Religion divides us more than it unites

What use is worrying about spirituality when all around we find a crazily insane culture of greed, selfishness, hate and similar other traits, growing like anthills? Take a glimpse at the past few days … media debating the bailing out of a private airline by the government — that, when flying is not even a right. Legally speaking, it’s a privilege. So how does one even imagine this to be a topic worth discussing when it comes to using taxpayers’ money? Then a woman chief minister tarnishes a rape victim. She concluded the woman was lying, even before investigations began. The chief minister claimed it was a drama to defame her government. Conviction, I tell you.
Then there was the Lamborghini, which hit a cyclist and then crashed, killing the rich driver/owner on a Delhi road. News focused primarily on whose son the rich lad was and the battered remains of the Lamborghini. The cyclist lay critically in some hospital. The rest of us are obsessed with the Indian cricket team and its lousy performance, believing that it is still a sport.
Can spirituality fit here? Who needs it? The people stuck in the grind of the system or the ones running those grinders? The only escape from the grind is to ‘rise’ and join the grinder operators. It must keep churning. Someone’s sweat and blood must be squeezed or else, the whole system will collapse. Hate, therefore, must be preached any which way ... through words, gestures, jokes, stories, speeches, movies, music ... everything. There must be a villain in every story, or else, you know not the art of storytelling. Religions fit so well right there. They preach peace and brotherhood but keep you at bay by a huge dilemma even if you are a peaceful person.
Imagine a girl and boy falling in love. One follows your religion, the other follows the one you do not follow. Will you let them marry or does one of them have to convert? If so, who should convert ... the girl or the boy or whoever doesn’t belong to our religion? Whatever your answer, you will hear the echo from the other side. There we go ... stalemate!
That is the problem with religion. It doesn’t allow us to get beyond our selfish, little selves. It is the impact of the social structures that push us to be more and more selfish ... so much so, that we strip our religion of whatever spirituality and context it ever had. Every religion itself was a quest and a fight against the system we have tied ourselves in. The sad truth is that the system has not only won, it even incorporated religion so well in its own crooked structure, that it gains out of the very thing designed to question its existence.
We tag along, crippled with our lack of reasoning. Unable to feel what the whirling Derveshs and Sufis danced and sang to, we follow mere rituals like praying to god everyday. The biggest crooks often display idols or symbols of their god or religion prominently. And what would a crook ask god? “Pardon me for my sins last week and for the ones I am going to commit next week too.” The only way left then to promote religion then is by creating a sense of threat from another one.
There is but one cry in this war of life – “Rise Up”. To put it bluntly, it only means becoming the ‘grinder’ or the ‘blood sucker’. For, to be up there and live in luxury, the world must remain unequal. If blood must be had, then, someone must be killed. And we use science to shadow our deeds under the label “survival of the fittest”, while in reality, it is the survival of the ‘cunningest’.

parvez.imam@mydigitalfc.com
(The writer is a filmmaker, traveller and doctor)