Secularism

In our contemporary political situations around the world makes this word more relevant now: Secularism - A doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations

It makes more relevant to the Indian politics as this is being used as a trump-card by major political parties during and after the elections. Also this is one which decides the fate of few political parties.

I have a fundamental doubt on secular parties/government; which party/government is called truly secular?

If it considers the religious sentiments of the people before making any policy decisions

or

If all its decision a be independent of the religious believes.

In our country or for that matter most of the countries around the world do consider the religious sentiments of the people. But the truly secular government should NOT consider religious sentiments of the people or at least NOT give more importance to it and instead takes the decision based on the merits of the case alone. This is extremely important for the multi-religious county.

I would like to mention few incidents where Secularism laughed at our secular decisions.

Uniform Civil Code (UCC)

All major political parties except BJP oppose the Uniform Civil Code. The so called Atheists, the communists too oppose this proposal. This is been looked as a brain-child of the BJP and hence it’s been looked as an anti-minority agenda. We should not be worried about the intention of the BJP, but look into this proposal with an open-minded and see what this proposal can bring to us.

If the parties/governments are truly secular they should drop their short-sighted religious vote bank politics and stand up to their secular credentials.

I believe that UCC will bring all the religions and people together. It’s every party’s responsibility to sit together and discuss this UCC and pass the resolution in the parliament.

Don’t you think every citizen in this country needs to be treated the same way? Don’t you think every citizen in this country belongs to the one rule of law? Why we need every religion to have their own set of rules?

Forced Conversion

This has been the accusation against the few religious institutions in India for long time. Being an atheist I am not able to understand why any religion should indulge in such activities? If every religion believes in oneness of God, then what’s that they are going to get by converting people to their religion?

In India, this is being run like a business for many years by the few missionaries. I too came across few people who try to market that their god is great.

If a government is truly secular, it has the responsibility of stopping this forced conversion too. But none of our parties/government has the guts to question it because of their vote bank politics and also due to external pressure from the Christian nations.

If this issue gets unnoticed it can lead to lot of incidents like Kandhamal.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. ~George Bernard Shaw

Sethusamudram Project

This project proposes linking the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar between India and Sri Lanka by creating a shipping canal and thereby it would provide a continuous navigable sea route around the peninsula. This is the dream project for tamil people for almost 150 years.

From the story of Ramayana we know that bridge was built by Ram’s monkey army but the scientists said that sand and bars at the bottom of the straits are actually a natural phenomenon. (similar formation is seen in many places around the world)

While, the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) has informed the Supreme Court the story of the existence of any man-made bridge is baseless and there is no any evidence that the bridge was built by Lord Ram’s monkey army or the events of the Ramayana ever had happened. The ASI later said that it couldn’t declare Ram Sethu as national monument because of no established scientific evidence that might prove the existence of the characters or the events of the Ramayana.

But due to political compulsions and not having true secular thoughts, we have stopped this project for the religious sentiments.

It looks like Secularism is a new religion and everyone wants to get converted to it without following it!

Roles and Responsibilities of God

Being an Atheist I tried to argue on the possibility of “no god” with few of my religious friends. Later I realized that faith is the one which cannot be debated logically because it’s ‘faith’, and hence doesn’t need reasoning. Now I no more question them on the existence of god but instead started asking different questions. (I too search for answers).

• What are the roles and responsibilities of god?
• God is for us or we are for the god?

My further discussion will be with the following assumptions:

• God exists and he only created everything in the universe
• God is omnipotent
• God is omnipresent

I will also discuss with the human point of view as I am mostly associated with them.

What are the roles and responsibilities of god?

If this universe had been created few billion years ago, what are his roles and responsibilities after that? Is he sleeping? Is he busy creating more universes?

I got multiple answers from the religious people and I am highlighting 2 of them for our discussion:

• God controls or responsible for every action of the human
• God has given the freewill to the humans and will not involve in the day-to-day activities of us. But he will maintain an account of every good and evil you do.

If God had already decided your every action, it means we are living in a Matrix.

What’s the greatness of the omnipotent person in creating humans and controlling them? If we are controlled by a creator, then why do we need to pray him or praise him for what he is? What he is getting by making people suffer? What’s his objective behind it?

If God has given us the freewill, then we are responsible for our actions and not god. All he does is just maintaining the account of our good/sins. We pray to him to guide us to the right path, save us from suffering and we also believe he listens and acts on it… if that’s the case, don’t u think he is an emotional idiot, who listens to the prayers and help them?

If God is not listening to our prayers, then why we pray?

God is for us or we are for the god?

I often hear that people wanted to reach god and its their objective. We have built many temples, mosques, churches just to spread the god’s noble characters.
In fact many of the religious fanatics become a martyr to reach the god. If god wants everyone to reach him, why he created us? What’s noble cause in it?

If god is for us, then he is responsible for guiding the people who pray to him. Why we need to pray to god for every suffering we go through, don’t you think he should help us voluntarily?. “If he can cure a blind person, why not he cures the blindness itself”, asks Christopher Hitchens in Got is Not Great.

As Orhan Pamuk points out in Snow, "Faith in God was not something achieved by thinking sublime thoughts and stretching one's creative powers to their limits. Its just being part of a community"

Even if god exists, to me he seems to be a Selfish, Sadist, Tyrant, Emotional..., who needs to be fought against instead of praising/loving him.

Lets not spend our energy, money and time in praying god; lets leave the god freely and start living our lives. Our lives are in our hand.

As Bella says in Notting Hill, “The more I think about things, the more I see no rhyme or reason in life”.