Stop telling me about your religious views !!!

Born in a great country like India which follows a positive type of secularism is a great thing which happened to me and I am quite proud of it. Here the government at least according to the constitution(theoretically) supports all religions the same. People are free to follow whichever religion they like to. Instead of being indifferent to religions here all religions have the same status and receive the same support from the state. As long as no single religion gets any special consideration from the government’s side it’s fine for me.

Being a positively secular State the people of India enjoy some rights. We can believe in any religion or abstain from following all and openly confess our religious belief. Preaching our belief is also fine to an extent as long as you don’t talk trash about other religions. Belonging to a middle class Hindu family I feel obliged to follow Hinduism, at least pretend if I don’t want to hurt the religious sentiments of my parents. I am quite sure if I start following any of the other hundreds of religions out there, my parents are not going to disinherit me and I also know their sentiments will be hurt which they will openly express. This implies there will be some consequences.

My parents introduced me to Gods, some of those infinite number of Hindu deities. They also taught me there’s only one God and we just address him/her with different names. I have a deal with my parents such that whenever there is a religious festival happening I will visit any nearby temple. If it is Vishu then I go see the sculpture of Krishna placed in a temple and so and so. It is interesting to note that although there is only one true god behind all the infinite Gods it is not acceptable for my parents if I go see only Krishna during Ganesh chaturthi.

Religion is something which gives people hope. In a world where everything is pointless and chaotic, religion tries to find a meaning for life. It is a necessary part of human character development. It provides a certain standard for life where people are expected to behave in a manner which is considered good in return for presents from some higher form which we call God. Some customs like untouchability and sati are certainly bad and will definitely get slowly forgotten. These two were abolished by law and are now frowned upon by society.

What I was trying to express is that practising any religion is fine. If you can live a righteous life not based on any religion but just with a sense of moral principles it’s also a good thing. You have the right to follow whatever thing you believe is right without physically or mentally hurting others. It is OK to try and convince another individual to believe whatever shit you believe in, but you should know when to shut the fuck up and just leave.

The ways in which we can physically hurt others is too obvious as one cannot throw bombs at random people or crowds just for the sake of something which is written in a religious text. The mental hurting is somewhat challenging as there can’t be strict rules about what can be done without mentally hurting someone else. If an individual named Naruto who strongly believes everyone should follow a particular religion and then whenever someone does not follow that religion Naruto gets mentally hurt. In this case it is very obvious that the individual mentioned here is out of his mind. The mental hurt thing is quite confusing in lots of circumstances.

The important thing is generally people should abstain from talking about any specific religion. Most of the time when someone talks either positive or negative stuff about any religion, I have noticed the listeners tend to get polarized. When people get polarized especially on such sensitive things as religion, it doesn’t end well for society.

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