Aditya Vedula’s Weblog

The best thing about old buds is that you do not have apprehensions about how your image with them is gonna be….!!! They already know what you are, and so things will start rolling the moment you meet them…. On 25th morning when i set out my foot in Chennai Central and met with two of my roomies from college, the thing that we did was laugh our hearts out…!!! I literally mean it because many people here have seen me smile or at the most laugh a little. While in college i used to laugh my heart out and i was famous for my loud laughter… So much that when i was once laughing in my room in the third floor of the hostel, some seniors in the other wing’s second floor which is a good 100-150 feet away were disturbed and ragged all the people in our room the whole night….!!!

Also you are eager to meet them because you are sure you will have a good time no matter where you are maybe a beach, or a movie or a roadside teashop. One of my friends had to literally fight with his girl friend to come with us. She wanted him to spend the long weekend with her, but since we were meeting after almost 2 years, he did not budge and fought with her finally to come… Friendship sometimes can overcome love…

Also you have no inhibitions while talking with your friends… The most sensitive of the topics too are talked with absolutely no fear of ruffling feathers… Yesterday while returning from a beach in the ECR, my friends Abhishek and Mahesh were having a heated discussion about religion, caste, god and many other things with me as an audience and contributing a little. Mahesh being a strong atheist and Abhishek being a believer of the existence of a power greater than man and the guidelines set by religion had a absolutely heated discussion. Had it been some public forum, some riots must have broken out by now. They were talking from killings in the name of religion to basic irrational thinking introduced in humans in the name of religion or in the matter of fact absolutely anything.

I would like to present a few examples used by them but i do declare here that these are just opinions of a few people i know and not mine. Also i do not comment on the correctness of them as this is a free country and everyone can have his own opinion and can express it.

Mahesh started of with the incident of a MLA claiming to have killed many people during the Gujarat riots. He feels that religion here has been the sole catalyst for the riots and that innocent people have been butchered for some reason they did not even care for. He argued that have those people thought more rationally rather religiously there would not have been riots in the first place. But because religion came into picture, it catalyzed the emotions and rational thinking was on the back seat.
The second thing he said was about the caste system that created barriers among people along with religion. Citing his personal life where he being from a staunch tamilian Iyer family, and his lady love being from a much lower caste, his mom even went to the extent of threatening to kill herself if he proceeded with the relationship. This may look silly to some, but it is still very much prevalent amongst us. He said, if there was no religion there would have not been a division among people in the first place and so everyone would have been equal and so no divides among us. He also feels that parents blindly influence their children with their beliefs without first knowing if what they think is right or wrong. This is where the whole thing starts and grows along with us. He said he too thought in the same way till some years back, but turned around when once saw a gruesome incident on TV.
The third thing he said was about the existence of God. He is a non believer and asks people to think rationally rather than believing that there is someone behind all this. There are some other things he said which are not appropriate to tell here.

Mahesh says that if all these people can be educated by some example the ill effects of this discrimination and can see that it can happen to their near and dear ones, they may not try to do this. He says rational thinking can only be induced into people by educating them about the ill effects of religion. He said that till a few years ago, he too was discriminating on the basis of religion but only started thinking rationally once he started seeing the world with his educated view. He said that his education helped him come out of the various wrong practices that were induced by his parents into him from his childhood. He also says in our country even though adults may be discriminated or labeled on basis of their political/professional practices, the children are still labeled according to religion or caste. He remembers being labeled as an Iyer kid during his school and points out that even though someone’s father is a communist, their kids aren’t labeled as communists but as Hindus or Muslims or Christians. So this discrimination starts from our childhood and is infused into our thinking systems by none other than our parents. Thus the only way to overcome this is to educate people about the ill effects and then ask them to choose out of religion.

His whole argument was that, the people who does all things in the name of religion or caste or god, are uneducated and so irrational. He wanted to educate them the wrong way of their thoughts and this try getting them to see the world as he sees or as he feels the right way to see it.

Now my friend Abhishek stepped in with his argument. According to me he was being more rational in countering this argument. He said that religion was something that was created by man. It was created only as a guideline for a way of life but not as a rule imposing on all. That’s the reason there are many religions today in the world. Also it is seen as a way of life and practices which help us ease our lives.There is no religion on the earth which propagates killing of innocent people or separation of people.

The discrimination, riots and killings in the name of religion is only because of some people’s political agenda and to fulfill their agenda but is not actually what any religion propagates. Also it may not be only a religious issue, there are many other things like region, language, food habits etc that can be used by people to discriminate and thus create problems.

From this point on, they went on a much more deeper and heated discussion while i want to touch upon a few things. The humans some centuries ago were not as big as today we are seeing. There were many less people and thus lot less disparities between people. But as the time rolled on, the population increased and so did the disparities. Then came the time for us to invent something that would bind us and at the same time make us act responsibly due to fear or respect to some greater force. Thus came the concept of God and religion. God is an ultimate power which can do almost anything from creation to destruction and that which watches over. Religion is just a way of life prescribed by the elders of the community which is followed by many to lead a peaceful and calm life. Also it acted as a social binder because there were not many religions and thus people had something common to bind. But as the population expanded, there came into existence various beliefs and thus came new religions. But the sole reason for any religion is to make life as peaceful as possible.

Thus religion acted as a binder between people who are disparate. True, it may be fading a little these days and creating many gorish things these days that actually are not the objective of a religion or faith, but even today religious feeling is the single most important and efficient binding agent. But as time passes there may be changes that are needed, but that cannot be forced on people. That may lead to even more unrest and lead to drastic consequences. Thus i feel, educating people may be the only way to induce rational thinking into them. My education have given me the liberty to think good and bad, and thus recognize the real objective of religious beliefs and practices as a way of life but not as rules of life. They are not rules but guidelines which can be followed for our own good. Maybe when times change, we may have some other binding agent in place of religion which may either replace or supplement religion to help us lead a peaceful life, but that can be attained only through self education rather than someone spoon feeding us.

So please help educate everyone, and help think rationally.

P.S: I am not an atheist, I do believe in God as a supreme power above us.
P.P.S: I am no social reformer, but i believe in reforming self prior to social reforming.
P.P.P.S: Please dont get into heated discussions.