Religious Freedom
A Subcontinental can be a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Jew, Animist, Atheist or something else. Every Subcontinental chooses his religion for himself. There is no compulsion in religion. Every Subcontinental can preach any religion he wishes to others. Nobody ought to stop him from doing that. Between the various religious communities, between religious sects, an attitude of mutual respect, consideration, tolerance and genuine friendship and trust should reign.
It is the duty of every Pan-Subcontinentalist to fight for the right of every Subcontinental to practice and preach any religion of his choice. That said, it is also a duty of the Pan-Subcontinentalist to fight for freedom from Religious Merchants, who act to divide people of the Subcontinent, to impose themselves on other people and to decide the freedoms and duties of the common man. The Subcontinent has seen very severe divisions in the name of religion. That makes it mandatory upon each Pan-Subcontinentalist to approach Religion with a some healthy scepticism.
There are Religious Segregationists. They will tell you that people of the faith they purportedly claim to represent, cannot mingle with the followers of another faith, they cannot live with followers of another faith. They will give various excuses ranging from racism to paranoia. They will tell you that they are racially superior perhaps based on some genealogical lineage, or some general physical attributes. They will play the victimhood complex card, and tell you about the threat emanating from some other religious group, again by quoting history selectively or by dishing out fabricated lies. They will tell you, the other religious community is unclean because of some customs and habits, or even due to poverty. They will tell their religious laws do not allow a co-habitation. These people are catering to one’s ego, one’s fears, one’s socially-honed sense of asthetics, one’s ignorance of one’s own religion.
Then there are Religious Fascists. They want to control the lives of others – what they are allowed to say, what they are allowed to do, how they are allowed to dress, how they are allowed to think. Often they coerce people to relinquish all association to their age-old customs, which preexist their conversions to the new faith. They are also the ones eager to use barbaric means to make people accede to their diktat. All this they do in the name of religion. Neither are these religious fascists willing to allow somebody to change his religion if he finds their interpretation of it suffocating. It is the duty of the Pan-Subcontinentalist to win back religion from the throes of these religious bigots. The religious bigots should be given only two choices – migration to some place outside the Subcontinent where his views would be acceptable and can cause no harm to the Subcontinent and its people, or migration to some place outside the World of the Living.
There are also Religious Uber-Passionists. They are of the view, that if their sentiments are hurt, they have the right to take the law into their own hands, and to bring barbaric justice to whoever they think partook in “blasphemy”. Saying or doing something against some prophet, emissary, symbol, name or edict of God, as understood by some religion, is at the most a crime against God and it is up to God to punish the person. Blasphemy is not for adjudication by civilized humans. What however can be adjudicated is speech, writings, or signs which ‘‘with deliberate and malicious intention’’ insult the religion or the religious beliefs of any class of citizens.
Religious Sexists are those who discriminate against women citing scripture. In fact discrimination does not really capture the atrocious behavior some religious groups show towards their women, which can range from constraining their freedom to stoning them to death. There needs to be an awareness, that it is not for Men to lord over the lives of Women, and no religion is made for Men only or for his Lordship over Women, except occasionally perhaps in a symbolic or a formal sense, but with no practical intention.
The most problematic however are the Religious Warriors. The use of a militant wing by some religious community or religious organizations can only be justified if there is a history of unprovoked violence against the group, when the religious group has an established policy of neither inciting violence nor committing aggression upon others, and if the militant wing is trained to cooperate with state security authorities, use minimum force and use force only for the defense of the religious community. But there are of course also religious militants who use violence, aggression against others because others simply belong to a different religious group; or when they consider it their religious duty to use intimidation, bullying, aggression, violence against others; or when they have no qualms about subverting the state through violence; or when they consider the slightest provocation, a provocation where there was no physical harm to their community, as sufficient grounds to commit aggression onto others; or when they first provoke others, and then upon a similar response from others, see it reason enough to escalate, to use terror or dispropotionate amount of force onto others. Such religious groups are a danger to society.
Religious Segregationists, Religious Fascists, Religious Uber-Passionists, Religious Sexists and Religious Warriors are all elements which desecrate religion and its name. These are the snakes which are constantly infusing venom into the arteries of society, all in the name of religion, all through the veneer of respectability, all by constantly abusing their position and responsibility as representatives and scholars of religion. As long as these elements exist, they will always remain a potent threat to the dignity of women, freedom of own religious community, security of other religious communities, and ultimately to the viability of a Unified Subcontinent.
It is imperative upon the Pan-Subcontinentalists to first recognize all these elements and then to fight their poison. First and foremost, it is the responsibility of Pan-Subcontinentalists of the same faith to stand up to these elements, but in the end all Pan-Subcontinentalists share this responsibility. The Pan-Subcontinentalists can start by giving them some friendly advice to change their ways and agendas; by questioning their religious interpretations and their methods; by enlightening the public by demasking them; by using all avenues of law to clamp down on them; and by confronting them head on, with the use of force if necessary. There should be no mistaking: all these elements have to be crushed one way or another.
In whichever system they have gained a foothold, one must consider that there are vested interests in ensuring that this religious hardline system prospers. These vested interests may be part of this system, they may be from the same country or they may be from abroad. One must be on look-out, if these vested interests are outside the subcontinent. However and Whereever these vested interests may be, the Pan-Subcontinentalists should ensure their defeat.
One thing the Pan-Subcontinentalists have to be always cognizant of is that religion promises paradise in after-life, but Pan-Subcontinentalists want more than that, they want to have a paradise on the Subcontinent itself, not just for themselves, but for their children, their grand-children and for the whole of their blood-line, not in after-life, but in this life itself, and promises of some paradise in after-life is something too little, especially because it is just a promise, a promise by some merchants of religion of questionable integrity.
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