WHEN RELIGION KILLS THE GOD

In the wake of remembering India’s daughters who have been all so barbarously obliterated from existence for man’s need for lust , there now exists a new low where even powerless but not voiceless arm chair critics like me can only gasp at the demoralizing trend of disputations following Asifa’s death .

The anarchists of the world often describe a pattern of human reflections on crime , where we the modern civilization hardly pay attention when an inarticulate tribal women from Chattisgarh is raped and violated but our senses become alarmed if a some obese woman is fat shamed on facebook . Yes we all happen to be busy in our own worlds being imperceptive to most inhumane things that happen in our society unless the event hits you where it matters . In a way , isnt every single one of us guilty and dont even deserve to opine upon, when another vulgar act of sexual offence comes to life . A collective responsibility to ensure adequate response to whistle blowers followed by government bodies efficiently conducting a trial to promptly punishing the guilty , whoever it may be was always the need of the hour . It never struck our senses that our pathetic system grossly lacked this engine but the moment someones religion is thrown upon this pile , there seems to be a sudden surge of attention to this unfortunately usual injustice . Why ? Because this event hit us where it matters , Religion matters to Indians , sadly not for the spiritual need but as an image !

The land of thousand gods , India for the first time is perhaps witnessing a line of generation whose relation to their religious entity is following a trend of Hero worship and Image building rather than a pathway to salvation or Nirvana . I hate to admit that Euro-caucasian Hindus understand the religion in the right context better than our own people . This is the trend we have been seeing ever since our new government came to power , there has been active efforts to show off power and invincibility that the youth feel they have by being a particular religion , and we have a long line of men in power actually supporting the act .

I’m a Tamilian , I come from the land of temples , Ive probably attended more Temples and mutts than you ever will but always for one purpose and one purpose only , Inner peace and Hope , through the observation of a superior power that may one day guide us to find your true inner self . I had the fear of god ingrained in me since childhood , I did eventually grew out of it but the purpose it served in the construction of my morality makes it an essential rite of passage .There is still a long history of practices , that are ritualistically archaic when people lose the meaning of it but hold on to it simply out of respect for the morales it holds and off course the purpose of delivering peace to oneself is still delivered through these archaic methods .

Now let me show you something , In the above paragraph , try replacing the word ‘temple’ with either mosque/church , the meaning will still hold fine with regards to the purpose of religion. Isn’t it fascinating that god really means the same in all religion . God is perhaps the most important belief that humans naturally cling on to and as a kid it serves the purpose of being the strict teacher that corrects harshly and as we grow up it soon comes to mean the part of us that is human and still serves to guide us in our journey of transcendency .

Sadly, there are people who interpret it differently and start making religion a cut throat team game or a political wing with the god being their supreme leader and the youth who already are going through their Identity crisis become so engraved it this image that religion gives them and naturally develop a relation to religion like how a Nazi starts glorifying the Fuhrer . This is where it fundamentally goes wrong and a person’s relation to god is lost to his search for self esteem and domination that he hopes his religion will offer . And a man who must be a loyal servant to his leader/cult , will do anything to make him look strong , even kill or avenge someone or behave in ways that is completely inhumane towards another human who just appears as the rival in his eyes . Thus , he is no more a human but only a puppet to the strings of his cult ,and God can no more exist inside this puppet and there we have it , where religion effectively kills the god in some one .

Lets look at the recent events of the child Asifa’s murder that clinically depicted this underlying flaw in our generations personality with respect to their relationship with their religion . Here we have a case of grusome child sexual offence with one of the most horrific sequence of events as reported that clearly depicts the work of men who definitely fall into the spectrum of Dissocial personality disorder or in plain terms , a psychopath. However , the revelation of these horrendous offences became a trigger for disgusting debates of “whataboutery” because the media and masses had started tagging the child and the offenders’ respective religions and soon what would have been another non vicarious response people would have given to another criminal psychopath became a national debate of who did it first with social media flooded by altercation between two groups trying to win the deplorable and pathetic argument of “which religion has more offenders ?!“, because clearly (sarcasm loaded) religion is ones identity and his source of image and self esteem and psychopaths come and go everyday and how dare you tarnish my image .

I guess there is only one man who can best explain the behaviour of these people and that is the great psychiatrist Carl Jung .

Here are some of his excerpts where he explains the modern man has become increasingly insecure for several reasons . He says “Modern society came into existence during the industrial revolution, when large portions of the population were driven from small towns into big cities in search of work and opportunity – instigating the birth of a mass society. While the development of a mass society generated benefits through the intensification of the division of labor, it also brought perilous problems. “This new form of existence…produced an individual who was unstable, insecure, and suggestible.” (Carl Jung, The Fight With the Shadow)” . The modern man is made to feel infinitesimal because of the ever growing structures around him that enslaves him and also he has lost touch with the age old relationship he had with god .

He would go onto describe the rise of excess secularism suddenly , brought on a confusion among us over our own self identity that till about medieval times , we all accepted a human being as the centre of the universe and all being the children of god with the almighty rewarding or punishing us based on our deeds and now these believes no longer are fathomable and with every passing days of our lives , with traditional religion not serving us well ,we have become increasingly insecure of our existence . Our minds unconsciously start searching for power to compensate our feelings of apprehension . Thus as a result , we become suggestible to mass movements and collective ideologies , which as we see is increasingly taking over religions all over the world .

Thus as a result , the divine purpose of religion is no where to be seen and only these mass movements in the name of god , solely with a lust for power and desire to seek it at any cost , even at the cost of an 8 year old innocent girls death . So , there you go , take a good look at this little childs picture and if you are indeed a believer of god , I hope you pray she gets her justice so her soul can rest in peace .

Dr .Vel Prashanth Venkatesan is a resident of Psychiatry at the CENTRAL INSTITUTE OF PSYCHIATRY (CIP), Ranchi, India who writes on Indian contexts of psychosocial issues with keen interests in helping towards mental health awareness.