THE NEED FOR A NEW RELIGION — WITHOUT A GOD
On rare occasions when I visited a gurudwara or a temple, I made it a point to watch people making obeisance before the Granth Sahib [the holy book of the Sikhs] or their favourite God. Those who took the longest time to rub their noses on the ground were usually those who more than others craved forgiveness for having lied, stolen, fornicated and made illicit money.
George Bernard Shaw once wrote that every intelligent man makes his own religion though there are a hundred versions of it. Evolving a personal religion for myself has been a lifelong quest. It has been as the renowned poet Allama Mohammad Iqbal put it:
Dhoondta phirta hoon main, ai Iqbal, apney aap ko
Aap hee goya musaafir, aap hee manzil hoon main.
(O Iqbal, I go about everywhere looking for myself
As if I were the wayfarer as well as the destination.)
I was born a Sikh and reared in Sikhism. My parents were orthodox Sikhs who observed the traditions of the Khalsa Panth (unshorn hair and beards for men and carrying other emblems of the militant fraternity). Many religious rituals were observed in our home. A prayer room was set apart for the Granth Sahib. One or the other member of the family had to instal it on its pedestal in the early hours of the morning and put it back to rest in a cupboard in the evening. Everyone was expected to say his morning prayer (Japji) and read a hymn or two from the scripture before he or she came to the breakfast table. The evening prayer (Rehras) was a joint affair. We took turns in reciting it while others listened. Most of us also recited the last prayer of the day (Keertan Sohila) before switching off the lights.
My grandmother, with whom I shared a room till I was 18, spent the best part of the day mumbling prayers. There were frequent Akhand Paaths (non-stop reading of the Granth Sahib from cover to cover by a relay of paathees, professional priests, which takes two days and two nights). Occasionally, there was also a Sampat Paath, in which a favourite hymn had to be recited after every one of the 5000 hymns of the Granth; this could take upwards of a fortnight. All these paaths (at which attendance was de rigueur) were accompanied by keertans (devotional songs) sung by professional raagis (religious singers). On the birth anniversaries of the first Guru, Nanak, and the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, as well as the martyrdom anniversaries of the fifth Guru, Arjun Dev, and the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, we joined processions taken out through the streets and worshipped in public gurudwaras.
As a child of five I was initiated into reading the scriptures and could recite them by heart. At the age of 17, I underwent a baptismal ceremony (amrit chakna – sipping of ambrosial water), which symbolized that I had joined the Khalsa (the pure) fraternity. While in college, I began to question the value of these rituals and the need to conform to Khalsa traditions. However, I decided to go along with them rather than create trouble for myself. I took pains to understand the prayers I had been reciting. Good keertan continued, as it does to this day, to touch my emotional chords.
Meanwhile, while studying at St Stephen’s College (in Delhi), I attended Bible classes. Although the emphasis was on the New Testament and the life of Jesus Christ, it was the language of the Old Testament, particularly the Psalms, the Song of Solomon and the Book of Job, that I found myself drawn to. Later, while working on the translations of the Sikh scriptures, I found so many references in them to the Vedas, Upanishads and the epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata (including the Bhagvad Gita or just Gita), that I decided to study them to better comprehend the meaning of my own Gurubaani or Gurbani (the voice of the Guru). Interest in religion also made me read whatever I could on Jainism, Buddhism and later developments in Hinduism. Islam was the last religion I turned to, largely to free myself of anti-Muslim prejudices, which had been instilled in me as a child. It was during the seven years in Lahore and my close association with Manzur Qadir (a leading jurist) that I began to question many of the assumptions made by all religions. He was a Muslim but did not offer namaaz (prayer) either at home or in a mosque even on the festival of Eid; neither did his uncle, Saleem, who was India’s tennis champion for many years and preferred living like a European aristocrat, rather than a Muslim nawab. Being Muslim meant little to them besides an accident of birth. Neither of them bothered to make religion an issue. I did. No religion evoked much enthusiasm in my mind. By the time India gained Independence on 15 August 1947, I had gained freedom from conformist religion and openly declared myself an agnostic.
Following the publication of my two volumes on Sikh religion and history in 1963 titled A History of the Sikhs by Princeton University Press and the Oxford University Press, I was invited by the Spalding Foundation to deliver three lectures on Sikhism at Oxford University and also by Princeton, Swarthmore and Hawaii Universities (all three in the USA) to lecture on comparative religions. Once again I went over the scriptures and lives of the founders of the world’s major religions.
Having done all this writing and lecturing, I felt mentally well equipped to express myself on religious beliefs and practices. And I feel more strongly than ever before the need to have not only a personal religion of my own but also to evolve a new set of beliefs for those Indians who have the courage to think for themselves. It is based on the assumptions that most people need some kind of faith to live with; that the emotional contents of that faith are best provided by the one into which one is born; and whose rituals have formed an integral part of his or her upbringing.
I feel what is required today is the acceptance of what is basic and rational in the religion of one’s birth after removing from it the accretions of dead wood that have accumulated around it and militate against reason and common sense. I present this, the blueprint of my religion, for consideration and comment to my more enlightened countrymen.
Before I do so, I will first deal with five items, which are generally regarded as the pillars of all religions: Belief in God; reverence for the founders of religions; the status of scriptures; the sanctity accorded to places of worship and pilgrimage; and the use of prayer and ritual. Since most of what I have to say on these topics may appear critical and negative, I will thereafter posit items for positive acceptance.
The Concept of God
Every religion has its own name and concept of God. He is Jehovah, Ishwar, Parmatma, Rabb, Khuda, Allah and Waheguru. He may be symbolized in the shape of idols, animals or other natural phenomena, or he may be regarded beyond physical representation in any form. He may be believed to be the only one, a trinity or a multiplicity of Gods. However different the ways of conceiving Him, what all religions have in common are the powers they attribute to Him. He is the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer; He is Omniscient (all-knowing), Omnipotent (all-powerful) and Omnipresent; He is just, benign and merciful to the faithful and at the same time an angry God who metes out dire punishment to transgressors. Whatever He be, we have to ponder over questions posed by the philosopher-saint, Adi Shankara, over a thousand years ago and find answers to them:
Kustwam? Ko Ham? Kutah ayatah?
Ko mein janani? Ko mein taatah?
(Who am I? Where did I come from and how?
Who are my real father and mother who gave me birth?)
If there are none, then we have to admit that we have got the God business all wrong. Nevertheless, different religions have given different answers to these questions. These answers can be grouped into two categories: Those given by the Judaic family of religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and those given by the Hindic family of religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
The Judaic group maintains that God created the world, sent out Adam and Eve to propagate the human race and created all other forms of life. According to it, one day, all life on earth will end and there will be a Day of Judgement when people will rise from their graves to be judged for the good or evil they did in life and accordingly be sent to heaven or hell. The Judeo-Christian-Muslim view of life is linear: it has a beginning, a middle and an end.
The Hindic view of life is cyclical: There is no beginning and no end but a continuing, unending cycle of births, deaths and rebirths. There is no heaven or hell (although Hinduism has words like swarg for paradise and nark for hell) but would have you believe that reward for good deeds and punishment for evil acts are meted out in the form in which a person will be reborn. Its real equivalent to heaven is release from samsar/sansar (world) and union (yoga) with the infinite that is God. It is moksha (salvation). For the evil it will be a purgatory of rebirth in all the 84 lakh forms of life (joon) before release will be granted.
However more sophisticated the Hindic theory of samsar may appear in comparison to the simplistic Judaic version, there is as little evidence to prove its validity as there is about Adam, Eve and the Day of Judgement. The honest truth is that we do not know where we come from, whether or not there is a divine purpose in our existence on earth; nor do we know where we will go when we die. The stark truth of our ignorance is summed up in a couplet by Shad Azimabadi:
Hikayat-e-hastee sunee
To darmiyaan say sunee
Na ibtida kee khabar hai,
Na intihaa maaloom
(What I have heard of the story of life
Is only the middle
I know not its beginning,
I know not its end.)
Under the circumstances, the only honest answer an intelligent person can give to the question ‘is there a God?’ is: ‘I do not know.’
It may be recalled that Gautama Buddha was put the same question, not once but several times, by his chief disciple and cousin, Ananda. The Enlightened One did not deign to reply. The only conclusion we can draw from his silence is that he either wanted people to find out the answer themselves or it must be taken as an admission that he did not know it himself.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, in his scholarly commentary on the Surah-ul Fatiha, in the first of his three-volume translation and commentary on the Quran, Tarjuman-ul Quran, maintains that all mankind was, at one time, monotheist but with the eruption of different religious systems, departed from the concept of one Almighty God. He further maintains that the Islamic idea of the unity of Allah was the most advanced because it refused to give God shape or form and went beyond the Upanishadic definition in negatives neti, neti (not this, not this) but gave God positive attributes by calling him the Great Provider (Al-Razzaq), Ruler of the Universe (Rabb-ul Aalameen), Benevolent and Merciful (Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem) and the final arbiter of human actions (Malik-i-Yawmiddeen – Master of the Day of Reckoning).
The Maulana also quoted the Quran in support of all creation being attributed to God. His argument was much the same as that of the French Enlightenment writer-historian François-Marie Arouet (popularly known as Voltaire): ‘We can scarcely believe that there can be a watch without a watch maker.’ What neither Voltaire nor the Maulana – nor for that matter anyone else who believes that every effect must have a cause – has been able to substantiate is that if God is the cause and the world the effect, who created God in the first place? It is the primary cause, the causa causans, about which we know nothing.
Instead of entering into a pointless debate on whether or not God exists, it is more important to bear in mind that belief in the existence of God has little bearing on making a person a good or a bad citizen. One can be a saintly person without believing in God and a detestable villain believing in Him. In my personalized religion, there is no God.
Founders of Religions
In every religion, the founder is more revered than God. This can be ascribed to the simple reason that we know more about the founders of our faiths – be they described as prophets, messiahs, messengers, avtaars or gurus – than we know about God. They were human beings gifted with superhuman powers, which enabled them to sway the masses. With the passage of years, so many legends grew around them that they ceased to be human and became incarnations of God, His progeny, His specially chosen messengers with direct access to Him.
The classic instance of giving the messenger a higher status than God Himself is found in present-day Islam. You may make jokes about Allah, but woe betide anyone who makes the slightest insinuation against His messenger, the Prophet Mohammed: Ba Khudaa diwaanaa Basho, ba Mohammed hoshiaar! (Say what you like about God, but against Mohammed, beware!) This attitude explains the fate of Salman Rushdie for having written The Satanic Verses; the rumpus created against the eminent US economist and one-time ambassador to India, Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, when it became known that he had given his pet cat one of the names by which Prophet Mohammed was known, Ahmed; and the burning down of the offices of The Deccan Herald in Bangalore because it had published a short story entitled ‘Mohammed the Idiot’. The story had nothing whatsoever to do with the Prophet but was about a demented man bearing the same name.
The truth of the matter is that we have hardly any reliable historical evidence on what the founders of different religions were really like. By deifying them we have done them grave injustice. We have made them incomparably good and beyond human striving. In my personalized religion, I would give prophets, avtaars and the like their due respect as important historical personages who did good to humanity. But nothing more.
Scriptures
All scriptures are held in awe either as words of God or divinely inspired utterances. I have read them in translation many times and am astonished by the emotional fervour they arouse. The most fervent are those who never bother about the meanings of the words they chant or recite by rote. I am sure that if they bothered to read them after being translated into a language they understood, a good bit of their enthusiasm would get diluted. Without exception, their contents are unscientific – one can’t blame their authors as, in their times, science was hardly advanced. In addition to being contrary to science, they are repetitive and tediously boring. Those which enshrine codes of conduct and ethics undoubtedly serve a useful purpose in providing stability to society. Some passages in most of them are also of a high literary quality. I often quote the Bible, the Quran, the Upanishads, the Gita and the Granth Sahib to buttress my arguments. But as works of literature, they do not compare with the great classics of Kalidas, Hafiz (Khwajeh Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz-e-Shirazi), Saadi Shirazi, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, Mirza Ghalib, Rabindranath Tagore, Mohammad Iqbal, Faiz Ahmed Faiz or even some lesser poets.
Mine is a personal reaction not shared by anyone else I have met. Most people are moved by their scriptures. They recite or chant them, swaying their heads in ecstasy as they do so, and claim to get peace of mind as a result. So who am I to tell them that their responses are conditioned by constant indoctrination and are a form of self-hypnosis? However, surely they cannot fault me when I maintain that the scriptures, for whatever they are worth, should be read and understood and not worshipped. This is what Guru Nanak had to say about people who recite prayers without understanding them:
Sudh na budh na akal sar
Akkhar ka bheyo na lahant
Nanak say nar asl khar
je bin gun garabh karant
(They have no comprehension, no brains in their heads
Who do not bother with the meaning of words
O Nanak! Such are real donkeys
Who vaunt their pride without having done any good.)
It is ironic that it should be the followers of Nanak, who proclaimed God to be nirankar (formless) and forbade the worship of idols, who treat the compilation of his and their Gurus’ writing as an idol worthy of worship. They drape the Granth Sahib in silk and brocade, rouse it in the mornings and put it to rest in the evenings, take it out in processions on holy days, and have it read by professional granthis (priests who read the Granth Sahib) all through the night while they themselves slumber. There are fixed rates for granthis: novices can be hired on cheaper terms than the adept whose pronunciation is clearer.
Sikhs are not the only ones who indulge in such gross travesty of scriptural sanctity. Hindus have their own non-stop recitations; the Muslims go one step better by distributing portions of the Quran to the congregations, which all of them read at the same time so that the entire Quran is finished in less than an hour.
Places of Worship
I believe that the only legitimate place of worship is the home. However, there are religions like Islam, which enjoin congregational namaaz in a public mosque as a religious obligation. Christians also exhort attendance in churches on Sundays and at masses. In Hindu and Sikh temples, keertans and kathaas (sermons) are conducted regularly; without congregations to listen to them, they would lose much of their impact.
In a country like India, which has few diversions that the poor can afford such as clubs, pubs and cinema houses, places of worship provide free, harmless entertainment in the company of like-minded people. In recent years, however, places of worship have been turned into arenas of contention and misused to propagate ideas other than those strictly religious. Some years back the most sacred site in Islam, the Kaaba, in Mecca in Saudi Arabia, was the scene of a pitched battle. In India there have been prolonged litigations over the control of mosques and temples and waqf (an endowment as per Islamic law) funds and trusts. In the early 1980s, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, notably the Akal Takht, was under the control of young gun-toting men spouting hate rather than spreading the message of love that their Gurus preached. In early June 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi authorized the Indian Army to evict them, thereby deeply hurting the Sikh psyche. (This was known as Operation Bluestar.) And who can forget the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya (in Uttar Pradesh) on 6 December 1992 by Hindu fanatics, leading to large-scale riots across the country?
I am convinced that the time has come for the government to forbid the building of any more places of worship – we have more than enough of them already – and to refuse permission to use public places for religious gatherings. And whenever a place of worship becomes a bone of contention or is misused for non-religious purposes by undesirable elements, its control and management must be taken over by the government. Places of worship have created vested interests for priests, pandas (Hindu priests well versed in genealogy), granthis, imams (those who lead the prayers in a mosque) and raagis whose livelihood depends on exploiting them. This must be put an end to. My sentiments regarding places of worship are summed up in a beautiful little couplet by Bulleh Shah, a Punjabi Sufi poet:
Masjid ddhaa dey, Mandar ddhaa dey
Ddhaa dey jo kuchh ddhenda.
Ik kisey da dil na ddhavein
Rabb dilaan vicch rehndaa
(Break down the mosque, break down the temple
Break down whatever there is besides;
But never break a human heart
That is where God Himself resides.)
Prayer and Meditation
It can scarcely be disputed that we Indians, be we Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs or Parsis, spend more time in performing religious rituals than any other people in the world. The Hindi adage saat vaar aur aath tyohaar – there are only seven days in a week but there are eight religious festivals – is by no means an overstatement. Count the number of religious holidays, national and sectional, then add up the number of hours people spend every day in saying their prayers and visiting temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras, the days spent in pilgrimage to holy places, the hours taken up by satsangs (religious gatherings), pravachans (religious discourses), keertans, bhajans, jagratas (all-night singing of devotional songs), and so on. It will come to a staggering total. Then ask yourself whether a poor developing country like ours can afford to lose so many millions of man hours in pursuits that produce no material benefits? Also ask yourself whether strict adherence to a routine of prayer, ritual or telling the beads of a rosary makes a person into a better human being? Is it not true that even dacoits pray for success of their nefarious missions before they embark on them? And aren’t the worst tax evaders and black marketeers often devoutly religious?
On rare occasions when I visited a gurudwara or a temple, I made it a point to watch people making obeisance before the Granth Sahib or their favourite God. Those who took the longest time to rub their noses on the ground were usually those who more than others craved forgiveness for having lied, stolen, fornicated and made illicit money. There is an amusing doggerel about the Potthohaaree (or Pothwari) trading community from Rawalpindi and Campbellpur districts (now in Pakistan), known for its business acumen as well as its religiosity:
Koor vee aseen mareney aan,
Ghat vee aseen toleyney aan,
Par sacchey patshaah
Aseen naam vee teyra lainey aan.
(Lies we often tell,
Short we do often measure,
But true Lord,
Your name we also take.)
I concede that it is entirely up to any individual how he or she decides to spend his or her time. If they get peace of mind through prayer and performance of ritual, they have every right to pray as long as they want to and wave candelabras of incense and tinkle bells to their hearts’ content. But what they, or anyone else, have no right to do is to impose their religiosity on other people. We as a people do this without consideration for the feelings and comforts of our fellow citizens. An instance of this total lack of concern for others is the use of loudspeakers calling for prayers (azaan from mosques) or blasting forth keertans, bhajans and pravachans. The craziest examples are all-night jaagraans that disturb the sleep of entire localities. Children are unable to concentrate on their studies, the sick unable to get rest, and if there has been a death in some household, the family members are unable to mourn in silence.
Another instance of imposing one’s religious practices on others is the custom of taking out processions through crowded streets which, it cannot be denied, upsets civic life. Christians and Muslims rarely take out processions. Catholics occasionally take idols of the Madonna or Saints around the streets and Shia Muslims take out tazias during Moharram. But Hindus and Sikhs indulge in them as a sacred birthright. Hindu Gods and Goddesses must be periodically taken out for airing; Goddesses Kali and Durga must be taken round the streets before they are immersed in rivers; so must Ganapaty, accompanied by loud shouts of ‘Ganapaty Bapa Maurya’. The mammoth procession taken out annually at Jagannath Puri brings all other activity in the city to a fullstop. Sikhs must take out processions on the birthdays and martyrdom anniversaries of their Gurus, no matter what Hindus or Muslims feel about them. It should be remembered that the most common cause of Hindu–Muslim riots are Hindu processions passing by mosques when Muslims are at prayer.
The government must take the lead in curbing unnecessary exhibitions of religious fervour. It is committed through the Constitution to inculcate a scientific outlook on life. Instead of doing that, it allows official media like All India Radio and Doordarshan to propagate religions through the broadcast of celebrations and hymn singing. Religious broadcasts take up most of the time of some TV channels.
The worst is part that the juggernaut of religion rolls on, getting full media coverage. Preaching religion over official media is against the spirit of secularism; protests against it are ignored like the yapping of agnostic dogs. A long time back I saw an hour-long programme on Doordarshan on the birthday of a Nirankari guru. I have absolutely nothing against Nirankaris;* on the contrary, I have defended their right to propagate their beliefs despite hukumnamas (decrees) issued from the Akal Takht. What I found very hard to stomach were the paeans of praise showered on their young guru. There were a few sad looking foreign young ladies constipated with virtue who read their pieces; they were followed by a succession of second-rate poets reading qaseedas (paeans) as they would sehras at a wedding. No doubt they were paid according to their skill at tukbandi (rhyming). Far from being impressed, I found the entire exercise vastly amusing and laughable. If religion is to have any meaning in present-day life, it has to be treated more seriously than chanting hallelujahs to godmen or godwomen.
All this also reminds me of my visits to Canada or the States. Whenever there, I always looked forward to Sunday mornings when many TV channels were taken over by evangelists preaching love, morality and singing praises of the Almighty. I relished those programmes for a very perverse reason: I found them hilariously comic and laughed more than I would while watching a slapstick comedy. I saw very soulful-looking men and pretty damsels dressed in virginal white turning their eyes skywards to God (who is believed to live above the clouds) and singing hosannas with full-throated fervour. The greatest ‘comedians’ of those god-plays used to be Reverends Jimmy Lee Swaggart and Jim Bakker. Unfortunately, both men who preached sexual morality and martial fidelity were caught pants down consorting with prostitutes.
A modern fad, which has gained widespread acceptance amongst the educated and semi-educated who wish to appear secular, is the practice of meditation. They proclaim with an air of smug superiority: ‘Main mandir-vandir nahin jaata, bas meditate karta hoon.’ (I don’t go to temples or other such places, I only meditate.) The exercise involves sitting in the lotus pose (padmasana), regulating one’s breathing and emptying the mind to prevent it from ‘jumping about like a monkey’ from one (thought) branch to another. This intense concentration apparently awakens the kundalini (the serpent coiled at the base of the spine), which then travels upwards through chakras (circles) till it reaches its destination in the cranium. Then the kundalini is fully jaagrit (roused) and the person is assumed to have reached his or her goal.
What does meditation achieve? The usual answer is ‘peace of mind’. If you further ask ‘and what does peace of mind achieve?’ you will get no answer because there is none. Peace of mind is a sterile concept, which produces nothing. The exercise may be justified as therapy for those with disturbed minds or those suffering from hypertension, but there is no evidence to prove that it enhances creativity. On the contrary, it can be established by statistical data that all the great works of art, literature, science and music were works of highly agitated minds, at times on the verge of collapse. Allama Iqbal’s short prayer is pertinent:
Khuda tujhey kisee toofan say aashna kar dey
Key terey beher kee maujon mein iztiraab naheen
(May God bring a storm in your life,
There is no agitation in the waves of your life’s ocean.)
A word that constantly appears in the Allama’s writings is talaatum, restlessness of the mind, as the sine qua non of creativity.
I would like to sum up all I have said about prayer, ritual and meditation in a slogan I have coined as a motto for modern India:
Work is worship,
but worship is not work.
My new religion for India would be primarily based on the work ethic. We have an apt motto, which needs to be put into effect: aaraam haraam hai (rest is forbidden). However, leisure time to recoup energy to resume work, which yields material benefits, ought to be provided. We must not waste time because time is precious. There is a Hadith (sayings of Prophet Mohammed) in which he is said to have exhorted (which loosely translated means): Do not waste time; time is God. We must reject the concepts of sanyas (retirement) and vanaprastha (taking to the woods; i.e., renouncing everything) and continue to labour till we are physically able to do so. Leading idle lives on inherited or unearned incomes is as bad as being a beggar. Laws must be passed to limit the right to leave property to descendants and begging must be outlawed. Guru Nanak emphasized the work ethic in three commandments:
Kirt karo,
naam japo,
vand chako
(work,
worship
and give in charity)
Note the order of priorities. In another hymn he wrote:
Khat ghaal
kicch hatthon dey,
Nanak raah pacchaney sey
(He who earns,
and gives some of it away,
O Nanak, he has found the right way.)
He or she who does not contribute materially to society has no right to claim any benefits from it.
There are some professions, much practised in our country, which contribute nothing to society but instead do a great deal of harm to it. The most popular of them is forecasting the future through astrology, casting horoscopes, palmistry, crystal ball gazing and deciphering ancient texts like the Bhrigu Samhita and the Sau Saakhee. Of these, astrology is the most widespread and believed in as much by the highest placed as by the masses. Prime ministers, chief ministers, other ministers, governors, bureaucrats and businessmen regularly perform tantric rites and practise black magic ostensibly to overcome the influence of evil stars. New ventures are undertaken only after making sure that the stars are in their proper positions.
In India, astrology has religious sanction. It must therefore be exorcised from the Indian religion of the future. That it is totally unscientific is beyond dispute. Astronomy is a science; astrology is not. What superstition is to religion, astrology is to astronomy – the illegitimate offspring of sick minds.
There are innumerable instances in our history highlighting how battles were lost because our commanders, instead of using their common sense, consulted astrologers about the most auspicious time to commence the attack. There is no evidence whatsoever to prove that marriages made after matching horoscopes do better than those consummated without consulting them. I know of the case of a leading astrologer who wrote a weekly column, ‘What the Stars Foretell’, for the Hindustan Times who arranged his daughter’s marriage after reading her and her future bridegroom’s horoscopes. The marriage lasted only a few months. Belief in astrology has assumed menacing proportions and, unless banned by legal enactment, will continue to govern the lives of people to their detriment.
The ultimate purpose of religion should be to abstain from causing hurt to all living things – human beings, flaura and fauna – as far as possible. Ahimsa Paramo Dharma, i.e., non-violence is the paramount religion. When it comes to humans, we have to learn to avoid hurting them. Writes Hafiz (the fourteenth-century Sufi poet):
Mai khor, mimbar ba-soz, O aatish andar Kaaba zan
Sakin-e-butkhana baash, O mardam azaari mekun
(Drink wine, tear up the holy book, set fire to the house of God
Go make your house in a temple full of idols;
You may do all these but do not hurt a man.)
Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, a thirteenth-century Sufi poet, echoed the same sentiment:
Dile badast aavar keh haj-e-akbar ast
az hazaaraan Kaaba, yak-e-dil behtarast
(Go into your hearts, it is the greatest pilgrimage
One heart is better than a thousand Kaabas.)
I am not sure whether we are yet in a position to outlaw the killing of animals for food because, in large parts of the world, human beings survive only by eating meat, fish and eggs. But this does not justify cruelty to animals or killing them for sport. Fortunately, in India, hunting of animals has been banned.
Our new religion should have a vision of the future and should aim to provide measures that do not put the lives of the generations to come in jeopardy. Our population is rising at a rate suicidal to our future. If we continue to breed in the reckless way we are doing, we will continue to be short of food, clothing, housing, educational institutions and hospitals and our cities, towns and villages will fester with slums. Family planning must be made an integral part of our religion. We must disenfranchise parents who have more than two children and forbid them from holding elective offices. We must also make sterilization of both parents on the birth of their second child compulsory. An undertaking to do so could be made a part of the vows taken at marriage. We have no right to overload an already overpopulated country.
The preservation of our environment must also become an essential part of our religion. We have the example of the Bishnoi community, which rigorously forbids the cutting of trees and killing of animals or birds. We have to go further. Felling of trees must be forbidden. The Hindu-Sikh custom of cremating the dead on funeral pyres must be stopped forthwith. There is nothing in the Hindu and Sikh religions requiring burning of the dead with wood. Many Hindu communities in South India bury their dead. For instance: C. N. Annadurai and M. G. Ramachandran (both former chief ministers of Tamil Nadu, who died on 3 February 1969 and 24 December 1987, respectively) were buried. Jain munis (monks) too are buried. The amount of wood that is consumed in cremations is horrendous. It has been calculated that on an average more than one crore Indians die every year, of whom 80 per cent are Hindus or Sikhs. Roughly two quintals of wood is consumed in cremating one dead body, making a staggering total of millions of quintals of wood consumed every year. We are destroying our forests to dispose of our dead. The answer is not electric or gas crematoria but Hindu-Sikh cemeteries with the proviso that no tombstones are erected on graves and the land is returned to agriculture every five years. The earth is in need of rejuvenation. Humans, when they die, should be returned to the earth from which, according to most religions, they emanate.
The use of wood for construction and furniture also needs to be severely curtailed. We have now enough synthetic substitutes to make all the buildings and furniture we need. Reafforestation and greening of our land must be given top priority. They can be easily included as a part of our religious obligations as well as become a compulsory component of our educational system. At every religious ceremony, be it the thread ceremony, baptism, marriage or death, provision should be made for planting a certain number of trees. Charities given in memory of departed souls should be devoted to planting of forests. Students passing their school-leaving or degree exams should not be given their certificates unless they provide evidence of having planted a required number of trees and seen them grow in good health for a specified number of years.
Polluting catchment areas, rivers and lakes should be condemned as irreligious acts. The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which make the land sterile and destroy bird and insect life, must also be severely curtailed. The earth must be considered sacred as must the lives of birds, beasts and insects. All ancient religions have something to say about the preservation of the environment as a religious duty. All we have to do is highlight these aspects and emphasize them with greater vigour.
Let me sum up my faith in a time-worn cliché: a good life is the only religion. The nineteenth-century American political leader and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, Robert G. Ingersoll, who was noted for his broad range of culture put it in more felicitous language: ‘Happiness is the only good; the place to be happy is here; the time to be happy is now; the way to be happy is to help others.’ One of America’s greatest writers Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919), whose prolific prose and poetry are a tour de force of optimism, put the same in plainer words:
So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind.
When just the art of being kind is all that the sad world needs.
In fine, let me clarify my ideas of God, religion and moral values.
It is evident that all religious systems have failed us. They have generated more misunderstanding and hatred than love and friendship. However, since some people need some sort of system of beliefs, we have to evolve a new religion that avoids the pitfalls of outworn creeds, of which we have had a bitter experience.
The process has to be dual: first wipe the slate clean and then start afresh to write a new message. What we need to demolish are five established pillars of most religious systems: God, prophets, scriptures, prayer and places of worship.
To my way of thinking, it is not very important whether or not people believe in God, or how they visualize Him – as one, a trinity or in multiplicity; as an old, long-bearded Jehovah, in the shape of an idol, nirguna (without attributes) or sarguna (with attributes), or as an abstraction. God simply does not matter.
Founder-prophets of religions matter a great deal to people, but instead of worshipping them, they should be regarded as ‘historical characters’ who brought about revolutionary changes in society.
Likewise, I would treat religious scriptures as historical writings and judge them on their literary qualities. They should not become subject matters of prayers. Places of worship should be converted to schools, colleges or hospitals or simply preserved as historical monuments.
We must not erase the past unless we have something positive to replace it with: mental vacuum can have disastrous consequences. In my outline of a future religion man replaces God. Fellow humans should be our top priority. You don’t have to worship them; only refrain from hurting them either physically or mentally.
I would place the care of all living creatures next to humans. We have no right to deprive them of life for our own sustenance. I subscribe to the Jain concept of Ahimsa Paramo Dharma and would make a strong plea for vegetarianism.
I would not include other items of food or drink amongst the don’ts. What an adult consumes of his or her own free will – be it alcohol, narcotics or tobacco – is entirely his or her own business even if it does him or her harm or kills him or her.
I would also replace reciting prayers by doing good work. Instead of chanting mantras or reading scriptures, every person should set aside at least one hour of the day for social service from which he or she derives no personal benefit but is beneficial for his or her fellow beings or animals. It should be nishkama seva (selfless service): teaching children, tending the sick or the handicapped, cleaning drains. Or whatever.
And finally before retiring for the night, everyone should spend at least 15 minutes entirely with himself or herself to review what he or she has done that day. I would suggest instead of meditating you should look at your own image in a mirror, look squarely into the reflection of your own eyes and ask yourself: ‘Did I hurt anyone today? If so, I must make amends tomorrow. Did I do anything to lighten another’s burden, sorrow or pain today? If not I must double my efforts tomorrow.’ It is not very easy to face one’s own conscience, but it is the ultimate test which one must pass. For me this test was beautifully worded by William Shakespeare in Hamlet:
This above all: To thine own self be true
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
I suggest that on religious festivals after performing expected rituals like going to temples, mosques, churches or gurudwaras, people should spend a little time – no more than half an hour – alone in silence and ask themselves: ‘What does my religion really means to me?’ Hindus could do this on Ramnavami or Diwali, Muslims on Eid-ul-Fitr, Christians on Christmas, Sikhs on the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism – Guru Nanak.
On Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary (21 November 2010) I tried to answer the question: How much of a Sikh am I? And drew up a list of answers. Although I do not practise my religious rituals, I have a sense of belonging to the Sikh community. Whatever happens to it, is of concern to me and I speak up or write about it.
I think that speculating about where we come from and where we go after we die is a waste of time. No one has the foggiest idea. What we should be concerned about is what we do in our lives on earth. I have imbibed what I think are the basics of Sikhism as I see it now. I regard truth to be the essence of religion and a must for life. As Guru Nanak said:
Suchchon orey sab ko
Ooper Suchh Aachaar
(Truth above all
above truth truthful conduct.)
I do my best not to lie because lying requires cunning to cover up the lies you have told before. Truth does not require brains.
As mentioned earlier, earn your own living and share some of it with others, said Guru Nanak.
I try not to hurt others’ feelings. If I have done so, I try to cleanse my conscience by tendering an apology before the year is out.
I have also inmbibed the motto: ‘Chardi Kala’ – ‘ever remain in buoyant spirits, never say die’. Ponder over it. Try it out.
*A sect of Sikhism that holds views different from the traditional Sikhs vis-à-vis the ten Gurus.