We Indians preserve a very repugnant taste about caste, creed and religion. These three are among the building columns of Indian society. These three act as an identity triangle that helps in chalking out an Indian from a rabble. We are overtly religious; we volunteer more rituals than any other sects in the world for it is being indoctrinated in our mind and soul that rituals constitute religion and beholding the rituals like puja, fasting, tonsuring and being vegetarian rejects the idea of incorporate he oriental plants like garlic and onions but allows vegetables like potato, tomato etc. This idea, according to the religious grim heads would give us eternal salvation (hereafter, thereafter, ever after… you don’t say)
The miniscule head of ours bangs with a huge thud when we go with the contradiction that the same bulb of garlic plays a vital role in religious uses. Garlic has been regarded as a force for both good and evil uses. To ward off demons, monsters and vampires bulbs of garlic are even worn around the body and hung in the windows. Now, people, if you look into the absurdity of matter you will you can observe that just for their sheer need the same orthodox , sandalwood paste branded people will hang the whole garlic bulb around their rickety neck or at the entrance of their home to ward off evil.
If we presume ourselves as a questionnaire and ask a very pretentious and clichéd question to self: WHO IS A HINDU??? The answer will come as follows:
# A normal stud would gladly fold his arms and respond:
“I mainly support Lord Shiva, since he looks handsome, very close to human beings and chanting his name I can tame any kind of fear( … Got the craze after reading Shiva trilogy by Amish) and sometimes Maa Saraswati since she is kind of sweet and very cute.
# You meet a Gujarati person and the person will amaze you by greeting “Jai Shri Krishna” (in the honour of Krishna) and you will stumble upon the thought “What the hell!!” Since he answered your question in his greetings.
# You ask the same question to a traditional Indian woman and she would start hymning the names of 108 Gods and Goddesses with their specialities that she preaches day in day out.
There is a dilemma in arriving at a consensus about, who is the prime God or Goddess in Hinduism? All Hindus don’t worship one God. Some are monotheists, some polytheists and some pantheists. Even monotheists don’t worship a single deity. Some worship Rama, some Shiva, some Krishna etc. Some don’t worship male Gods, they worship female deities like Kali, Pārbati etc. Coming to the polytheistic regime, they worship all Gods. They will worship Shiva- the destroyer, Vishnu- the curator and many more; the list goes on with Gods and their taglines.
We can easily view the entropy in the selection of Gods and as a result it’s creating a chaos in the mind of people questioning their faith. Due to the presence of multitude of divinity a normal person cannot determine which God to follow and when to follow. We must believe that Hanuman, the dark faced species of ape is a deity in its own terms and rights. Since he was an observant and the most obedient of Rama and Sita the sobriquet “ Bhagwan” or “Shri” usually precedes his name. There is a fun fact about this “Lord with tail”. In some parts of India, the Tuesdays are being celebrated as the birthday of Hanuman. My question is very simple; I just want to know the name of the registrar who registered his birth.
Religion poses many tests of conscience. This isn’t a drawback. If anything, it’s one of the reasons for the existence of organised faith. But of course there are extremes of opinion about how acceptable it is to disagree with religious doctrines. My insistence is that religion must make people how to think God for themselves would be seen as extreme or may deem the person as an iconoclast by those at the opposite far end of the spectrum. The fine line between hypocrisy and reform can be perceived well when we see parents from middle class restrict their children to discuss sex related issues in public but the same set of parents encourage their children to learn Padawali (A book of hymn) where the flirtation of Krishna with his Gopikas (cow herd girls) are eloquently inked in the rhyme and rhythm. As expertly said by renowned arts editor and cultural critic Sadanand Menon
Go to any Vaishnavite temple in India and you will find the 12th century poet Jayadev’s work Gita Govind being recited during the morning prayers. The Sanskrit verse has several lines in which Radha urges Lord Krishna to make love to her…While religious minded men and women seem to have no problem chanting these lines, they seem to get offended when a couple kiss in the park.
The hypocrisy of Hinduism doesn’t stop here. It takes a funny turn towards the culinary habits of us Indians. As discussed earlier, according to Hindu religious doctrines keeping fasts for a prolonged period and only eating veggies proves to glow our life with eternal light of salvation. People doesn’t it look bit odd that how keeping fasts and eating only vegetables can enlighten our life. Since if there is the omnipresence of God then it is quite sure that he won’t commit any sorts of activities that might compromise his image in his community. As given in the treatises that God have created human beings in his own image and if human beings perform activity like fasting for a prolonged period, if we say in terms of God then it’s hurting the omnipotent because a guardian would not tolerate anyone to question his guardianship.
Talking of the religious bigotry, in food, I would like to example from an event which took place in Osmania University, Hyderabad where a group of Dalit who were the former students of the University organised a Beef Festival, to assert their culinary rights in public by cooking and eating beef Biryani in public. The festival started out well but got disrupted by the acrimonious intervention of some right wing Hindu fascist. The festival was very much significant for some Dalit students as they organised to fight against the food fascism created by the Brahmanical Hinduism that connects caste with food. Culinary politics and contacts with animal play a huge role to discriminate people in the Caste System.
But unfortunately there are very few heretics who would question the basis of ramshackled and stigmatised rituals of bigotry. The so called religion is being injected into minds of the people with or without their consent. The majority of mass pray not by their soul but due to the fear of eccentricity present in the religion.
