Like the shadow hovering around the backIn the moonlight night,when the world sleeps
Today some dreams again came to meTo wake me up from my sleep.
Why it happens, time and time again?
When the rains stop and the drops keep on falling on the medow
From the roof above
I think of u................
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Secularism
Definition:
What is secularism?
I tried to search the word in the most popular search engine called Google.com
And I got 616,000 search results!!
In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I got the definition of Secularism as:
Secularism means:
· In philosophy, the belief that life can be best lived by applying ethics, and the universe best understood, by processes of reasoning, without reference to a god or gods or other supernatural concepts.
· In society, any of a range of situations where a society less automatically assumes religious beliefs to be either widely shared or a basis for conflict in various forms, than in recent generations of the same society.
· In government, a policy of avoiding entanglement between government and religion (ranging from reducing ties to a state church to promoting secularism in society), of non-discrimination among religions (providing they don't deny primacy of civil laws), and of guaranteeing human rights of all citizens, regardless of the creed (and, if conflicting with certain religious rules, by imposing priority of the universal human rights).
Very well explained!
Problem Summery:
India is not a country with a single religion, language or race. From the Mongoloids in the Northeast and other hilly areas, to the Nigroids of the Andaman, to the Caucasians India is home to a thousand of different races, a melting pot of thousands of languages. India is spread from the hills of Hindukush Mountains to the Indian Ocean.
We though live in the same country still we are divided because our languages are different, our food habits are different, and our dresses are different. When somebody in the south eats his rice with rosom, somebody from the North says 'How can a Person eat so much of rice?’. When a person from the Northeast eats pork as the most delicious food in the earth then one from Gujrat says 'how can somebody eat such a dirty and filthy animal?’ From clothes to thinking pattern many things are different. Whereas people from the East are open in the outlook towards the relationship between genders on the other hand the states of UP, Bihar etc are feudal and orthodox in thinking.
So difference exists between us. Whenever differences exit conflicts will surely arise. That is the basic tendency of any human being. Because of this tendency only the human race has progressed. We want to do better then the Neighbors, I will do better than he will etc. These feelings only drive us to excel. A Northeasterners will always think that his food habit is the best, his language is the sweetest, his thinking is the right kind of thinking and a person from the Kerela will think the same thing.
So are we secular? Is anybody of us? Can anybody of us meet a person minus his caste, creed, language etc? Or are we all un-secular fanatics; because we cannot withstand another person’s food habit, his language, and his line of thinking? No we are not. Because until and unless we don’t go and forcefully impose our language, food habit or thinking on somebody else we don’t become fanatics. We have lived under this condition hundred of years and in none of time there has been any major conflict between the people.
However, conflict has arisen on a different front and that front is the most formidable. This is bigger than any language, food, culture or anything else. It is bigger than family, it is bigger than the thousand years of heritage that you have, it is above country and it is above God.
This most forceful, above anything is Religion. And in India as in the case of Food, Religions are also a plenty: though 80% of the total population is Hindu, India also is the home of more than 120 million Muslims--one of the world's largest Muslim populations. The population also includes Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Jews.
As it always happen the main conflict is not between the first and last but between the first and second, that is usual. Nevertheless, if this competition had been confined to class room then it would have been of no concern, but it has spilled to the streets, between countries, nuclear arms are involved, Peoples lives are involved. Thousands of people are dying in bomb blast, in riots; thousands of people are left homeless, parentless.
Analysis of the problem
Origin of Religion:
“Durkheim was a leading French sociologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His classic work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life was published in 1912. He sought the origins of religion in society, rather than in the individual human mind. Durkheim suggests that religion always involves a distinction between things that are sacred and things that are profane. He also distinguishes magic from religion, arguing that magic, though it may involve sacred things is not real religion, because it is done individually.
Unlike Frazer, the other authority in the research of Origin of religion, Durkheim was not very interested in magic, though, like Frazer, he saw it as the ancestor of scientific practices. Because Durkheim's main interest was the ways in which society is bound together, he investigated the role of religion in doing this, and sought the origin of religion in communal emotion. He thought the model for relationships between people and the supernatural was the relationship between individuals and the community. He is famous for suggesting, "God is society, writ large." Durkheim believed that people ordered the physical world, the supernatural world, and the social world according to similar principles. He wrote about this in an essay, Primitive Classification, which he co-authored with Marcel Mauss. He noted, for example, that in Native societies in the southwestern United States, the division of the world into four directions and four seasons corresponds to the division of society into four clans, each of which holds spiritual and political prominence during the appropriate season. His student, Robert Hertz, wrote an essay in which he suggested that the simple division between left and right, in virtually all cultures, takes on great spiritual and supernatural significance, with the left being seen in a negative light compared to the right. We can see this in the derivation of some English words, e.g. dextrous, which derives from the Latin "dexter" (right), and sinister, which is the Latin for "left." We do not possess a total ordering of the world, with "left" and "right" being linked to a long list or other oppositions, like "female" and "male" and "light" and "dark" or "the sun" and "the moon", but many cultures do.”
Cause of the Problem:
Therefore, if we take the above observation as true then religion was born in the hands of people, which was the need of the society. And people living in a single society believed in the similar values or guidelines, which were put forward so that the people lived with some fear for the supernatural and this was God.
Unlike the other religions, Hinduism is not an Institutional religion. There is not a single institution, which works as the guardian of the religion. People in the region spread out from the Hindukush foothills to the Himalayas believed in certain common believes, some common rituals and they were being called Hindus and a religion was born.
As this was not a Institutionalized religion for the benefit of the society work division took place among the people and this work division gave birth to the caste system. With the society divided in to different castes people from the caste working lesser manual labor started thinking themselves as people of higher caste. And they manipulated the whole social structure to rip benefit from it.
Then these regions from the middle century were exposed to the people from the other regions in the form of Aggressors. And these aggressors came with different regions of the world with different faith. And the priests traveling with these aggressors when saw the social fabric of the religion divided along different castes with hatred for each other, with the higher castes oppressing the people from the lower castes, they saw the opportunity( I am not using this word in wrong sense) to spread their own religion.
Therefore, here were born people of different religions Hindu, Muslim and Christian. I am not mentioning the other religions like Jainism, Buddhism etc as they were born in India only and can be considered as different flavors of Hinduism only.
As we can see that the priests mainly targeted the people who belonged to the lower castes in conversion and these were the people who were poor, economically and financially backward. Luring these people was easy and when those poor people saw that there was another religion, which will give them more respect in the society, a position that was their dream until that time.
And this way the society was divided into different religions, which till a few days back had a single religion.
Independence and Secularism
Then came the Independence. The English government drew a thick line among the different religions in India with the sole aim of dividing the people along religions and increase the communal tension so that this feeling weaken the freedom struggle. The power hungry politicians played along the British government’s game and divided the country on the basis of religion. But the whole country was not divided, just to satisfy a single persons power hunger a small portion was made into Pakistan and the other part become a democratic secular country called India.
But the seed of religious politics sown by the British did not die down. In the course of time, the power hungry politician of the free and independent country played along the line of the policy of divide and rule. For the sake of votes, they ignited the same feeling of religious fanatism.
The people who are poor and educationally backward can be easily lured by the people with vested interests. As we can see during the demolition of the Barbri Mazid or any other incidents like that, the people who took part in the activities were mainly from the villages who didn’t have any proper education and who were invariably poor. If we look into Kashmir, and believe what the many newspapers say the youths lured by the terrorists are the youths who are poor and take up the guns or bombs for the lure of a few thousands of rupees. If we look into the Mumbai or Gujrat riots, the people who fought in the streets in the name of religions were not some religious pundits nor were they from any rich family. The people who are already frustrated because of the economic conditions and ignorant because of lack of education end up in the hands of religious fanatics and they are the who have to take the burnt of the unrest. Even if we look into the international arena, the countries, which are known as the breeding ground of the religious terrorists, are very backward economically. Though there are exceptions but these exceptions are ignorable and can be considered as exception only.
Some people may say that religious fanatism and terrorism are two different entities. Here I am not talking about ideological terrorism or fight for rights by some of the groups in the Northeast part of India or any other part. But the reasons of these terrorisms are the same with religious fanatism, where in the former fight is the name of some ideologies and other the fight is in the name of religion which is also an ideology only.
Solution:
So as we can see that the main challenge that the secularism is facing today is not from a few religious fanatics but from the lack of Education and poor Economic conditions by a section of people. I personally believe that every person wants to be happy, want to lead a happy life, want to get married, have children, and sees the children growing up. This is the basic nature of people. But when somebody sees these not happening because of reasons not reachable to him, he tries to solve the problem by other means. And one of these means is nothing other than terrorism.
To counter the growing menace of religious fanatism people have to be educated to gain employment (I don’t think just knowing how to read and write make one educated, as the government wants us to believe). The private sector should be encouraged to open up as much Industries as much they can in the areas, which are known to be the breeding ground of terrorists.
As the people will be educated and will be able to earn livelihood in a decent manner, they will not heed to the lure of the religious fanatics, they will not go to the street in the slightest provocation to burn buses and houses. And the moment that day will come we will see the true dawn of a truly secular country.
What is secularism?
I tried to search the word in the most popular search engine called Google.com
And I got 616,000 search results!!
In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I got the definition of Secularism as:
Secularism means:
· In philosophy, the belief that life can be best lived by applying ethics, and the universe best understood, by processes of reasoning, without reference to a god or gods or other supernatural concepts.
· In society, any of a range of situations where a society less automatically assumes religious beliefs to be either widely shared or a basis for conflict in various forms, than in recent generations of the same society.
· In government, a policy of avoiding entanglement between government and religion (ranging from reducing ties to a state church to promoting secularism in society), of non-discrimination among religions (providing they don't deny primacy of civil laws), and of guaranteeing human rights of all citizens, regardless of the creed (and, if conflicting with certain religious rules, by imposing priority of the universal human rights).
Very well explained!
Problem Summery:
India is not a country with a single religion, language or race. From the Mongoloids in the Northeast and other hilly areas, to the Nigroids of the Andaman, to the Caucasians India is home to a thousand of different races, a melting pot of thousands of languages. India is spread from the hills of Hindukush Mountains to the Indian Ocean.
We though live in the same country still we are divided because our languages are different, our food habits are different, and our dresses are different. When somebody in the south eats his rice with rosom, somebody from the North says 'How can a Person eat so much of rice?’. When a person from the Northeast eats pork as the most delicious food in the earth then one from Gujrat says 'how can somebody eat such a dirty and filthy animal?’ From clothes to thinking pattern many things are different. Whereas people from the East are open in the outlook towards the relationship between genders on the other hand the states of UP, Bihar etc are feudal and orthodox in thinking.
So difference exists between us. Whenever differences exit conflicts will surely arise. That is the basic tendency of any human being. Because of this tendency only the human race has progressed. We want to do better then the Neighbors, I will do better than he will etc. These feelings only drive us to excel. A Northeasterners will always think that his food habit is the best, his language is the sweetest, his thinking is the right kind of thinking and a person from the Kerela will think the same thing.
So are we secular? Is anybody of us? Can anybody of us meet a person minus his caste, creed, language etc? Or are we all un-secular fanatics; because we cannot withstand another person’s food habit, his language, and his line of thinking? No we are not. Because until and unless we don’t go and forcefully impose our language, food habit or thinking on somebody else we don’t become fanatics. We have lived under this condition hundred of years and in none of time there has been any major conflict between the people.
However, conflict has arisen on a different front and that front is the most formidable. This is bigger than any language, food, culture or anything else. It is bigger than family, it is bigger than the thousand years of heritage that you have, it is above country and it is above God.
This most forceful, above anything is Religion. And in India as in the case of Food, Religions are also a plenty: though 80% of the total population is Hindu, India also is the home of more than 120 million Muslims--one of the world's largest Muslim populations. The population also includes Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Jews.
As it always happen the main conflict is not between the first and last but between the first and second, that is usual. Nevertheless, if this competition had been confined to class room then it would have been of no concern, but it has spilled to the streets, between countries, nuclear arms are involved, Peoples lives are involved. Thousands of people are dying in bomb blast, in riots; thousands of people are left homeless, parentless.
Analysis of the problem
Origin of Religion:
“Durkheim was a leading French sociologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His classic work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life was published in 1912. He sought the origins of religion in society, rather than in the individual human mind. Durkheim suggests that religion always involves a distinction between things that are sacred and things that are profane. He also distinguishes magic from religion, arguing that magic, though it may involve sacred things is not real religion, because it is done individually.
Unlike Frazer, the other authority in the research of Origin of religion, Durkheim was not very interested in magic, though, like Frazer, he saw it as the ancestor of scientific practices. Because Durkheim's main interest was the ways in which society is bound together, he investigated the role of religion in doing this, and sought the origin of religion in communal emotion. He thought the model for relationships between people and the supernatural was the relationship between individuals and the community. He is famous for suggesting, "God is society, writ large." Durkheim believed that people ordered the physical world, the supernatural world, and the social world according to similar principles. He wrote about this in an essay, Primitive Classification, which he co-authored with Marcel Mauss. He noted, for example, that in Native societies in the southwestern United States, the division of the world into four directions and four seasons corresponds to the division of society into four clans, each of which holds spiritual and political prominence during the appropriate season. His student, Robert Hertz, wrote an essay in which he suggested that the simple division between left and right, in virtually all cultures, takes on great spiritual and supernatural significance, with the left being seen in a negative light compared to the right. We can see this in the derivation of some English words, e.g. dextrous, which derives from the Latin "dexter" (right), and sinister, which is the Latin for "left." We do not possess a total ordering of the world, with "left" and "right" being linked to a long list or other oppositions, like "female" and "male" and "light" and "dark" or "the sun" and "the moon", but many cultures do.”
Cause of the Problem:
Therefore, if we take the above observation as true then religion was born in the hands of people, which was the need of the society. And people living in a single society believed in the similar values or guidelines, which were put forward so that the people lived with some fear for the supernatural and this was God.
Unlike the other religions, Hinduism is not an Institutional religion. There is not a single institution, which works as the guardian of the religion. People in the region spread out from the Hindukush foothills to the Himalayas believed in certain common believes, some common rituals and they were being called Hindus and a religion was born.
As this was not a Institutionalized religion for the benefit of the society work division took place among the people and this work division gave birth to the caste system. With the society divided in to different castes people from the caste working lesser manual labor started thinking themselves as people of higher caste. And they manipulated the whole social structure to rip benefit from it.
Then these regions from the middle century were exposed to the people from the other regions in the form of Aggressors. And these aggressors came with different regions of the world with different faith. And the priests traveling with these aggressors when saw the social fabric of the religion divided along different castes with hatred for each other, with the higher castes oppressing the people from the lower castes, they saw the opportunity( I am not using this word in wrong sense) to spread their own religion.
Therefore, here were born people of different religions Hindu, Muslim and Christian. I am not mentioning the other religions like Jainism, Buddhism etc as they were born in India only and can be considered as different flavors of Hinduism only.
As we can see that the priests mainly targeted the people who belonged to the lower castes in conversion and these were the people who were poor, economically and financially backward. Luring these people was easy and when those poor people saw that there was another religion, which will give them more respect in the society, a position that was their dream until that time.
And this way the society was divided into different religions, which till a few days back had a single religion.
Independence and Secularism
Then came the Independence. The English government drew a thick line among the different religions in India with the sole aim of dividing the people along religions and increase the communal tension so that this feeling weaken the freedom struggle. The power hungry politicians played along the British government’s game and divided the country on the basis of religion. But the whole country was not divided, just to satisfy a single persons power hunger a small portion was made into Pakistan and the other part become a democratic secular country called India.
But the seed of religious politics sown by the British did not die down. In the course of time, the power hungry politician of the free and independent country played along the line of the policy of divide and rule. For the sake of votes, they ignited the same feeling of religious fanatism.
The people who are poor and educationally backward can be easily lured by the people with vested interests. As we can see during the demolition of the Barbri Mazid or any other incidents like that, the people who took part in the activities were mainly from the villages who didn’t have any proper education and who were invariably poor. If we look into Kashmir, and believe what the many newspapers say the youths lured by the terrorists are the youths who are poor and take up the guns or bombs for the lure of a few thousands of rupees. If we look into the Mumbai or Gujrat riots, the people who fought in the streets in the name of religions were not some religious pundits nor were they from any rich family. The people who are already frustrated because of the economic conditions and ignorant because of lack of education end up in the hands of religious fanatics and they are the who have to take the burnt of the unrest. Even if we look into the international arena, the countries, which are known as the breeding ground of the religious terrorists, are very backward economically. Though there are exceptions but these exceptions are ignorable and can be considered as exception only.
Some people may say that religious fanatism and terrorism are two different entities. Here I am not talking about ideological terrorism or fight for rights by some of the groups in the Northeast part of India or any other part. But the reasons of these terrorisms are the same with religious fanatism, where in the former fight is the name of some ideologies and other the fight is in the name of religion which is also an ideology only.
Solution:
So as we can see that the main challenge that the secularism is facing today is not from a few religious fanatics but from the lack of Education and poor Economic conditions by a section of people. I personally believe that every person wants to be happy, want to lead a happy life, want to get married, have children, and sees the children growing up. This is the basic nature of people. But when somebody sees these not happening because of reasons not reachable to him, he tries to solve the problem by other means. And one of these means is nothing other than terrorism.
To counter the growing menace of religious fanatism people have to be educated to gain employment (I don’t think just knowing how to read and write make one educated, as the government wants us to believe). The private sector should be encouraged to open up as much Industries as much they can in the areas, which are known to be the breeding ground of terrorists.
As the people will be educated and will be able to earn livelihood in a decent manner, they will not heed to the lure of the religious fanatics, they will not go to the street in the slightest provocation to burn buses and houses. And the moment that day will come we will see the true dawn of a truly secular country.
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