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Fervour: This is the season of religious activities in India file pic |
But there's one great passion which surpasses them all. Religion. Not new. Religious conflicts go back to conquerors, looters. People who came to trade were prepared to fight for trading rights.
The destruction of the Bahmiyan Buddhas by the Taliban barbarians was not a new invention. Way back in the 1500s the Portuguese missionaries who came to India for 'souls and spices' decided to destroy the heathen images of Elephanta.
But that isn't what religion is about. Not fighting or proselytizing. It is really a cycle of celebration and wonder to help us deal with the seasons and fearful forces of nature.
This is the season of religious activities in India. The hard days of tilling the soil are over, the labourers are unemployed, the harvest is good. Besides, there is something mystical about the month of shravana which makes people want to pray.
But something is gone wrong. I read a saying in a magazine 'To be religious is to give yourself so that the world may be more beautiful, more just, more at peaceâ¦'
I wish that were true of more than just a few of us, me included.
These last few months have seen a back-to-back display of both the beneficial aspects of religious practice.
But are we seeing too much of hate instead of love? Of brutality and madness in the name of gods?
And yet there is hope for sanity. While people in Orissa are burning homes and people alive, my little friends Abhi and Akhil insisted that their father buy them plain mud Ganeshas.
Usually they have a small garish 'murthi' which is dissolved in a bucket of water. This year Abhi has learnt about the clogging of lakes and the serious damage to the ecology by chemical paints.
So our lakes are being protected. But while all these festivals, which are appropriate harvest seasonal celebration in rural areas, are pure disasters in a metropolis of eight million people.
