Subu on Religion

Of Faith and beliefs !

(By the title above, I mean that the views expressed below are strictly the writer’s own opinion though they might at some points bear resemblance to many great thinkers living and dead.)

No article on religion should or rather can begin without Karl Marx’s famous line “Religion is the hope of the hopeless, soul of the soul-less and opium of the masses”. Well speaking of religion one has to touch upon various related concepts. To go on, questions on religion question the existential nature of God and finally even the validity of rituals in religion.

To me God is a divine word. It is the very utterance of the word which infuses a strong sense of confidence in me. To be honest, I am neither an atheist, nor agnostic and surprisingly not even religious in the strict sense. I prefer taking religion in a highly liberal sense of view. God’s existence (whether he does or not) has never really troubled my soul and neither am I a rebel when it comes to matters of faith. But then again I follow my own ways of looking at it, the way my heart dictates and my mind justifies.

Putting this line up with a disclaimer again I will opine that somewhat I reason out, God must be Man’s creation than Man being God’s. At least the form and varieties we look up to him presently. Man is a born rational. And society, its organization, norms and continuity establish this fact. Because if something is not rational, it cannot possibly last that long. And so also is religion, through the personation of God. That God has been commoditized many a times for personal gratification is of no surprise.  But then everything exhibits anomalous behaviour during the stages if its maturation.

Every system is created with a purpose and so also Religion.  It is not just a body of faiths. It is a carefully crafted system to control and regulate the society. It gives us a sense of humility, no matter how successful one is through hard work one says ‘Sab Bhagwaan ki den hai’, a sense of participation in the collective wellbeing of society (recall Ganesh chaturthy, RathYatra, Christmas Celebrations or Eid).. bringing all high and low equal before the eyes of God !

Coming to rituals, I am not a person who would strongly advocate the essentials of ritualistic procedures and more so when it concerns religion. Yet, personally rituals bring a sense of disciple in life. In a typical Hindu society which is laden with multitudes of rituals, if one gets up early in the morning, takes a bath and sits down to pray, one cannot completely do away with the scientific benefits associated with the same. So also, when on certain days of the week people are barred from eating non-vegetarian food, it is to ensure man remains merely Omnivorous and doesn’t turn out to be largely a carnivore. The balance of food chain needs be kept in mind.

It is the manifestation of the mind that establishes certain types of rituals in one society absent in another. Tribal men worship trees, not hard to understand why ! Thus it is the mind which sacred-izes a polished stoneinto a ‘Salagram’ , the rising sun as God and still more the four legged Bovine into ‘Gai Mata’.

To conclude religion existed even before present man did.. It rose from the family hearth being worshipped as fire and continues to this date to ease and smoothen our busy mechanised world. And such a view on religion I consider is rational, scientific and Secular !