Crisis of Religion

Another personal piece of writing. How I hate these but they act as a kind of catharsis. While doing a course on religion with the International Centre for Journalists, I realised how divisive religion still is. I also realised that I love my God, adore Him and yet I feel scared talking about religion. Why?
There are a myriad of reasons for this.

As I go through my journey in life I get more and more convinced that religion will be exploited and abused. My fear of religion may have been subconscious so far but now the urgency with which it seeps into my conscious being is perhaps the BP Oil spill rate – perhaps faster.

Why? Im Hindu, I am living in one of  the most advanced countries in the west. Why fear? I was brought up in a Catholic environment-having studied all my life in privilaged private Catholic schools run by Irish nuns. I learned catechism and went to the church etc. I know Christianity as much as Hinduism. So why fear? What about the west should or is scaring people?

I can only say its the feeling more than the articulation of facts behind my fear that is important. Somehow we easteners – have an inherent intutive consciousness that could perhaps be a substitute for the over rationalisation in the western culture. I fear in over rationalisation we are either hiding something or are missing the simple links.

I guess being a kashmiri Pandit ( for the less initiated in Hinduism, it is the highest caste in the stratified Hindu world of class and religion ), I have always been more spiritual than religious. Hinduism in any case does talk about the essential spirit of being a Hindu as one who is a good Christian, a good Jew, and all the other religions ). Vivekananda is worth more than a read.

I guess India instead of rising up to its yogic and spiritual leadership potential just sunk into the quagmire of regional politics and the confusion of its own growth run amock. Now in a world dominated by economic and social chaos, religion may find it difficult to speak its own independent language. Religion as practised by some extreme groups from various religions is just helping those that want to create a human divide for specific political reasons. That is why it must be stopped. Protest must be silent as epitomised by Gandhi.

 Kashmir, not just now but for ages has been one of the most turbulent places on earth. I guess that has to do with its combination of geopolitical, strategic placement on the physical contours of our earth as also with its breathtaking beauty. Majestic, untrammelled, beckoning, luring. Most of all the intellectual and academic contouring of its human masses.

Nestled deep inside me I guess is the fear of generations of Kashmiri pandits, hunted down and mowed to bare existential proportions as a race. As a child you are conditioned especially if your small dwindling numbers keep coming under attack. But as I grew up and was exposed to this as yet beautiful  multicultural world of ours, the fear subsided till one day I paid the heavy price of defying ancestral knowledge and getting lured by all encompassing humanity into believeing that these were just old men’s tales.

Being the daughter of a journalist with illustrious credentials, I was always wanting to outshine. I followed in the footsteps of my father and becamse a fearless outspoken critic of vested political, business, social interests. No one told me that journalists can no longer be fearless. I thought as any young journalist that no one could touch me. Uppercaste ruling elite Kashmiri Hindu woman, I tried to keep reaching beyond every limit. Little did I know that as I aimed for the stars in the sky, my gaze fixed upwards, was oblivious to movements on the ground.

As a reporter I started covering my birthplace and though it was business and political journalism, I knew I was a Hindu minority in a muslim state and had to be trail blazingly honest. Like every journalist my dream was to meet and interview all those “Islamic fundamentalists” who wanted complete seperation from India. Along the way I met and interviewed people from the establishment as well.

I cared a damn. It was a story and I had to get to speak to these men and understand their psyche. I interviewed many of them and many times felt the shadow of state presence. I cared a damn – I was a Hindu. I could not go wrong. India is a majority Hindu state. This arrogance cost me. Journalists I realised could no longer claim to be a brand apart from decisive politics practised by governments. They may have their own compulsions but I never understood those. I dont understand them even now.

While covering Kashmir I realised that political uprisings have roots in economic deprivation, marginalisation. Somewhere the political system had gone wrong and now it was all about the rift between Muslims and Hindus. Yet I kept on highlighting the battered state of the economy, the isolation of the government from its people, the casting aside by muslim politicians of their own muslim constituents. At the peak of elections, there was no face to the politician asking for votes. Thousands of expectant voters but  politicians too scared to venture out. Yet the elections kept taking place…. and those that were the privelaged … those that were in with the elite clique….. (nothing unique to India)….. kept winning. And underneath the surface the simmering kept getting intense till it had to burst one day. Perhaps the scenario was more complex as there were outside countries involved as well. Perhaps I’m being too simplistic, perhaps….

The one lesson, journalists themselves must beware of is aspersions being cast on them for reasons far from obvious.  This new religious war is far too expensive for media as it is in its present day and form to win….
That breaks my heart. Nothing breaks my heart more than innocent victimisation. The machinery of journalism is worn and itself in the hands of those that run the other machinery. Im scared for journalism and I’m scared for democracy. That is why now more than ever we as journalists need to be cautious in reporting Islam or any other religious issue. Most of all we need to fight for openess.