Of religion, religions and harmony

One should think it quite odd to hear a term like “religious violence” given that religion is said to be all about promoting love and peace. what on earth is religious violence? Isn’t it pathetic or even preposterous that we often hear of religion-based violence, when religion is popularly known, in all cultures, to be the most humanising agent in the world? And, how about terms like religious intolerance, religious strife, religious persecution, religion-based genocide, etc.? These terms which combine the adjective ‘religious’ with all the wrong words like persecution and genocide, appear to be replete with irony. Of course, one would understand, for example, terms like tribal intolerance, tribal violence, tribal genocide, etc. because ‘tribal’ is disparagingly used to mean crude, unrefined or violent. Consider a term like ‘tribal instincts’, which conjures images of aggression and violence. How about the term ‘religious instincts’? Can you ever associate them with violence? Certainly not. Then how are we so accustomed to consider the adjective ‘religious’ being used in association with intolerance, strife and persecution in the same way we do ‘tribal’? curious to say the least!

What has trained us to consider as normal and live with this patent incongruity- that any term signifying cruelty being so complacently linked with the word ‘religious’ as in, for example, ‘religious persecution’ is that we have, pathetically, a history which has been bloodied by religion-based atrocities. How can religion give rise to animosity, cruelty or bloodshed? If religions have made people broadminded, intelligent and sensitive, how can we live in a world where we take something like ‘religious intolerance’ as quite normal? How can we not feel perplexed by such terms? Surely, each religion has given us a divisive and irreconcilable brand or label, which is pathetic.

Of course, every religion is supposed to promote goodwill and fellowship; but how about “religions”? When we move from the singular to the plural; that is, from “religion” to “religions”, the relevant connotations begin to take a U-turn from love, compassion and altruism to intolerance, otherness and antagonism! If we think of our living experience with religion, it has never existed in the singular; ours has always been a world of religions, which have alienated us rather than unite. That’s the unpalatable truth. It would be a futile journey if one were to set out to find a society where religions have functioned as a unifying factor instead of an alienating factor. Can there possibly be an ingrained element in all organised religions – an element, which makes us feel insecure and threatened by the presence of other faiths?

As if ‘religious strife’ were not ironic enough, today we are also talking about ‘peaceful coexistence’ in multireligious societies, as if religious groups are naturally hostile, and badly in need of discipline and intelligence that have to be brought from outside of religion. Isn’t this a sorry state of affairs? How ridiculous it would be, if we were compelled to consider communities of different religions- those who are supposed to be refined by their respective religions, in the same way we do those tribal groups that destroyed each other in those dark ages?

Hence, isn’t it quite important to tease out the component in religion which makes people think in terms of “us” and “them”? Time and time again, human history has given evidence to the fact that “The more, the merrier” doesn’t ring true in matters of religions. Conversely, the world has shown that when it comes to religion, what applies is, “The more, the scarier”. Woeful, isn’t it? Religions have pathetically divided societies into camps where sparks of enmity lay dormant beneath deceptive calmness – only to emerge at the drop of a word. And, we jubilantly call that brittle state “religious harmony” as if it is an uncommonly jolly state of affairs, giving the impression to a cosmic guest on our planet that human religions are naturally seditious and hence, for them- the earth dwellers, a short spell of the so-called religious harmony is something worth partying.

The word religion works like a mantra or magic on most of us. It casts a spell on us and makes us think and behave quite differently from our normal conduct. It is a realm of experience in which we are made to feel self-righteous in how we think and act, and, interpret the world. It’s the only discipline in which death is not considered as final but as a door to an ‘afterlife’. If anyone ever referred to afterlife seriously in any of the hundreds of ordinary human interactive situations or disciplines i.e., interviews, academic/business discussions, law, medicine, psychology, business, economics, engineering, education, etc., he would do so only at the risk of inviting scornful laughter. For example, no court of law would consider mitigating a punishment in consideration of the punishment a ‘sinner’ is deemed to suffer in afterlife, either in hell or in any other so-called life forms. Let alone considering the possibility of retributive justice in afterlife, even a mere suggestion of such a prospect would be treated as a sign of unbelievable naivety. Yet, the very same people, if gathered at their respective holy place- temple, church or mosque, will believe afterlife as more concrete than the lived life. But this is quite normal and sane, you know!

Let’s look for some more examples to understand how a multitude of things being considered absurd in real life are treated as holy truths in the area of religion. The followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions consider heaven and hell as real places. As we know, even Buddhists believe in heaven and hell although they talk about being reborn on this planet in any of the numerous animal forms, not excluding other realms like the so-called pretha loka. However, strangely, none of these believers hope to discover where the heaven or hell is located; no globetrotter has ever evinced any interest in paying a visit to either heaven or hell to see those places and their inhabitants. Nobody who is not out of his mind would hope to find them using a telescope or by digging the earth, though heaven and hell are sure to be somewhere in the sky and in the dark depths of the earth, as we have been made to believe, respectively, from infancy.

Our ancestors literally believed in the existence of these two terrains, heaven and hell, when religion was an indivisible part of their day-to-day life, just as science and scientific thinking are inseparable from modern life. They had never doubted the existence of either heaven or hell although they couldn’t see them. However, with science shedding more and more light on areas of knowledge over which religion had used to wield absolute authority, people have begun to be torn between new knowledge, questioning those religious claims, on one hand, and their long-preserved faith in unverified ‘realities’, on the other hand.

Today, as Sri Lankans, we have become much more sophisticated than we used to be with regard to, not only religion, but also ordinary issues like, for example, politics. People’s maturity was tested recently when in two instances, Buddhism was supposedly slighted by two persons. People are practicing tolerance thanks to secular discourse. Therefore, the relative calm with which the general public have begun to treat religion, i.e., as something increasingly being exploited as a divisive tool by unscrupulous politicians and their sycophants for political gain, we can be optimistic about ushering in a society of enduring peace, resulting from a more objective understanding of this phenomenon called religion.

More importantly, people in general, have realised that their lives have become topsy-turvy because of wily politics and that they have to engage in real life issues instead of the “other worlds”, which politicians are most keen to transport us to, with the promise of unparalleled luxury.

The bottom-line is, no human institution, principle, ideology or concept by itself – be it race, religion, nation, democracy, etc., however much idolized or sanctified it may be, is above human beings and their collective wellbeing. All else are means to it, not ends.

Susantha Hewa