LARGE LOOMS THE DARK ... 1

There is an enormity of ignorance about us. Half awake, half dreaming, we move on in this world with neither knowledge of who we are nor where we are from, save from mother's womb, nor where we are headed hereafter if at all we survive death of the physical form. There is a stupendous sense of uncertainty about our lives in every sense of the term, yet, we live clinging to the ephemeral pleasures of life like delirious children dancing in the ball room of a sinking ship oblivious of their impending fate.

This sense of uncertainty about life has given birth to religious certitudes of heaven and earth, unproven, obligatory doctrines to be adhered to, throwing rational caution to the winds and debasing one's faculties to observances irrational and archaic. Such scriptural tyranny typifies radical Christianity and Islam and is the cause of much friction between the two major world religions, especially, when both are proselytising faiths that rely on the numbers of their flock to keep their dominance over the world. Fortunately, Judaism, the other great Abrahamic religion and the most ancient of the three, is free from this impulsion to convert . Hence, the Jews are a brilliant lot but sadly lacking in numbers which, perhaps, is the reason why they have suffered persecution everywhere over the ages.

Coming to the religions emanating from India, they are far more civilised in their approach to propagation of their principles. I say, principles, because Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, all these Indian denominations of the Dharma, are based on the realisations of sages and saints down the ages and are not founded on arbitrary pronouncements by so-called-prophets who would not have stood the test of either science or the standards of the Rishis of India in their claims to prophethood. The Indian dharmic traditions do not proselytise by the sword or by cunning. Hinduism does not proselytise but Buddhism does. However, Buddhism has spread throughout the world by the power of love (virtue/dharma) and never by force. Hinduism is spreading by the strength of its philosophy and by the sublimity of its principles, both theoretical and practical. Jainism is a totally non-violent religion where this doctrine of non-violence has been carried to its logical and often, shall I say, illogical extreme. But all these Indian dharmic traditions are highly enlightened in their approach to the problems of life and the hereafter with reverence for the individual as the core principle and compulsion in faith a blasphemy. The Indian religions uphold democracy of the spirit and are in no way exclusive. Hence, India has never gone out of her borders to persecute other races in the name of religion, ever beholding humanity as a single race, the highest manifestation of the absolute divine principle. In return she has been butchered by invading Islam, killed by the tens of millions by fanatical Muslim warlords and finally amputated in her limbs by perfidious partition of her geographical terrain with never-ceasing malicious warmongering thereafter by the betraying seceding sections. Christianity, in the name of that sublime soul Jesus, has inflicted terrible wounds, too, in the body of the motherland, converting tens of millions by sleight, subversion of indigenous culture and by political machinations. What remains still is unyielding India with her glorious spiritual tradition dating from time immemorial and rolling down the high Himalayas like the rushing Ganga onto the plains below. And, yet, so little is known to the common man who gropes about in darkness.