I find myself becoming quite religious in my
antipathy to reli…no, actually, that should be, Religion. I find myself
proselytizing and preaching on the dangers of institutionalized faith. My
semi-libation – I’m clumsy and tend to spill things – toasts to polymath
Dawkins are starting to take on the aspects of ritual, tending uncomfortably
towards dogma and cant. My accountant tells me that she is considering
submitting my bar bills as a tithing expense. I find myself surfing
anti-Religion web sites for arguments that I then plagiarize and pass off as
revelations. Hell, I’ve found myself taking out my articles of faith, polishing
them, and presenting them as the only Truth that makes sense, ignoring, as I do
so, the obvious holes in my logic, over-riding objections with the power of
oratory. In short, I seem to have become Religious.
Oh, I have my justifications and my
rationalizations, but, they all boil down to fear. No difference there, then. I
mean reli… Religion got started because of fear in the first place. Fear of the
night. Fear of the unknown. Fear of thunder, lightning, and the voices of the
gods in the howling wind, the naked ape cowering in the sturm and whimpering in the drang
. All of which is as close to a selfie as I care to get. Not that I'm scared of thunder and the voices of the gods, you understand. Those have been explained, to my satisfaction, by rationality and science No, my fear is of the rising tides of militant religiosity.
Saffron the designated color of
Hinduism, as opposed to the condiment, seems to be subsuming the philosophical
and much heralded Colors of India. That’s colors, plural, as in many and
varied; a heady mixture of creative concepts to explain the mysteries of life;
each limning, shading, on occasion merging, with the other, to create a
reasonably amicable, (for a given value of amity), system of social order that
has served the sub-continent well for a few thousand years. The philosophies were
not so much competing, as much as finding their place in the pavane of governance
and individual rights and responsibilities. At least, that’s the way it used to
be. Not so much now.
Now, here, in this land where diversity, and the
right to be different, was enshrined in the Constitutional clauses of
sovereignty and nationhood, the monoculture rigidity of militant Hinduism, the
Religion, is, with increasing frequency, occupying the public spaces of India.
Saffron robes have become the official office wear of an increasing number of
legislators and law makers, who in their zealotry are passing laws and ordinances
that pay little heed to the rights of the Other. Saffron rituals take precedence minority ways, and no back talk. Taking cues from Mosque and
Church, Hinduism has embraced apostasy (apostasy – in a philosophy – can you
dig it?) as a control mechanism. No more multiple pathways to the god head;
one, and only one, saffron hued, officially approved, mandated, road to
salvation. A philosophy that accepted, encouraged, questioning, and dialog is
being perverted into a religion with all its authoritarian implications.
I have to stop. This is getting depressing.
