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Preaching peace, waging war
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Devotion to one's god and devotion to one's religious establishment are entirely different. It is dangerous to mistake the will of the religious establishment for the will of God. This spiritual illiteracy is packaged as devotion and is the reason why people express their religious devotion by hating and hurting people of other faiths, say SWAMI AGNIVESH and Rev. VALSON THAMPU.
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Most conflicts have been fuelled by a misuse of devotion.
THE time has come to tell the truth. The truth is that peace is a blessing dreamt by religion and destroyed by the religious elite. The same is true also of human rights.
Religion is born out of our thirst for peace: peace with God and, because of that, peace with the rest of creation. It is a thirst that can be assuaged only with the water of love; love especially for the enemy. For millennia, however, we have been made to drink the hemlock of hate in the name of the God of love. This was never the work of God, but of the self-appointed guardians and custodians of gods. God's benediction on the human family is peace. Islam, for instance, is literally the religion of peace. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shantihi is the emphatic Vedic blessing. Jesus greeted people, not with a Good morning but with the gift of peace, "Peace be upon you". The absolute emphasis on compassion and ahimsa in Buddhism and Jainism are the quintessence of peace. Human beings receive this gift of peace and turn it into a cult of cruelty for each other. They disfigure their religions to legitimise this spiritual vandalism.
The manipulation of devotion has been the foremost strategy in this context. Religions are profoundly rational. Rationality is at the root of all forms of human freedom, especially our spiritual freedom. Conditioning is the opposite of freedom. Human beings who are religiously conditioned to behave unthinkingly. This is misrepresented as devotion. No attempt is made to distinguish between devotion to God and devotion to one's religious establishment. The greatest danger we can invite on ourselves is to mistake the will of the religious establishment for the will of God. This spiritual illiteracy is packaged as devotion. This is the reason why most people express their religious devotion by hating and hurting people of other faiths and not by loving them. God's will is that we love one another, because we cannot in honesty love God if we do not love each other. The religious elite makes us hate and hurt each other as expressions of our devotion to our religions.
All wars and conflicts of the world have been fomented and fermented through a misuse of devotion. Devotion is a unique human faculty. Animals fight less because they are, for aught we know, incapable of religious devotion. The pseudo-religious elite propagates and prostitutes the unique human faculty of devotion. The most potent and poisonous secular religion is cultic nationalism. All forms of nationalism have exploited the faculty of devotion most abominably. Nation is to nationalism, what God is to conventional religions. In times of war, the distinction between patriotism and nationalism vanishes. As the cult of violence rises and spreads, the boundary blurs between loving one's country and hating the neighbouring country, with which we are at war. The latter becomes the proof for the former. So, the children of God fight and kill each other. They also pray to God for victory over their enemies, being convinced that their enemies must also be the enemies of God. At the same time, the scriptures say that all are God's children, equally. It must be very difficult being God, because God does not practise partiality and yet has to heed and obey the partisan entreaties of both parties! It is time we had compassion on God.
Religions have forfeited the right to preach peace by rejecting peace among themselves. This has happened mainly on account of losing the ability to live with differences. Religions are unique. So they necessarily differ from each other, especially in terms of outward customs and practices. It is in the nature of love to acknowledge and transcend differences. Religions preach love, but they have seldom practised this kind of love. Instead, they have conditioned their followers in the art of hating, even as they preached love. This is not because hate is of the essence of religion. The essence of religion is, and will always be, love. But what drives the religious elite is not a culture of love, but of organised vested interests. The first step towards peace is to call the bluff on this universal hypocrisy. As a rule, the people most cynical of the spiritual core of a religion are the custodians of that religion. The reason is simple. You cannot be parasites on a religion and, at the same time, honestly respect its core values.
The conclusion is inevitable: religion as we practise it today is a catalyst for war, not peace. This is because of the divorce between religion and spirituality. The core of spirituality is the discipline of loving God and loving our neighbours as the two expressions of our religious freedom. Spiritually, the quintessential human right is the right to love. Depraved religion has robbed us of this basic human right. With that every other link in the chain of human rights is also weakened and endangered.
In history, secular leaders have done more to define and defend human rights as well as religious freedom than the preachers and keepers of religions. More often than not, religions have served to legitimise various forms of injustice, as in the case of the abhorrent caste system. It has sanitised political misadventures like the Crusades, and sanctified absurdities like the blasphemy laws and their ludicrous abuses in communally charged situations. Religious leaders have had far less respect for religious freedom than secular leaders. The most authentic proof that we are committed to religious freedom is the willingness to respect and safeguard the religious freedom of those who do not belong to our own religious fold.
In all these, power has been the shaping factor. Though love is assumed to be the quintessential religious paradigm, in point of fact it is power that has driven the chariot of religions. This is most evident from the attitudes and advocacies of the religious elite in every religion. Though religions differ from each other in their specifics, the religious elite share a common agenda. Though they insist on the incompatibility of religions, they comprise one homogenous socio-economic class. They have identical views and goals. It is because they are so similar to each other that they make their followers fight in order to perpetuate a spurious aura of difference. As a rule, all chronic fights presuppose kinship. The fights between differing entities or real enemies can be resolved, but the fights between brothers are irresolvable because they are bogus fights. The real enemy of religion is the consumerist-materialistic culture. Hardly any religion is engaged in combating it. Instead, religions themselves are becoming increasingly consumerist.
The key to the healing of religions, which is a pre-requisite for peace, is that the people should refuse to buy the hypocrisy of the religious elite who, very often, treat them no better than animals for slaughter. A pointer in this direction is the apathy of the religious establishment for the development of their community. In India this is most pronounced in the case of the Muslim community. The Muslim leaders have to explain to the rest of country why the rank and file in their community is so illiterate and under-developed today.
The basic business of a religion is to equip its followers to live with dignity and fulfilment in their context. Quality of life in this world should not have to be sacrificed for the sake of some hypothetical compensation in the world to come. The only proof that there is a heaven in the future is its foretaste in this world, here and now. Fullness of life, or the attainment of the highest quality of life, is integral to eternal life. They are the two sides of the same coin.
Wherever the people have been empowered to attain quality of life they have preferred peace. As long as the worth of human life is compromised through crass poverty and under-development, it has been possible to whip up mass frenzy for war and lead the poor into battle like sheep to the slaughterhouse. Poverty and peacelessness go together. It is hypocritical to pray for peace without waging war on poverty, illiteracy and under-development. In recent times we have seen how poverty drives thousands to suicide. That is because poverty degrades individuals and robs them of dignity and worth. It is easy to drug people in such a state with the opium of spurious patriotism and make them offer themselves to the gory gods of war, throwing their lives away like worthless trifles. The rich, who value their life, are rarely persuaded to die for their country; though they are the loudest in recommending suicidal patriotism to the poor. The religious elite too romanticises poverty and sells it to their followers while it wallows in worldly luxury.
Not surprisingly, the rise of religious fundamentalism has hurt the cause of progress and prosperity everywhere. Fundamentalism of every kind involves a regressive mindset. Its logic is contrary to the dynamics of development. That is the story of Afghanistan, a scary prospect that is staring us in the face today.
Mega corruption is intrinsic to fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism is a cover up. It is the mask that the politically covetous wear to hide their self-seeking agenda. The corrupt cannot be serious about the well-being of others.
Corruption and aggression go together; for in a transparent and equitous system, corruption cannot be practiced with immunity. The trademark of the corrupt is a combination of fanaticism for their religion and allergy to the followers of other religions. This religious corruption is the mother of all other forms of corruption.
Communalism signals the corruption of religion. The culture of corruption is allergic to peace and human rights. The basic peace agenda has to be the reformation and spiritual revitalisation of all religions. The first step to peace and human rights is the establishment of peace between religions. Religions need to be rescued from their present framework of conflictual relationship and relocated in a paradigm of mutual cooperation. The second is the acknowledgement of the equal value of every human being, no matter what religions people profess. The prelude to this is the acknowledgement that all people are equal in the sight of God, which is the enduring logic for the juridical equality of all citizens. The third is the restoration of the lost balance between faith and reason in the understanding and practice of religions and a vigorous critique of the idea of devotion in religions.
Any devotion to the religious establishment that is disharmonious with our devotion to God must become unacceptable to all people. The fourth is an uncompromising commitment to development. Development holds the key to the appropriation of the full worth of every human being and is, to that extent, an enterprise with spiritual overtones. The fifth is the democratisation of all religious establishments and the exposure of the hypocrisies that flourish in them.
Religious advocacies must be measured against the values advanced by their respective scriptures as well as the dictates of universal ethics. All these would involve bridging the growing gulf between the scriptures of religions and the lives of the religious communities that profess allegiance to them. Religion must become a domain of truth and justice. Until this happens, religions will preach peace and wage war at the same time.
Swami Agnivesh is a noted social activist and national president of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front.
Rev. Valson Thampu is a distinguished author and peace activist. He is a faculty member of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and an ordained minister of the Church of North India.
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