By Paramjit Bakhshi
In spite of so many people proclaiming that secularism is a good thing, I am not too sure. If you are truly secular there is no body batting for you, and nobody to look after your interests. Really! Look at how we smokers have been left in the lurch. Though smoking has been more prevalent than beef eating, it was banned from public places without a murmur of protest. There was not even a wheezy attempt to hold a smoking party. Mind you, we smokers have a long tradition of tobacco consumption. Going back a few hundred years, at least! Yet not even tradition came to our rescue. One remembers the glorious times in Kelvin and Anjalee cinema, when you could enjoy the flick, while nonchalantly flicking a little ash on the floor. Remember, even areas inside the airplanes, used to be reserved for us. Today we are treated like criminals. Desperately locked up in little cubicles at airports and looked disdainfully at, everywhere else.
Smoking is bad for health, we are constantly told. But so is drinking and eating red meat. Ask any doctor and he will tell you that. So why is beef eating getting so much support and a beef ban being equated to an assault on religious freedom. One certainly is not aware of any religious text advocating the consumption of beef. But the closure of illegal beef shops in far off Uttar Pradesh, has raised more heckles, than the arbitrary shutting down of legal liquor shops did, in this town of merry tipplers. Our critics brought forth another ingenious argument against smoking, saying it pollutes the atmosphere and causes non smokers to inhale second hand smoke. So do automotives, and you surely cannot be blind to miss the tedious traffic jams every morning, afternoon and evening. Undoubtedly our lungs ingest more petroleum fumes in a day, than second hand cigarette smoke in a week. The beef industry beats even the automotive industry (and thus the tobacco sector), in harming the environment, considering the amount of methane gas released by cows and the amount of water and farmland required to produce one kilogram of meat. I am convinced that smokers are just easy secular targets who are treated unjustly and also taxed increasingly in every new budget. There is no prophet to defend us, no Osho like figure who can unabashedly stand up for us, as he did for free sex, and sadly not even a mortal to state, “no power on earth can stop us” from smoking. Clutching at straws, the only enlightened example we can call in our defence is the chain smoking Oracle from “The Matrix”, but I guess she will hardly suffice, to bring back the Marlboro man, who has disappeared into the haze of yesterday’s smoke. Politics unfortunately listens, often to the dictates of religion. Apart from smoking, the political decisions to ban or not to ban beef, books and movies, are like it or not, influenced by religion.
There was recently an eloquent piece, in this newspaper about not mixing religion with politics. The writer no doubt needs to be appreciated for the historical insights he has given. However it is the current global situation full of violence and strife, which he has failed to analyse minutely. Without delving too much into history, let us begin with the Second World War, which is a fairly recent event. Though this war was fought on two fronts, and considerable more resources were used, fighting the Germans than the Japanese, the atom bombs were dropped on Japan and not on Germany. Similarly the only time that the napalm bombs were used, was against a country, which did not share the religious beliefs of the Americans. The merciless salvos of cruise missiles and very recently the “mother of all bombs” were directed against countries which are all Islamic. To a great extent religion does dictate foreign policy. It would be impossible for America to unilaterally pound another Christian nation the way it has been doing. One only hopes it will not pick on North Korea next.
If one looks at many major conflicts which have taken place in modern history then one will discover a sinister mix of politics and religion. Whether it is India vs. Pakistan, or Israel and Palestine, or the Western nations versus the Middle East and Afghanistan, it is the difference in religion which enables and somehow justifies disproportionate cruelty. Religious intolerance has influenced not just international politics but even major internal strife such as in Bosnia and Sri Lanka to name just a couple of instances. The political partition of secular India took place on religious grounds and this led to history’s largest exodus of people fleeing their centuries old homes. And again very recently ethnic cleansing on the basis of religion displaced an entire community from the Kashmir Valley without a murmur of protest by proponents of any religion. Indeed in the modern day and age religious intolerance still exists as a political force not just across religions but across sects within the same religion. Just a few decades ago factions of one religion fought each other in Ireland and today the entire Middle East is engulfed not just in inter religious battles but also conflict between sects of the same religion.
Much has being written recently about the Indian intolerance today and perhaps some of the fears are justified. But when western countries are taken as yardsticks for tolerance it seems to be grossly unfair. India has more Muslims than most Muslim nations. See what fears such immigration is generating in most western countries. It would be prudent to remember that the fires of such inter religious strife were not stoked in our country. The world changed dramatically since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the eighties and the subsequent arming of the rival militia by the Americans. The spark lit in Afghanistan by the “champions of freedom” has spread like wild fire across a major part of the world. The fire of intolerance is even now being fanned by powers which are clandestinely and relentlessly supplying sophisticated weapons to all factions and sides. Luckily India had the foresight not to join the war on terror even on George Bush’s vehement exhortation of, “if you are not with us you are against us”, and though the flame of terrorism might still singe us we are fortunately a little better off than the partners of that coalition.
If incidents of religious or communal intolerance in our country need to be condemned, they need to be condemned not just strongly, but in a manner which is not biased. I am afraid that most of us have been prejudiced in the past. There were the 1984 anti Sikh riots and many anti outsider movements which have happened across Kashmir and the north eastern hill states which targeted people who belonged to different religions. Most of these were glossed over without all round condemnation by leaders of many religions. Even today when Indians are targeted in western countries one hardly hears all our religious leaders raise a voice in condemnation. If our condemnation has to carry weight it will have to be unselfish and unequivocally human in nature rather just in defence of people of our own faith. The cat of all intolerance needs to be belled jointly rather than, when it attacks us in particular as a religion or community. We need to remember that what goes around does ultimately come around.
If an argument needs to be made against any religion, it must be this -let no religion proclaim superiority over any other. No religion has a monopoly on God, or on goodness, and the good and the bad exist in all religions and communities, as our experience no doubt shows. There cannot ever be, any justifiable rhetoric of “if you are not with us, you are against us” even if it is a President, a preacher, a pundit, a mullah or a granthi utters such worlds. The biggest self proclaimed saviour of the world, the USA, has behaved more like a bully, and lit more fires than it has extinguished, and so will all narrow minded leaders who assert to be our saviours. If we shift our glance a bit from America, we will see Canada which has more to inspire us than its belligerent neighbour. This country has successfully managed to assimilate people, from diverse corners of the globe, and one hardly if ever, hears reports of religious or communal turmoil from this part of the world. Similarly if we shift perception and use reason rather than religion while making a decision to ban or champion beef, triple talaaq or conversion or reconversion perhaps we will be able to address all issues without much drama and violence.
Of course reason too can also go overboard. This is the case today with taxes on cigarettes. They are more punitive than reasonable in intent. Is the intention to convert us into non smokers? Thankfully being or not being a smoker is not a matter of most people’s faith. One fails to understand how beef eating or divorce can be or should be linked to any faith!
The writer can be contacted at [email protected]