years from now they could well be facing this reality of our civilized life. For the peace of my mind as of now I just push such thoughts away, far away and only pray that I should not see such a day in my life. Reading about such things at times makes me feel shameful because I am a man myself just like any of those men who commit rape on helpless women and young girls or also even kids. Sometimes when I find myself staring at a beautiful woman and her so called good assets (which is considered natural for a man) I feel ashamed of my manhood and even go to the extent of thinking that there should be no such thing as physical attraction between a man and a woman. I know it would take a lot of excitement out of our lives but if it could stop rapes from taking place, don’t u think it would be worth it? Ask a girl who has been raped. Sometimes, I wonder what is the psychology of a rapist? Is he not a son? Does he not have a sister or a wife? How would he feel if it happened to someone whom he loves or is related to? I really don’t have answers to these questions, but sure would like to research it myself. I am sure a lot of research must have been carried out in understanding the psychology of rapists and also a number of efforts being taken towards rehabilitation of rape victims. But I don’t really know if a rape victim can be rehabilitated really. Are there no ways of eradicating this crime from our society? If I am given a choice I would like to wipe this crime away from the face of this earth (wishful thinking I guess!!). May be capital punishment is the only answer to this crime, I for one strongly recommend it. Coming back to fanaticism and religion, Imagine this… Rape being justified in the name of religion!!! the fact is, this is what it comes to ultimately if exploitation and riots in name a particular religion are to be justified. It beats all my logical reasoning to accept rape in the name of religion, there can be no justification for it, in fact it is a matter of great shame for any religion on the face of this earth and I am sure all people in their right sense will agree with me. So it finally boils down to that riots and activity of killing and rape has got nothing to do with religions. It is just expression of someone’s personal animalistic and sadistic desires and lawlessness and riots are only the excuse. Riots and lawless situations exhibit the true nature and character of a man and level of evolution of a society as a whole. I don’t know all the religions of the world but whatever little I understand, I know for certain that there can be no religion on the face of this earth which teaches violence and not peace and coexistence with other human beings and even nature. Then why do fanatics exist in all the religions? And the irony that these very people consider themselves fiercely religious when they cant even behave like humans at the first place, how can they be religious at all? Fanatics as I understand are all those who have got nothing to do with the religion they profess to be following, they do not understand the first letter of that religion leave alone the path and final goal of their religion. May ALLAH/BHAGWAN/GOD show them the real path of the religion!!!!. Killing, Raping looting and terrorizing in the name of religion can never do any good to the existence and propagation of any religion or lead to Nirvana or open the doors of Heaven/Jannat for anyone.

A JOURNEY CALLED “LIFE…………..DEATH”

There are too many things one can learn from “The Alchemist”. Its all about following your dream and about taking the risk of following your dreams, which is actually so difficult to do and there are very few people in this world who actually do, I mean risk it all, just to follow your heart and your dream. Beauty is, the author is so right in saying that when u decide to follow your dreams the entire universe conspires in your favour which he called as the “beginners luck” and we all have been witness to this beginners luck at one or other point in our lives. Also, he talks about a stage in our journey towards realizing our dreams, where everything just goes haywire and there is everything working against us and it almost takes us to the brink of abandoning everything and just getting back to what was so familiar and comfortable (i.e. our usual daily life which we get used to) this is actually the time when we are being tested for one last time and it means also that we are really close to our objective. The example given was really great and yes nothing new but we forget simple things in our life like "the darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn". It is actually true that so many of us just leave the struggle when it gets really tough and the chips are really low, whereas actually we were so close to the objective, if only we would have had a little more patience we would have been there. In one of the episodes he talks about death, yes the fact we always forget, the only reality about our life, it is a constant which is not going to change rest everything is uncertain. There are a lot of us who either think that it happens to others and then there are others, who are so busy running after the materials that they don’t have time to think about anything, leave alone death. Yes, and those who do think about death, mostly fear it, some fear death because of the physical pain attached to it (such people actually fear the pain rather than the death, I am one of them) and there are some who think they do not want to die because its not time yet for them to go. Ironically but true, this decision about timings has thankfully not been left to us. So, how do we get over the fear of death or make it our friend, a companion? And not waste our beautiful life worrying about dying all the time. One of the possible solutions lies in this book, it reads "if i have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other". Yes very much right, one would never know when he or she wakes up in the morning that if it was the last day of his or her life and in fact, that day would not be any different from all the other days already spent. So, why not take everyday as the last day of our lives and live it up. Anyways, so what I personally follow is, everyday when I wake up, I say to myself "what a beautiful day to die" and there on, I just do what I have to and go through all the motions and concentrate on the job at hand rather than worrying about my death and I am really at peace with the fear of death. Another beautiful thought which I came across about death was in the novel by the author called "Confessions of a pilgrim". I derived from it that death can be visualized as a beautiful person who is always sitting besides us, so close to us that it travels with us wherever we go and it also accompanies us to our bed. Its a beautiful companion, a faithful companion, the only one who will never be unfaithful to us, rest all the companions are just lesser mortals and have been unfaithful at one point or other. Death always stays with us and actually speaking that’s the only companion who would accompany us all through our lives right from the moment we acquired some shape in our mother’s womb to the moment when we would get the vision of that white light and that feeling of lightness when we would finally leave this body also sometimes expressed as "VASTRA" (clothes) in the Indian mythology. As per the Indian mythology, the soul never dies, it is indestructible, it only changes a body just like we change clothes. Our soul is a part of God and it goes back to him. We can find the mention of the mighty soul of ours around the last portion of 'The Alchemist' where the shepherd realizes that ultimately it his own soul which is the “hand that wrote all” and his own soul was the part of soul of God. I firmly believe that there is no fiction involved in this story of the shepherd, but this is a true expression of mysteries and realities of our life, which we never pause to discover. There is massage that this book wants to convey to us!!! I have never been into writing anything ever in my life, yes not even a personal dairy, but since the time I actually started writing which was just a month back, I realized that if we just write our thoughts as they occur, the resultant has a touch of mystery, because what we wrote with all our heart and soul, sometimes tends to surprise us. We tend to learn from what we ourselves wrote. We never realized that we had so much inside us and we don’t know from where, it all came. “The hand that wrote all”, yes I think its our soul that speaks out, the soul we never recognized, the one we never knew, the one which is part of soul of God…. …All religions have over all the years have preached a man “Know thyself, you will find God”, “look within yourself u will find all the answers”, these words are so common but how many of us actually are ready to pause and give it a try. It may sound crazy, may be the book has a effect that may appear really crazy but I am sure there are some people who would identify with me. May be when Paulo Coelho wrote this book his soul was revealing itself and that’s why some of us can identify with it because our souls are the part of same soul of God, just like his is. May be these lines of his novel were written by the “Hand that wrote all……………”