Mountain of light

I subscribe to this magazine called The Little Magazine (www.littlemag.com). This is a bi-monthly publication and takes quite a while to go through. Each issue is based on one topic (like crime or media) and then they are essays on that article by people who are authorities in that field. Then there is fiction and poetry on the same topic , book reviews on the same and it usually ends with a film or a play script that is again based on the same cover issue. A lot of fiction and poetry is, quite refreshingly, from languages other than English. The magazine draws a lot from all corners of India to come with wonderful pieces. Each issue for me is a wonderful learning experience. The last issue I read was on Crime. Among the things they talked about was communal violence. I wanted to write about it for quite some time except I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write. It is also easy to get very negative about the whole thing and then I tend to lose my point altogether.

Communal violence as I understand is violence based on among other things, religion. This is something I have never been quite able to understand. I understand people fighting over money, women, opinions, and even television remotes. But why religion? Most of us don’t even choose our religion, we kind off inherit it from our parents at birth. But then religion is also something we manage to hang on to most closely. As I start analysing the whole thing it is easy to see why communal violence happens.

India, as our founding fathers saw it, is a secular country where there is no discrimination on the basis of religion. All religions are equal. But even after centuries of these religions mingling together I see minority (in terms of religion) communities living all concentrated together. Near these dwellings will be a place of worship and the most of the shops in the surrounding areas will also be owned by the same community. Depending on where you go, inter-religious marriages are still frowned upon even by the majority community. We still don’t know too much about each other’s festivals even though we have lived with each other for generations. As in a country like ours, where different religions have co-existed for centuries, I would expect current thinking and ideas (even education) to draw upon the knowledge and wisdom from all these religions (like language, for example). To my mind, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of other religions and how they are only different paths to the same God.

It is precisely this ignorance which shows its ugly face in the form of communal violence. Ignorance you see can breed a lot of negative attributes like fear, hatred etc. When we strike violently against someone isn’t it a combination of fear and hatred? Fear because the other person has the ability to bring harm to us, and hatred because we perceive that he has or plans to bring harm to us. This ignorance when combined with things like lack of economic opportunities, hunger, and some mischievous religious leaders, becomes this huge demon which is all ready to spout fire at the other community. This could take the form of demolishing century old mosques, raping nuns and burning clerics alive or even demanding for a Hindu state.

To my mind there are two ways of stopping this kind of violence. One, by effectively clamping down on the people who do the violence and the people who plan it right down to the last fire and two, by education and bringing down unemployment. Both solutions are easier said than done and I don’t see anything been done on any of these counts. Sometimes I get all cynical and wonder that given these conditions why isn’t there like a major riot every year and at each major religious festival. The kind of nonsense which sometimes get dished out in the front pages makes me shiver as I think of what kind of mind does it take to make these statements and what else is that devious mind capable off.

The other day I was searching for some famous quotes and among others I came across these two.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

Harvey Milk, at a 1978 Gay Freedom Day Rally. (Harvey Milk was killed later that year by a fanatic).
"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion."