Posts Tagged ‘god
Signs Of God 1
By Bhardwaj Pandya
By Janak Samtani
There is no need to write about Sachin Tendulkar as a cricketer or a star. Everybody knows his achievements & even has memorized his stats. So I’ll get straight to the point.
Recently there was a meeting between Tendulkar & Saraswati Vaidyanathan. She is his fan. Fine. She is 87-years old. I respect that. Now, this meeting was covered by the media and some excerpts of it were shared. I did not find anything interesting in the news article as much as I did to the comments people had shared. But, it was worth noticing how that article described Sachin’s approach towards the elderly lady. As expected, people picked it up & went to the point of saying that we all Indians should learn being humble from Sachin & we should try to find Tendulkar in ourselves. All those comments literally cracked me up.
Then, there was – Sachin is God.
Now this really gets me thinking. These people have first not seen God and neither what God does all day, and then they call a mortal as God. I thought at that moment that this required a post after analyzing the reason behind this superficial belief & labeling.
We Indians, have more identities than people from other countries. By identities I mean nationality, religion, race, language, name and lots more. So for us, when someone else excels or performs, we associate that with one of our identities and feel proud and highlight it all over. Look at all the Indian origin people who have excelled abroad. We try to associate them with ourselves and say, hey we Indians are just great. Really? That individual was born abroad and is not Indian anymore. This is something we got to understand. Coming back, when Sachin performs & achieves another milestone, we associate his identity of being an Indian with ours and go hysterical. Is it that majority have restrictions to do what they like and feel good about someone else’s achievements as their own because of the association of identities? I can completely accept it when it comes to a resident national.
The serious issue is of labeling Sachin as God. Why is it done? Because as per the populist belief, there is no one mightier than God in his field of work, so Sachin in his field of work has equaled him and no one can be above him. Now, who are the people who label Sachin as God? The answer is not so simple. Let’s just deviate a bit.
A few days earlier of me reading the news on the meeting between Sachin & Saraswati V.; my colleague & me were discussing the concept of Prophet and God. He mentioned that Jesus Christ is not God, but a Prophet, who is also worshiped in Islam as one of the earlier Prophets to Mohammad, who was the last of Prophets. He should be accepted as the Prophet in Christianity too, but instead worshiped as the Lord. He later mentioned that probably Buddha too was a Prophet, but in the course of time worshiped as God. To me, it sounds logical. Since all religions are made of people, this only means that the definition of Prophet and God should not change. If there were several Prophets in Arabia, is it not possible that there were several in the Indian subcontinent as well? At this moment we cannot deviate further in questioning Prophecy. We’ve accepted that for this post. So, who could it be in the sub-continent other than Buddha? I cannot call Ram & Krishna as Prophets as they are characters of epics. So I only see characters which were idolized. Idols which we consider as Gods. So if you’ve not already realized, it’s the way of the Hindu religion to idolize. So, to answer the question, I’ve not seen people from any other religion calling Sachin as God apart from Hindus. The others clearly understand the distinction between God, Prophet & a human. My colleague mentioned that in Hinduism, we probably mistook all the Prophets as Gods and we landed up worshiping all of them. Not sure, since most of the Hindu Gods sat on large flowers, or flew, or had cool skin color. But I feel it gets quite vague. Some do idol worshiping and some don’t & say that God is within us. It is probably this flexibility that permits a group of people of this one religion to go ahead and claim Sachin as God. Of course, I am not labeling the entire religion like that.
If Sachin is claimed to be God by one group, then why is the same or different group struggling to claim his superiority to the late Donald Bradman? By no means am I taking any credit away from Sachin. An important point to note is that he has remained clean & out of all match-fixing cases we have seen so far. I’ve heard a lot of people doubt that Sachin plays for his records. Maybe or maybe not. I’m not going to bother with that.
In a few years, the commentary might go “God is batting on ninety eight not-out and Sachin has already blessed nine thousand eight-hundred Hindus today. When are these innings going to end?”
Religion, Atheism & Me
By Saurin Parikh
(Written on 21st February 2009)
Saurin Parikh in conversation with Saurin Parikh…
Do I believe in god?
No, because I don’t believe in organised religion and the images of god that every religion has created for itself.
Why don’t I believe in religion?
I feel that religion is the reason behind most of the problems faced by the world today. Had there been no religion, there would be no differences, no castes, and no biases. Had there been no religion, people would be differentiated by their abilities, capabilities and intelligence. But because there are so many religions, people’s acumen and intellect have become secondary.
And then there is the issue of peace and war. Religion has made people intolerant towards one another. Riots, terrorism, moral policing, political manipulation, social discrimination, these are the banes of society and they originate from religion.
How can you say that? Religions advocate peace, not war.
Yes, religions do advocate peace. And all religions advocate peace, but is there any peace around us? To a large extent, Muslims are perceived to be the most aggressive, if not violent most violent. But are Hindus any better? If terrorists are Muslims, then self-proclaimed moral polices are Hindus.
But isn’t it wrong to stereotype the entire religion because of a few bad elements?
I am not doing that, but everyone else is. A few people (we still don’t know for sure which religion they belonged to) burned down a train compartment in Godhra. What followed was an assumption that Muslims did that, which led to the Gujarat riots of 2002. Even if those miscreants were Muslims, weren’t Hindus wrong in fighting, killing and burning every Muslim they could find? Wasn’t that stereotyping? The men behind the recent terrorist attacks have been Muslims, but aren’t Hindus wrong in proclaiming that every Muslim should be ousted from India? Isn’t that stereotyping?
At the same time, a Hindu political group was behind the pub incidents in Mangalore. Who gave them the right to stop women from visiting pubs? Who gave them the right to curb Valentine’s Day celebrations? In their minds, the religion they follow gave them that right.
But we all agree that what they did was wrong?
But did anyone try to stop them from doing this wrong? The media persons who were following the poor women with their cameras didn’t do anything. Only one of the many people in that vicinity did something, but he was outnumbered and beaten up. What did the government do? What did the citizens of Karnataka do?
But what can anyone do?
I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done myself. I am not sure if I would have fought back. But that’s not my point here. My point is that there would have been no pub attacks, no moral policing, no terrorist attacks and no riots if there were no religion; or at least if each religion respected and showed tolerance towards the other.
I don’t want to be a Hindu, nor a Muslim, nor a Christian, nor a Sikh, nor a follower of any other religion. I was born a Hindu, but I have chosen to become non-religious. And the reasons behind that are more that the peace and war issue we just discussed.
Such as?
I genuinely don’t believe that there is a God or a Superpower up above us, residing somewhere in the skies and controlling our lives from up there. When we are children, our parents teach us that there is only one god and the god treats everyone equally. But then we grow up to learn that there are many gods, each religion has its own god and in fact, Hinduism itself has numerous gods and not everyone is treated as an equal. How can there be so many gods? If there are so many gods then do they also fight amongst themselves like we do? Do they compete against one another? The obvious answer to these questions is no. And for me, the even more obvious answer is that there is no god.
Then who created us? Who created the earth, the solar system, the various species? Who controls us? Who decides our fate?
In the mix of everything that comprises the solar system, I am too small to answer that. In fact, no human can answer that. I don’t know who created us and everything around us, but I do know that our gods didn’t create it all, simply because, we are the ones who created our gods and our religions.
The first form of life on earth wasn’t in the form of human beings. Life, as an entity, went through various phases over centuries to evolve into human beings. There was no religion attached to the first humans on earth. Humans started to chart their territories and define a particular place as their owns. Then over time, religions were formed and gods were created. Hence, gods didn’t create us, we created gods because we didn’t know where we had come from. The closest answer to who created us would be that seeds of our creation were sown in the form of micro-organism and we evolved from there.
Coming to the question of control and fate, I believe that we ourselves control ourselves. Our actions decide our fate. There is no god charting our lives, we do it ourselves. There is no god pushing us into trouble or pulling us out of trouble, we do it ourselves.
The other thing I believe is that every human being on earth is connected to one another. With some, you have a strong connection and with others, the connection is weak. But there is a connection. Your actions will influence and affect not only you, but many others, even people you don’t know. And similarly, other’s actions affect you.
So what is wrong with that?
There would have been nothing wrong with that had there been just one god. But there are many gods and many religions behind these gods and that is where it all becomes unbelievable for me.
So you are an atheist?
Yes. I don’t believe in god, which makes me an atheist.
I don’t believe in god because I don’t believe in submission. I don’t submit myself before anyone or anything. I have fears, but I believe in conquering them myself. Superstitions of various kinds originate from religion and I find them silly. Just because something has been going on for ages doesn’t mean that it is right. Every human being has a brain and the power to think and question, but because of our busy lives and apathetic nature, we don’t think or question, we just follow what everyone else is doing. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to follow a religion because religion has been around for ages and people have been following it and there is no harm in it. I would rather believe in myself. I believe that I have the power within myself to achieve what I want and find a solution to any problem that I am facing.
And even beyond that, I am an atheist because I don’t feel the need to pray. Many people have told me that they don’t pray to ask for things, they pray because they find peace in prayers. But I don’t need to find peace; I am at peace by myself. If you are agitated or angry or frustrated, you pray to god and feel peaceful. If I am in such a situation, I talk to my own self and find peace. I don’t feel the need to go elsewhere.
Any more questions?
[Saurin Parikh runs the popular website Review Catalogue.]
Spiritual Sex
horny baba ki jai
Who says spiritual gurus don’t like a good fuck every now and then? Swami Nithyananda, who has been embroiled in a sex video controversy since the past few weeks now has another scandal on top of him – a sex tape of him getting on top of another actress. After some starlet called Ranjitha, it’s now Yuvarani’s turn to deny the allegations. I feel writing a lovely little post about this, crammed with my unnecessary and unwanted gyaan, but there’s too many articles scheduled for the next few days and I’m going to need an entire week to stop laughing at followers of this godman. All you adult children who believe in shit like god – you have seven days, please find a good place to hide. Your time starts now.
Fast Food
It’s amusing how religion and faith determine and control your eating habits. Christianity is considered by many to be the weakest religion. While it is weak, at least it does not stop people from eating what they want. Everyone enslaved by the ordinary mortal who was nailed to a cross is at least free when it comes to diet.
All Christians I have met are well fed and it shows on their face how much they enjoy their pork and wine. Other religions are as weak, if not weaker.
Muslims are taught from the beginning of their lives that pork is unhygienic. They slaughter and eat goats and claim it is a sacrifice for Allah but what the devout musalman will never know is how good sausages taste on pizza (especially at Alfredo’s in Juhu), and that minced mutton should be left for nachos.
And then they observe daytime fasts for a whole month. Okay, but does making up for it by overeating at night make sense? And whats this rubbish about not even swallowing your own saliva? Obviously, growing a coolass beard and bending over for a god that never was doesn’t give you any idea what it’s like to have a salami sandwich or ham, bacon & cheese with a pot of tea on any morning.
Hindus are probably the greatest hypocrites of all. They eat chicken, mutton and pork but refuse to eat beef because their religion tells them that the cow is a sacred animal. So kill pigs, hens, goats and fish but hold yourself back from sinking your teeth into a cooked cow because someone told you that the cow is your mother and a holy animal. If you really believe that shit, I’d like to make a garlic pepper steak out of your mom. What is really stupid is that people will eat meat only on certain days. Does it taste better on Tuesdays? Eating meat on Thursdays makes you a sinner? Depriving yourself of non-vegetarian meals on Saturdays makes you holy?
And now, Jainism. The religion I was born into, the one I laugh at the most. I’ve had people tell me that no matter what I believe in or follow, I will always be a Jain because it is my father’s religion. It makes me wonder how much studying in good schools and colleges and being literate and open minded really educates them. It makes me wonder where all their male-female equality bullshit has been shoved because not one of the people who try to convince me that I am a Jain because my dad is one has bothered to find out which religion my mom was born into and what she follows. Not that it really matters because you are what you believe in and believe yourself to be, not what you are born into and brought up to believe or what your parents are or what the world wants you to be. I am proud to say that though my parents have their beliefs, they dont do mindless shit like going to temples, fasting and conducting shitass poojas.
True Jains believe that fasting purifies the mind and body. This is ridiculous, depriving your body and brain of food prevents you from thinking clearly. The digestive system is like your heart and lungs, it doesn’t need rest.This is not to say that you should stuff yourself with food everytime it comes in front of you. The body secretes digestive juices, that creates hunger pangs and if you dont give yourself food when you are hungry, it messes up your stomach and health. So going without food and water for days will not purify their mind, body and spirit but it will make them unhealthy and sick and take them closer to their god, which is a good thing.
And then, there are the educated people who think that fasting on certain days or abstaining from meat for a period of time will make get them what they want. Abstaining from certain food groups makes your wishes, dreams and desires come true?
If a man who has lived all his life in a forest and eats what his body and tastebuds crave was brought to the city and made to observe all these stupid customs, imagine how confused and amused he would be. Our bodies are designed to digest vegetarian and non-vegetarian food, so if you don’t eat meat because you don’t enjoy the taste or just like animals too much it’s totally cool, but to deprive yourself of a seafood sizzler because you think not eating it will make you spiritual is plain dumb.
Humans are two-legged animals. Big animals eat smaller animals. We humans, with our intellect, were smart enough to break the food chain, which is why we can hunt down and eat bigger animals. To anyone who eats for pleasure or to satisfy their hunger, the idea of eating only certain animals only on certain days and then fasting to clean your system would sound silly. I think animals are better off than us, they eat to satisfy their hunger and maybe for taste, without looking at the calendar. They truly deserve good food, now if only they knew what cooked meat tastes like…
[I wrote this post a few years ago and it makes perfect sense to me even now. The veg/non-veg debate is still on in my head, though.]
Protected: The Ramayan
Protected: Talking To God
The Man Who Saw Allah
Last week, two friends who’d come over to smoke hash narrated a hilarious and unbelievable incident to me. We were discussing the effect hallucinogens might have on the deeply religious. We were talking about visions people have at the time of their death, and the topic shifted to how narcotic substances might alter one’s perception of god, religion, spirituality and the universe.
Deftly rolling joints, these guys told me about a young Muslim man who had dedicated his life to Islam. A non-drinker of course, the god-fearing young man liked smoking hashish every day.
It so happened that the group of people he used to get high with decided to play a prank on him. One afternoon, when he was very stoned, they offered him fruit juice spiked with LSD. Now this dude was really baked and obviously had no idea what he was in for – he readily accepted the fresh, chilled juice and sipped on it to soothe his parched throat, dehydrated by the charas.
In some time, his eyes widened as if he were deranged, and he leapt up and announced, “Bhai, Allah dikh rela hai, bhai!”
Someone else present at the scene ordered him to stop talking nonsense and asked him if he had lost his mind… no one had seen Allah, so how could he?
But this enlightened fellow was in no mood to listen to anyone else – the chap called his wife up and repeated the same thing – that he had seen Allah, was probably dead and on his way to jannat. Naturally, the poor woman started freaking, but he told her he loved her and their kid and then he just hung up. Maybe, he wanted to get right back to enjoying the hallucinations, still not realizing it was the acid doing that to his brain.
Anyway, this is a very funny and strange story, and I thought I’d share it with you.
I have a lot of Muslim friends who offer me homemade non-vegetarian delicacies on Islamic festivals and other special occasions – I love them and respect their faith, so no need to get offended.
Not like I offered anyone a Breezer or something. Geez.
[Published earlier on Blish and my blogspot]
Mehta Kya Kehta? 