OH GOD! ... 1

OH GOD!

What a terrible injustice is this that billions should suffer to help the privileged few savour the pleasures of life and what a pretentious piety, too, to worship a God who rains misery on life on earth for some inscrutable purpose of His! Better to worship each other and make a heaven here on earth instead of wasting resources on a being whose existence is neither known to most nor whose presence ever tangibly felt by any save the saint beyond superstitious affirmations of such. Human ignorance necessitates this faith in a God who lives incommunicado but who, nonetheless, is accessible to petitions and prayers of the people, or so it would seem from the practised piety of billions to poor effect.

Ignorance and imagination make a queer mix that perpetuates the myth of this mysterious being called God whose existence has in no way helped humankind till date beyond causing ceaseless conflicts and schisms in its body politic. Whatever art, architecture and culture have proceeded apparently from faith in God, for they have largely been God-centred, must not be attributed to religion as such but rather ought to be seen as the creative outflow of man stimulated by the existing cultural patterns available. If God were to dispensed with and spirituality, scientific and individual, fostered, the world would not be worse off at any rate. On the contrary, this superstitious cloud hanging overhead and showering curses --- for the Semitic God is largely doing that on unbelievers and professors of non-Semitic faiths --- having gone, human society will be far better off as the decline of the Christian religion in the western world stands to testify.

A Godless world is not a world devoid of spirituality as the Indian dharma traditions have for millenia stood to testify. The Indian civilisation has always been man-centred and not God-centred. The whole idea of spirituality here has been this drive towards creating the ideal man out of the man apparent. And this is the central idea that has impelled Indian civilisation to its acme of perfection in the past. However, with the Islamic invasion from 1300 years ago, civilisation here has received a setback owing to the barbarism inflicted on the Hindus by the invading Mohammedans in the name of their proselytising religion.

Religion as the rest of the world understood it was unknown in India. Here it was ever dharma and not religion that held sway over human affairs and fashioned gods out of men. If later accretions born out of historical exigencies and the complexities arising out of a growing population and a developing feudal system segmented society into a rigid and a ruthless 'jati'-ridden order, it must be remembered that it was a degeneration of the original 'varna' and 'jati' idea that had been implemented for the smooth functioning of society and as the means to the gradual evolution of man from the social plane to the spiritual plane transcending all bounds. The seers and sages who had formulated the principles of righteous living in India ages ago had discovered the divinity at the core of all of phenomena and had attempted to help human evolution along certain preferred channels of self-expression so as to expedite the process. The entire thrust of Indian culture was this drive towards divinity for which society was geared.

Written by Sugata Bose