for serious thought...

Beware, Fundamentalism!

Even as fundamental ideas are injected into the minds of the people, people have started taking serious note of the harm it has done to people’s outlook.  Attaching too much importance to anyone tenet of religion and giving a twist and turn to the concepts so as to make a believer’s outlook narrow and prejudiced, can be called fundamentalism.  Fundamentalism, instead of making one grow stronger in faith in God and love for humanity, makes one a fanatic and causes her/him to look with derision at all the tenets with which s/he does not agree. Naturally, nurturing fundamentalism breeds hatred in the community, and quite strangely, this happens in the name of God who loves peace in the world.  The greatest paradox is that no religion advocates a philosophy of hatred, but rather all religions are attempts at bringing people closer and unite them with a bond of love, for the common good.

            The worm of fundamentalism has eaten into the marrow of all religions in India.  …Looking closely at the various communal disturbances in independent India, from Mandaikkadu to Kashmir, one can say without much hesitation, that all religions are guilty of this.  Each religion, instead of respecting the feelings and beliefs of other religions, has risen up in arms, which has resulted from time to time, what in Indian history, is to be recorded as communal riots.  A close look at these riots will prove that it is not consequent to an isolated rift between two faiths, but rather as a part of what narrow-mindedness the religions in India have taught its followers. As Gandhiji once asked, if religions which should unite the people, create cleavages in the human community, should we have such religions? Any religious group that is soaked in its fundamentalist tenets fails to understand the rationale behind the beliefs of other people practicing other religions, and places of worship become a target of their hatred. …

            As we look around the Indian society, we understand that it is infested with ills, socio-economic inequalities and multifarious problems – casteism, communalism, regionalism, exploitation and poverty.  The dominant fissiparous tendencies everywhere threaten the very integrity of the nation.  No one can deny the fact that emotions run high, passions run amok and reason is shattered when religious feelings are kindled.  Political opportunists and anti-social elements fan the religious sentiments and this is the reason for many communal riots that India has witnessed. …

            India is a country of many faiths, linguistic and ethnic groups, and our social structure is caste-based.  In spite of these diversities, an average Indian is peace-loving and possesses the ability to look above all these differences.  The greatest mission of religions today is to be agents of social change.  Indian society is infected with social ills like inequalities and corruption, violation of human rights, harm done to the dignity of women, injustice meted out to children, and cruelty to the underprivileged.  The unemployed, the unorganized and the illiterates have many a tale of woe to narrate.  Superstitions, evils of dowry and practices like child-marriage are common in Indian society.  Not realizing the integrity of creation, human beings heartlessly most ruthlessly do damage to nature which God has given under their care.  Religions, steeped in fundamentalism, have no time to think of these burning human issues. …

            When many die due to hunger and poverty, when the guiltless die and the guilty go unpunished, when the ignorant are exploited and the innocents duped, can religions be blind to the stark realities?  Is it time to breed hatred OR time to act and transform society, where love would rule over everything?

             [These are excerpts from my article that won the first prize in the Rerum Novarum Centenary All India 

             Essay Competition on “Response of the Church in India to the Threat of Religious Fundamentalism”, &

             was published in the book Challenges to Religious Pluralism by The Commission for Dialogue, 

             Madurai Archdiocese, 1994.]