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From: Satinath Choudhary <satichou@yahoo.com> Date: Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:17pm Subject: Happy Diwali & Eid, and some Action For Human Rights! Dear Friends, I have friends who do not celebrate Diwali. They dig deeper into what is the celebration for? ???Diwali celebrates Rama's homecoming, that is his return to Ayodhya after the defeat of Ravana and his coronation as king???. This is the same Rama whose name continues to be invoked for the purpose of attacking Muslims and Christians. It is the same Rama who is supposed to be ???aadarsh purush??? (ideal man). A man who orders his wife to walk through fire to prove her chastity! Mind you, she was supposed to have been abducted by someone, and Sita might possibly have been forcibly violated. That does not matter. If she had been violated, she had to burn! Well, today not many people may burn their wives for getting raped. But what kind of behavior does it promote? Then there is the story of beheading of Shambuk Muni, who was born among the lower caste, yet he had the temerity to perform a ???yagya???. Such an absurd and abnormal behavior on the part of a low caste individual had to be the cause of famine and hunger! The great Rama goes and beheads the impudent low caste Shambuk! And lo and behold! At once it brought rain and end of the famine! Dhol, gawar, shudra, pashu, nari; skala tadan ke adhikari. Drum, illiterate, low castes, animals, and women; all of them are deserve to be beaten! Such caste and gender related ???morals??? abound through all of Hindu scriptures. In light of these are we justified in celebrating any of the Hindu festivals? But what about the social aspect of these celebrations? Can??™t we push the religious aspects under the rug and just celebrate them for the sake of socializing, good food, wishing a good day, and renewing friendship? I think we should be able to do the latter. As for the former (pushing the religious aspect under the rug), we can do better. We should remember those things as an act of introspection. I don??™t believe we need to forget our past, nor we can. What is important is to draw lessons from the past rather than use it for fueling our vanity and bigotry. That will happen only if we always deal with our religion and traditions from the point of view of making them better, weaning senseless and useless things from them. That cannot happen until we give up the notion that we need to be ???proud??? of our religion, tradition, heritage, etc. I think it will be beneficial for all of us to feel that for many years of our life, when we did not have much analytical capacity, nor were we encouraged to think critically and analytically, we were totally submerged into religion and tradition and told to be proud of them. Once we have matured and developed capacity to think seriously and rationally, let us start doing the same, and try to undo some damage that might have been done to our psyche because of our earlier submersion into our religion and traditions. Well, what about other religions and festivals associated with those religions? I don??™t know about them much. So I better not say much. But a couple of things are clear to me. Those are that fundamentalism in any religion is no good. Let us look at a couple of meanings of the word ???fundamentalism??? given in dictionaries: 1. A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism. 2. An organized, militant Evangelical movement originating in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century in opposition to Protestant Liberalism and secularism, insisting on the inerrancy of Scripture. 3. The interpretation of every word in the sacred texts as literal truth If strict interpretation of sacred texts and its ???fundamental principles??? is no good, how can a loose interpretation suddenly become good? At best it may not be as bad, as senseless and as illogical as the former! We know for sure that except for some missionaries engaged in social work, religion is mostly invoked for the purpose of attacking someone else, looting their property, and acting out our hostility. We know that vast majority of evangelical fundamentalist Christians have voted for Bush to kill Iraqis and loot their oil. We know that fundamentalists among Muslims & Hindus don??™t mind killing and maiming innocent individuals. We know that devout Buddhists in Shrilanka have been enraged over alleged conversion to Christianity. It does not matter whether the allegation of conversion was true or false. Free thinking and freedom to choose a religion is a fundamental human right. And hence if someone persuades another person to convert to his or her religion, there is absolutely not ground for anyone to hate the person who may have done persuasion or the one who got persuaded. But then how about so many nice and sumptuous celebrations associated with various religions? Shouldn??™t we celebrate them? Well, I feel that if any group has a tradition of celebrating and enjoying without hurting others, we should all join the celebration and have some fun and frolic, but do it with a grain of salt. We should spend some time in introspection and pulling ourselves out of blind ???faiths??? we have been thrown in! So celebration of religious occasions is fine. But it should be associated with a critical introspection of oneself, one??™s own religion, and one??™s own traditions, everything that may be considered to be one??™s own, and try to become a better person, better community, and make a better country and world! By the way, thanks to a message from our friend Meha we know of an effort by Amnesty International whereby they are trying to have people send messages of hope, peace and solidar 30302/55257_diwaliaction2004.pdf nestyusa.org/interfaith/pdf/diwaliaction2004.pdf">http://www.amnestyusa.org/interfaith/pdf/diwaliaction2004.pdf The link gives instances of two individual victims of human rights abuse and two organizations fighting for human rights, and suggest sending messages of hope, peace and solidarity to them. They suggest bringing together family, friends, and members of our community to make Amnesty International??™s Action for Human Rights a part of our family??™s holiday. They suggest including children in this letter-writing activity; they can make holiday cards, adding simple messages of optimism, harmony and camaraderie. I would suggest going a step further. I would suggest sending such a letter at least to one person or organization that is not mentioned at the above mentioned website. In particular, we could try to think of the victims of our own religion and religious fundamentalism, and that of our traditions, and send some letters to the victims and to the organizations that may be helping them. Such an action would serve the additional purpose of introspection of the kind I have mentioned above. In addition, the message of peace and solidarity may spread wider to far flung areas around the world, and with copies thereof to Amnesty making them aware of many more instances of individuals and organizations that deserve our admiration, acknowledgment and our endorsements. So, friends, I wish all of you a very happy Diwali and Eid with just enough introspection that does not spoil your joyous mood!-) Take care, Regards, Satinath ----------------------------------------------------------- INDIA THINKERS NET quote "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." : John Kenneth Galbraith ------------------------------------------------------------ |
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