VEDANTA, THE ONE WAY TO PEACE

Conversion from one religion to another which is one of the key operational principles of proselytizing religions such as Christianity and Islam is the seed of fanaticism and the violence thereof. To believe that one religion is superior to another and, hence, the adherents of such have the divine right to convert affiliates to other religions by allurement or force to their own is the sign of gross spiritual ignorance and the most violent mental attitude towards fellow humans. Spirituality at its highest, as expounded by the Vedanta, upholds the essential oneness of all of phenomena and the divinity of all of sentience irrespective of one's religious or ideological affiliation. Thus, to carry out fanatical programmes of conversion on the basis of such a fractured understanding of life is antithetical to spirituality and provides the bedrock on which stands all religious persecution. The history of the world is a continuous deluge of human blood spilled in the name of a cruel God with a desert heart devoid of any pity for those of His children who choose to stay out of His arbitration. Hundreds of millions down the ages have been sacrificed at the altar of religion, plundered and pillaged, murdered and mutilated, just because they were non-believers in a monotheistic method of the mind masquerading as the sole means to the attainment of the Absolute when all that it has always been was a merciless mechanism crushing out the life of things, and such human barbecue continues to this day on account of scriptural sanction and unholy inducement. The Sanatan Dharma, on the other hand, in trumpet voice declares the divinity of humanity, nay, of all of phenomena, and is a direct counter to the inhuman agenda of these irrational affirmations going by the name of religion. Wherever such a one has spread, it has done so at the point of the bayonet and the sword. If these religions were philosophically sound or scientifically tenable, they would not have had to resort to such a deal of violence to drive their ideological agenda home. But they are weak philosophically, being founded on unique personal revelations, so to say, and thus, these revelations must be forced down the gauntlet of masses of adherents and converts who dare not challenge their validity. The moot point remains that human beings are born into cultures with their specific dominant religions whose doctrines are drilled into them from birth in such a malefic manner that most never recover from such indoctrination and remain captive in their fanatical moulds for life. Irrational assertions of outdated scriptures are so thrust down their systems that they remain intellectually crippled for life with critical faculty surrendered and mind divested of the power to challenge the doctrines in abject submission to such cultural compulsions consequent on them. It is a theocracy all the way and there is no scope for dissent or debate, deliberation or doubt on matters sacred and sacrosanct, neither the sanity of engaging in such an exercise for fear of causing the ultimate offence of blasphemy and so risking personal safety for retribution under religious law is quick and terminating. Conversion into the faith is permissible but not out of it, what a blasphemy itself in terms of natural justice and human rights! There is such a deal of inhumanity involved in the very text of day-to-day living under the auspices of canonical law that one despairs if sanity will ever prevail in large numbers of the followers of the faith for them to be finally able to 'shake off the sterile curse'. As of now the situation seems grim as the movement gathers momentum through conversion and population boom across Africa and Europe. Even in the United States of America its presence is being felt to the consternation of Americans who have not forgotten the horrors of 9/11.

In the United States there is the Bible Belt where theological bigotry prevails to such an extent that Christian missionaries there have their own course of Biblical science which they teach children and debar the dissemination of factual and evidence-based true scientific knowledge. The classic confrontation here is between the myth of creationism and the fact of evolution, or shall we say, between regressive religion and progressive science. The scapegoats are the children who are deprived of a sound scientific education and grow up to be bigots like their predecessors. Elsewhere in Europe, however, the youth are largely losing faith in unscientific Biblical doctrines and are either becoming atheists or they simply are affiliate Christians but do not take their faith seriously. Roman Catholicism is facing a major challenge today as its adherents are no longer attending Church the way they used to earlier. The growth of Islam in Africa and Europe is also a major cause of worry for Christianity. These two world religions, both Semitic in origin and of the proselytizing type, are in a titanic tussle for religious hegemony in the world. The ease of conversion into Islam and the seeming impossibility of conversion out of it on account of the horrific apostasy law that under Sharia decrees death for the offence, perhaps, makes for the rapid increase in the numbers of the Islamic faith. Moreover, the strictures of the faith make for absolute submission of its followers as its cardinal clause and dissent in point of its fundamental doctrine a horrendous blasphemy. This in turn contributes to much private dissent among its disenchanted adherents who dare not profess public dissociation from the faith for fear of violent retribution and social ostracism. But liberal movements are afoot within the Islamic fold. They are gaining ground slowly but surely, especially by women, who are much repressed in a patriarchal set-up of little freedom for them.

The demographic shift of global population towards Islam, as is much touted by Islamic protagonists of conversion and proliferation through population explosion, is a cause of grave concern and is portentous of impending peril for the world in the not-too-distant future. The inevitable clash of cultures between the West and Islam as was prophesied by Samuel P. Huntington two decades ago in his book 'The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order' is an accomplished fact today and the threat of a global war looms large as the rift widens with Islamic cultural infiltration in Europe gaining ground and radicalization of the disoriented youth rising alarmingly. However, the West, Russia and China need to take stock of their perfidious political objectives vis-a-vis the Islamic nations which should neither be taken to be soft soil for State bombardment nor appeased to extract geopolitical advantages. The situation is grim and, with nuclear proliferation a fait accompli, the fate of the world hangs in the balance should there be a polarization of forces on the basis of religious culture culminating in an eventual 'clash of civilizations'. These are not wild imaginings or flights of fancy but are the core issues that are rocking the world today whose degenerate derivative is Islamic terrorism.

The world is in the throes of Islamic terrorism and India is affected by it as well. The 2001 Indian Parliament attack, the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, the 2008 Delhi serial blasts, the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts---these are but a few of the many devastations that our motherland has been subjected to by her errant children across the border. Hindering India's progress by fostering terrorism here will serve Pakistan no good for "he who liveth by the sword shall perish by it". The recent Easter blast in Lahore that killed 69 and injured more than 341, mostly Christian women and children, is a case in point. And who knows, may be retribution for this innocent carnage will also follow in the fullness of time and Pakistan may have to pay dear for the global menace of terrorism whose hub it has been thus far? Pakistan's policy of hurting India by cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, inciting insurgency in the state and abetting the separatists there, all these are being engineered to fragment India but are in effect boomeranging on its perpetrator threatening the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and its possible disintegration and eventual absorption in India. The West is being sporadically hit by terror attacks and is waking up to the full-scale of the threat to its civilization. Islamic terrorist organizations may castigate non-Muslims in any manner they please, may vandalize and oppress whosoever they hold in opposition to their belief-system, plunder, pillage, murder, massacre, destroy and devastate all and sundry just as they fancy, reducing civilization to ruins in the name of religion, but must not be criticized in turn in the domain of the very beliefs they espouse for that will be deemed Islamophobia. What a travesty of natural justice when the oppressor is thus protected by social convention and civic norm to go about injuring the oppressed within the fold and without with impunity! They who dare issue death decrees on hapless authors denying them literary freedom and forcing them to go into hiding or exile, behead infidels to create diplomatic tension between nations, ravage ancient monuments and works of art dubbing them idolatrous to justify their destruction, violate every human right under the sun, they must be safeguarded from feeling touchy about their brutal dogmas when a word of reproach is sounded against them, such is the dichotomy that is plaguing the civilized world when it comes to dealing with radical Islam.

And all these may be summed up in the one malady that afflicts us all, the sense of separateness and the one counter-urge to be together, the essential tending towards integration. The gregariousness of the human species, the formation of clans and tribes, groups and societies, sects and religions, nations and States, all tend to one fundamental end, the finding of oneness in this world of infinite variation, the unity that eludes but which is in the heart of things, secret, yet, sending ever the message that it lies in wait to be discovered, the profound end of evolution, the transcendence of phenomenal life, the infinitude of existence. Man hears this voice of freedom coming from within but mistakes its source as a revelation from without from an omnipotent arbiter inhabiting a higher heaven with a rod to strike the errant one who chooses not to fall in line with the dictum from above. Fear and ignorance and their foster-child arrogance have thus gripped the world for ages, superstition bred in the primitive mind devoid of enlightenment of reason or real inspiration have plunged the world with bloodshed such that we feel the echoes of those ancient clashes even today with technological tentacles holding us in their death-grip like never before. But there is hope as well. Scientific knowledge and the Vedanta are releasing humanity from the insensate culture of its brutal past and the combination of the two will bring forth a renaissance of all that has been highest and noblest in human history with added discoveries of the future ushering in a golden age for all of humankind. There will be resistance, often violent ones, to thwart the progress of man for the conservative element in the organic system is hard to rid of, but victory shall be sealed with fresher generations seeing the light of day and accepting what is true and best in human culture as the future man scales higher peaks en route to the summit of realizations that we are outwardly many, inwardly one. An enforced homogeneity will not work for it is against the basic principle of Nature, the variegation of life built on the foundation of the essential oneness of existence. Unity in diversity will have to be accepted as the one basis for a variegated flowering of the human species. Only on such an enlightened acceptance of each other may we be sure of the promotion of peace and harmony of the peoples of the world, only on such a universal understanding of truth may we be able to truly love our fellow-beings as we move towards a world civilization with a common agenda, the freedom of all, fellowship with all and the well-being of all that inhabit this beautiful home of ours, Planet earth.