Religion. A thing that brings the masses together. A thing that tears the masses apart. A thing that transforms the calm to the irate; the rational to the inane; the neutral to the extreme. All in an instant.
I feel religion is rather over-rated. Do you really need it? No good has ever come off it! Of course there are the obvious disadvantages - the religious disagreements, the fights, the riots. But, let’s steer away from those for a minute and look at the sheer nuisance value that comes with living in a multi-religion nation. Just simple everyday things...
Driving: Have you ever noticed how people from different religions tend to drive differently? Sure, we’ve heard jokes about the bad Pune traffic, but, take a moment to observe the driving styles of different people. Two examples: Muslims and the Sikhs.
- Muslims drive like minority rights and rules apply even for driving on the road. Have you ever observed that? Aggressive and insane with the “I must go first. By the praise of Allah, I’ve earned it!” attitude.
- Sikhs drive with pretty much the same attitude that they live their lives. Do now, think later. Or better yet, “What’s to think, yaar? Just do!”
Public Hullaballoo: This annoys me no end. I don’t think there’s another country in the world where you can block the road with a procession at any time you bloody well feel like, or a country where you have so many processions to begin with. Secularism zindabad, but really, if there’s not a religious procession on, it will be a marriage baaraat clogging up the already narrow roads. So, yes, religion and marriage – imagine that – two things that are screwing the world over! But, whom can we blame anyway? We Hindus have hundreds of Gods that we prey to, which amounts to thousands of ‘auspicious dates’ that we MUST celebrate. Add to that, the huge Indian population, and what do you get? Millions of processions! Millions of traffic jams!
Peer Pressure: All religions come with certain stereotypes. These aren’t all bad, but they do tend to add a bit of peer pressure on us lowly humans. Case in point, the Christian community. You are invited to a Christian party and what is the first thing that comes to your mind? You expect that one of the guys will whip out a guitar and the whole gang will start belting out Elvis Presley songs till the wee hours of the morning. Right? Imagine the amount of pressure that kind of expectation puts on a poor Jessel Lobo that doesn’t know how to strum a guitar to save his life!
Marriage: I’m guessing this qualifies under the obvious, but, I’ll still talk about it! Well, I’ll talk about it because marriage is the only thing I could think of to get our beloved Parsi community into the fray – talk about stereotypes, huh! Yeah, we’ve heard all the jokes, we know them all. But, somehow any joke on the dwindling Parsi community and their “thy shall not marry a non-Parsi” regime still manages to crack me up! The small sweet little Parsi community is shrinking by the generation. As the options for the Parsi eligible become, well, really ineligible, I hope they snap out of the inbreeding concept and seriously explore the option of expanding their gene pool!
Praying Out Loud: I believe that religion should be in one’s mind – you really don’t need to tell the world about it. Unfortunately, in India, the saying should really be, “I’m religious and I’m going to shout it out loud from the mountain tops”, rather than the romantic version of the phrase. For if you shout out “I’m in love” from the mountain tops, chances are that you’ll get bashed up by some Shiv Sena goon that couldn’t get lucky on Valentine Day. On a bad day, and I’m not exaggerating, a mere 1 km walk through the streets of Pune can get you blared at by loud speakers from a mosque, a temple, a marriage band and a procession.
So, how many of you agree that religion is unnecessary? You can come to me with “I’m not religious, I just know there is someone watching over me” bit, and I’ll take that. I’m sure there’ll be those who will come at me with “you can’t generalize all this…BASTARD!” I don’t mean to generalize either. But, by and large, that’s how it is, isn’t it? I don’t mean to hurt anybody’s religious sentiments here. Although, what about the sentiments of the non-religious? Nobody seems to care about that!
In the end, I'd just like to say:
Trust me when I say this…
All religions need to be shaken…
The world would be a better place…
If everyone just ate bacon!
4 comments:
Hey Sid.... I believe that religious activities do create problems for so called non religious people. However, don't you think life would be really monotonous with these religious activities? You are a bachelor right? When you get married...wouldn't you want a big bang marriage with all the cultural events? Believe me I'm not against your thoughts but the flip side has also valid points& reasons.
Hey Yogi...I do agree with you that there are positives as well...the food, the festivals or even, like you said, marriage functions...but why can't these things be done a little discretly...and not affect (read disrupt) the entire world around you?
Sid , I agree with your view of religion being unnecessary and I believe its importance is surely gonna fall in coming centuries as I see no benefit of it .This topic is my fav and I hv had some lovely dicussions around this on our BB.Many of our generations are atleast open to discussing this ...I tried speaking this with my mom , uncle , dad and they r the least receptive with this subject ...its basically just hardcoded without any logic /questioning ...it is just blindly followed which irritates me.
However I dont agree with you on your correlation of driving and religion . I feel human temperament/nature and religion hv no connection . Sharmila
Hey Sharmila...I hope what you say actually happens...but, I have my doubts! Judging by the amount of fanaticism around coupled with the reducing tolerance levels of people, I have seen the situation only going downhill! I feel our ability to be able to laugh at ourselves (esp in the name of religion) has gone down by the generation - feel the previous generation was far more open to that!
On the driving bit, well, that's just my observation :)
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