Common Enemy

This is more of a follow up to my previous piece. I had an informative conversation with one of my friends who had to read it as I kept nagging him. He is into political sciences and he started off with asking me about the Dravidian movement. In a while, we landed on the best topic - Secularity. Although the politicians of today have altered its definition to 'being pro-minority', the origins can be traced back to a few centuries when the Church influenced the rule of law. It meant the separation of parish from the throne. Before you start wondering about the origins of the word in Hindi or Tamil, let's not forget that even before Christianity, Islam and other beliefs found place in our country, our ancestors had squabbles over the sects of Hinduism too.

Similar to the Shia-Sunni conflicts in modern day Iraq that has given room for the growth of outfits like ISIS; and the many European wars motivated and aggravated by the disagreements between the Catholics and Protestants, the dissent between the various sects of Hinduism was prevalent in the last millennium. Although differences exist between the followers of other beliefs too, probably the low population following them has kept them from fighting against each other.

Although there exist many a divisions within the followers of the same religion, majority of the dissension is between the two big brothers. Partially because being bigger among the lot, they have a huge following, deep pockets and high political stakes. Ya, that's right - POLITICS. As much as I would like to not come up with a conspiracy theory that religious turbulence was spurred by the underlying political equation even centuries back, history says otherwise. My understanding of the entente between religion and politics in England during the time of the Tudors influenced me in penning this piece. Tudors in particular because my interest in the British history was kindled by the tv series in that name, if not by the 'Bloody Mary' drink.

Gradually, over the centuries the differences between the sects of Hinduism has disappeared owing to the arrival of new beliefs in the country, that helped in realising the similitudes rather than the dissimilarity. Even a friend of a friend may not be a friend, but in this pragmatic world, enemy of an enemy is surely a friend. As Kevin Spacey from House of Cards would put it "three cheers to 'ruthless pragmatism'!". That show is one hell of a depiction of cutthroat politics. This trend in Hinduism hasn't been observed in Islam yet or for that matter in humankind yet. As the number of lives lost due to riots is still significant in our country,most of them provoked on religious grounds.

Political masters have used the concept of religion for the good and bad, right from overthrowing tyrants to instigating a pogrom. Sadly, they have been more successful in their attempts to achieve the latter objective. Any play of politics is incomplete in today's world without the media playing its voodoo.   Of late, even once-credible news organisations are turning into TRP craving gossip channels that exaggerate every miniscule incident into a gargantuan clash. We cannot single out the media houses to take the blame for concentrating on delicate issues since as much as they would like to toe the line of their corporate daddies, their survival is based on the audience and their preferences, after all we are the TRP drivers.

With a government at the centre, that is making the citizens responsible and accountable for governance to cleanliness at every chance it gets, the onus is on us to educate ourselves of the art of 'think before you act' or even better 'think before you opine' since silence kills many a conflicts.

Let us unite again against the common enemy - the politics of religion.