2014, IMHO, has been a watershed year as far as debate on religions go. One only needs to search in youtube to get some very fascinating debates - one religion vs. another, religion vs. atheism et al. If you haven't, look for Bill Maher, Douglas Murray, Majid Nawaaj, Richard Dawkins, Anjem Chaudhary, Athaar Khan etc. The discussions are thoughtful and highly entertaining to say the least.
The ongoing debate in India around conversions (and re-conversions) towards the end of 2014 has been an icing on the cake, so to say.
Now conversions are not new. Some of the major religions in the world openly propagate it and thrive on it. It has been going on for centuries. And while I firmly believe and openly profess the right of a person to believe in anything, and follow whatever path he/she thinks is the right one, I cannot but wonder what kind of a person (the preacher or the converter) would ask someone to forego his/her current religion and join a new one. That person, the converter, has to be a BIGOT or an IDIOT.
There is no way to sugarcoat this. You see, at the heart of the conversion inducement lies a fundamental assumption - that my religion is better than yours! Really, in this day and age, if someone says "my religion is better than yours", either he/she is a complete nincompoop or a vile scheming bigot. There are no other categories I can think of.
If a person decides to leave his/her religion of his/her own volition and go to the next one, there may be some understandable reasons. I will give a few but the list could be really long:
- Caste - If you belong to one of the so-called lower castes, there may be good reasons to embrace a different religion. All Hindus who love their religion need to wake up and realize that calling/treating some Hindus as "lower caste" is self-annihilating. Self respecting people will simply walk away as they should.
- Gender - Need I even say anything. All religions give women the short end of the stick. Some societies have moved away from the barbarism, some follow it today and some would like to get back to it! For females, the best alternative seems to be to show their middle fingers to this entire religion thing and let the males squirm. Pity is that it is the females who seem to be conditioned the most to follow their religions (and accept their second class citizenship status) from early childhood. They hold their religions on their shoulders oblivious of the fact that it is religion that has been burying them down for centuries.
- The Books - Living by the diktats of books that were meant for life in ancient/medieval times might insult some people's intelligence. Most people simply ignore those books, as they should. However if your society judges you by your degree of adherence to medieval books and ideas, it might be time to say goodbye to your religion altogether.
- The Followers - If your co-religionists make you uncomfortable, you can either fight them and make them irrelevant, or ignore them (but for how long), or leave your religion. Would you want to continue to be part of a group whose ideas you no longer identify yourself with.
There could be obviously many other reasons. In fact, I would aver that most people simply don't leave/change their religions out of inertia. They are too busy with their lives to care about it. However we all have to decide what kind of society we want to leave for our children. If we believe in something, we should raise our voice for it. If we don't agree with something, we should fight against it. Silence in this day and age is a privilege we don't have.
The ongoing debate in India around conversions (and re-conversions) towards the end of 2014 has been an icing on the cake, so to say.
Now conversions are not new. Some of the major religions in the world openly propagate it and thrive on it. It has been going on for centuries. And while I firmly believe and openly profess the right of a person to believe in anything, and follow whatever path he/she thinks is the right one, I cannot but wonder what kind of a person (the preacher or the converter) would ask someone to forego his/her current religion and join a new one. That person, the converter, has to be a BIGOT or an IDIOT.
There is no way to sugarcoat this. You see, at the heart of the conversion inducement lies a fundamental assumption - that my religion is better than yours! Really, in this day and age, if someone says "my religion is better than yours", either he/she is a complete nincompoop or a vile scheming bigot. There are no other categories I can think of.
If a person decides to leave his/her religion of his/her own volition and go to the next one, there may be some understandable reasons. I will give a few but the list could be really long:
- Caste - If you belong to one of the so-called lower castes, there may be good reasons to embrace a different religion. All Hindus who love their religion need to wake up and realize that calling/treating some Hindus as "lower caste" is self-annihilating. Self respecting people will simply walk away as they should.
- Gender - Need I even say anything. All religions give women the short end of the stick. Some societies have moved away from the barbarism, some follow it today and some would like to get back to it! For females, the best alternative seems to be to show their middle fingers to this entire religion thing and let the males squirm. Pity is that it is the females who seem to be conditioned the most to follow their religions (and accept their second class citizenship status) from early childhood. They hold their religions on their shoulders oblivious of the fact that it is religion that has been burying them down for centuries.
- The Books - Living by the diktats of books that were meant for life in ancient/medieval times might insult some people's intelligence. Most people simply ignore those books, as they should. However if your society judges you by your degree of adherence to medieval books and ideas, it might be time to say goodbye to your religion altogether.
- The Followers - If your co-religionists make you uncomfortable, you can either fight them and make them irrelevant, or ignore them (but for how long), or leave your religion. Would you want to continue to be part of a group whose ideas you no longer identify yourself with.
There could be obviously many other reasons. In fact, I would aver that most people simply don't leave/change their religions out of inertia. They are too busy with their lives to care about it. However we all have to decide what kind of society we want to leave for our children. If we believe in something, we should raise our voice for it. If we don't agree with something, we should fight against it. Silence in this day and age is a privilege we don't have.
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