Skip to main content

The Politics of Religions: Beyond Inclusion-Exclusion

There are two aspects of every religion. One, its message is to adhere with the moral principles of love and compassion. Second, its institutional aspect, which is naturally unique and immanently diverse. In that sense, every life on the planet is one and same. Only a compassionate heart can perceive the common message of every religion. All the struggles for majority-minority identity making have nothing to do with religion; it's politics. Politics is by its nature self-centered which thrives on the construction of parochial identity. Politics is not our nature as claimed by Aristotle, rather it is love. Secularism itself is a "civic-religion", based on constitutionalism, scientific temper, and rationality, and its message is same as any other religion has. All the struggles for identity are futile. Division is not our destiny. Only love and compassion are our true nature, rest are nothing but conditioned-illusions, perpetuated through thoughts, which have been cultivated in our memory since long-long time. Conflict is not about west v. rest or this religion v. that religion. It is, rather, related to our insincere image-making identities about each-other. No doctrine or principle is needed to cultivate love. It is our nature, clouded by narrow-minded identity politics. All the debates around "principled distance" or "equal distance" must not arise at the first place. If religion is lost in the "politics of its institutionalization" for inclusion and exclusion, naturally, such practices are anathema to the religion itself. There is a famous saying that one has discovered the truth and shared this news with his friend, and his friend suggested to organize it and institutionalize it; for what purpose? For narrow and self-centered interest. It's easy to blame others but difficult to accept that every problem starts with an incorrect approach of looking and experiencing. It's a phenomenalogical question. The craving for security and finding refuge in small identity are the causes of our misery and confusion.Our mind is confused so it could not resolve the problem. It is to identify as life, the supreme energy, without any fragmentation liberates us.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the ...

Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

The worldliness of world is constituted by care (Martin Heidegger). Only in our concernfull dealing with the things around, the existence of being may be understood. In our everydayness of care and concern the world appears to our consciousness. Care is the language, a nomos of our existence, yet it is hardly perceptible in a world of law, which was rightly defined by Hans Kelsen and Max Weber as “legitimate use of violence”. The monopoly of political state over the violent nature of law makes it the most elevated institutions in relation to various social orders co-existing with the political state. Politics, once conceived as “an art of possibilities” by Harold Laski, is now becoming merely a language of allegations, counter-allegations, trickery and manipulation, in one statement, it symbolizes the archetypical character of violence whose expression is apparent in the existence of law. Violence has become our mode of existence in a sense that it speaks through us when the humanity f...