It makes me ask some deeply profound questions. What is religion? What is God? Why religion? Why God? Who decides these? Who said that God can only be attained through religion? And who has the right to impose upon me what is right and what is not?
Any knowledgeable person would know that throughout the history of mankind, religion has been a potent force used by rulers to control the people. At one level, religion has acted as the instrument for the powerful and the elite classes to wield influence and shape the lives of the masses. It is nothing but a lid that covers the reality of the world. No wonder then that Chanakya in his treatise, Artha Shaastra, stated that the best ruler is one who can convince his soldiers that they are fighting for a religious cause and that religious fanatics make the best fighters. We have seen this being used time and again in various civilizations. The initial proponents of Islam used the motivation of spreading the religion to wage wars and conquer lands. The missionaries of Spanish Catholicism aided the conquest of the new world and destroyed indigenous cultures. The crusade is an example of what happens when two religious interests clash. We see this continuing even today, with the so called jihad being waged by certain Islamic groups. They use religious justification to kill non-believers. Many modern states also have a concept of state religion, be it Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or anything else. In modern day India, Hindu extremists want to establish the supremacy of their way of life over others. The list of conflicts and wars fueled by religious motivations is very large indeed. All these prove that religion has always been a motivating force for the establishment of authority over people.
Another stream of thought raises the question of the validity of religion. After all, the so called holy texts and tenets of religion were created by people like us. All claims of 'divine revelations' are mere humbug. Man needed to explain the forces of nature and the great questions of life. The inventive human mind came up with this concept called religion. Unlike science, there is absolutely no authenticity in religion. If someone were to write a book of moral principles, put up a fancy picture and call it the 'real God', wouldn't it qualify as a new religion? The truth is, this is how religions originated. But I am not saying that the great texts like the Vedas, Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, etc are mere worthless words. They all have extremely valuable messages in them but the pity is that they are not followed in the true spirit. In the current age, there doesn't seem to be any divinity either! Stories of a prince crossing the ocean to rescue his wife, of a man 'rising to heaven' from an altar or of a man walking over water are all precisely that - stories. It is nice for the feeble human mind to hear such stories and imagine that such fantastic things can also occur. Some religions even go as far as to claim that non-believers would be 'punished'. The founders of religions used such clever tools to manipulate and control the minds of the believers and keep them under their control. Luckily, the power of rationalism and human spirit could not be defeated.
I am not attacking religion per se. One cannot forget that religion at another level is a personal and social affair. There is no doubt that religion serves to unite the believers of one faith in a manner that few other feelings would. Religion has also served as a prime motivator for charity and kindness among humanity. For innumerable people, religion has taught them a way of life, a purpose of existence, the joy of living. But history shows us that religion has been a more negative force than positive. The benefits that religion provides in the form of charity, etc can also be provided without it in the name of humanity alone. As Adi Shankara stated, the name of God is chanted only by the fool who doesn't understand its real meaning. Certainly, if mankind is to progress from here and now as one family, we must leave our differences apart. Religion in its current form stands in the way of this grand mission. There needs to be a fundamental rethink of what is religion and if at all it is necessary.
I have no doubt that all religions at their core have peace and unity as the message. The common thread that unites every belief system is love. Love for God, love for humanity, love for nature, love for love sake. The Latin saying, Deus Caritas Est, captures this aptly. God is not an entity that one will necessarily find through religion. God is a feeling, a realization, an understanding of the reality. God is love. God is truth. God is knowledge. God is kindness. God is human conscience. These are not attributes of God as religion would say but they are God in themselves. The Tamil saying, Anbe Sivam, Anbe Satyam, also states the same. Love is God, love is truth. I agree that for a few (I stress, very few), religion has helped in attaining this truth. However, I would not want to end up surmising the real nature of God in the narrow manner that religion does, "There can be no other truth than this"! God is nothing but an interpretation of reality, which the inherently fickle human mind constantly struggles to explain. You can choose to explain it in any manner you want as long as it doesn't lead to division and hatred.
Though one can argue that the various religions are but different paths to the common destination, the fact is that the differences are so large that the final goal is often forgotten. There needs to be an end to this madness that religion has brought about in humanity. Even for those who are agnostic or atheist, love is not non-existent, though 'God' maybe. The two are but the same. This conception of God is not new; it has been around for as long as religion has been. But it has been declining and we have now reached a point where such thought finds no place in any popular belief system. There needs to be a fundamental rethink of the utility, or lack of it, of religion and the pursuit of the reality of God. It should start at the individual level and then move to collective social realization. Once such a transformation has been achieved, all narrow religious boundaries can be destroyed and humanity as a whole would move one step forward.
The simple truth is that even a stranger's kindness towards you is God. The care and affection shown by a mother to her child is God. The moment one realizes the truth, crossing all boundaries, one attains God. Call it Jesus or Shiva or Vishnu or Allah or Jehovah or Buddha or whatever other fancy name you can conjure up, for me it is all the same. Religion is not the truth. God is. Love is. Humanity is.
