Sunday, March 13, 2005

sanyasis, murders and courtrooms

Hey

It is very unfortunate to see the title of my blog. The three words should'nt even be appearing in one single line, leave alone becoming catchy titles. Neverthless, religions & religious leaders are always surrounded by controversy irrespective of what they believe and what they preach.

Religion is a institutionalized system of belief. A belief that is built over strong thoughts, principles, values and practices. Religion is a very strong factor that can cut across the boundaries of the earth and try to bring about people together. It is powerful than science. Whereas science involves compelling facts to believe in or follow, religion runs by faith; and faith does not ask for proof or factual questions. Extreme faith leads to fanatics. While certainly religion is basic necessity to promote harmony, it can be the most devastating weapon of mass destruction ever.

So this brings us to the religious leader. More than a sizable percentage of the people in India who have capability to think believe that politicial leaders are avatars of Satan; that they advocate personal growth at the cost of million lives. It is religion which provide solace to most of these and other people who have lost their ability to believe in the political or judiciary processes. The religious leader becomes the symbol of truth, justice, peace and hope to millions. And if these people choose to taint themselves..........

For survival reasons religions are operated no better that mutlinational corporations and the religious leaders are more businesslike - like the CEOs. While it is not justifiable to corner out one religion Vs another in this discussion, it is to be universally accepted that the symbols of harmony are marred in controversy in almost EVERY religion. There are Christian "fathers" who molest kids; Islamic leaders who advocate jihads and revenge; crazy god-men who have sex workshops; self proclaimed prophets who have shootouts in their garage; Hindu sanyasis who are charged with murders within temple walls. And when such crimes are committed, it puts the governments, peer spiritual leaders and most importantly the people in tough spot. It shatters hope, kills the faith, breaks the beliefs and ruins peace.

The latest to join this bandwagon of tainted spiritual heads (now we know the universaility of the term tainted 'ministers' ) are the Kanchi Shankaracharyas. While the police investigation is on and it is not my wish to 'guesstimate' if the Acharya had a hand in the murder, it is certainly a black mark to the institution of the religion. This only goes to prove that well educated, highly religious and god fearing spiritual men are nothing but MEN at the end of the day. They come with their own weaknesses and egos. The mutt-head may have done nothing bad, but his sheer involvement in a conspiracy is sacrilege.

Iam certainly not in agreement with the way the Acharya was treated by police or the government. There are rapists, muderers & bomb-lords who roam scot free all over the state & country and few of them even end up becoming ministers. Compared to these people or anybody, the Archarya has involved himself to thousands of social activities and bettered the lives of millions of people. So one can argue that this issue should not be made a big picture of. For Godssake, he could have been placed in a mutt-arrest. But it doenst matter. One can do a zillion good things - but they all nullify when he commits a crime, knowinlgy.. When Gandhi decided to withdraw his first agitation in the late 1920s after about 10 policemen were killed in the protest, Nehru & others told him - "it is only a small mistake. Compared to the millions of lives benefiting by this momentum, this needs to ignored and we should proceed with the struggle". Gandhi said -"go and tell this to the families of the murdered policemen. If we dont believe in what we advocate it means we are not ready for it yet." (source: GANDHI - the movie).

The Kanchi case will go on for a long time without reaching a constructive conclusion. Everyone involved - the religion-based political parties, the so called secular parties, the party-sponsored TV channels, other media, peer Hindu religious leader, other religious leaders, authors, publishers, religious terrorist organizations, casteist forces, police, state government, dalit-champions, atheists, blog columnists - in short everybody benefits for the worse from this episode..... it doesnt matter whether Shri Jayendra or Vijayendra had a hand in this underground activity or they are acquited, it just matters that a symbol of purity is destroyed forver - it will take a very long time before faith is restored.

Chao...

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