Just wanted to say something!!

 “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” — Karl Marx

Why should one rely on someone to gain strength and confidence, and why shouldn’t he be self dependant? We blindly believe in an imaginary figure to help us lead our life!

Whatever outcome we have in our life is dependent on our actions and their response from the environment, we are the master of our lives, and it is we who decide what course our life takes.

If such is the condition then what is the role that religion has to play in our lives.

Religion has been a tool to aggregate masses under a common philosophy; this aggregation can be by a leader or a group of organized body. Where does the difference lies then between a group of religious followers and a political party?

If I want a control a group of people and want to do them as I want; I need to influence them with my philosophy, make them believe what I think is right and what I don’t is wrong, and how should I achieve this?

I need to put the reasoning power of the mass to sleep and lead them in a hallucination using the opium known as religion.

Now considering various religions being practiced, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism etc.

Islam began as mean to unify all the warring tribes of Arab and to live in peace, and the founder of the mission being Prophet Muhammad. To begin the mission he needed something to convince the people and nothing is more convincing than the name of God.

In the period around 600 AD the Arab world was divided into various tribes worshipping several gods.

(Quoted from Armstrong, Karen: Muhammad-Prophet from our time page40)

“There was widespread spiritual restlessness. The settled in Arabs, who lived in towns and agricultural communities of the Hijaz, had developed a different kind of religious vision. They were more interested in gods than the Bedouin, but their rudimentary theism had no strong roots in Arabia ……… The Quraysh also worshipped other gods. There was Hubal a deity represented by large, reddish stone, which stood inside the Kabah. There were three goddesses – Al-Lat, Al Uzza and Manat – who were often called the “daughters of Allah” (banat Allah) and were very popular in the settled communities. Represented by large standing stones, their shrines in Ta’if, Nakhlah and Qudhayd were roughly similar to Meccan Haram……”

At such a time of unorganized beliefs and rivalries among the tribes Prophet took on the mission of unifying all the tribes under one kingdom named as Islam (the Arabic word for surrender). He gave them a common belief and a concept of one god, Allah (Allah means god in Arabic). He gave them the laws to be followed, the principles to guide their lives was mentioned in Quran (which was said to be the words of Allah directly delivered to Muhammad through an Angel in the month of Ramadan in 610 AD). Even though the Quran was not scripted by Muhammad himself, the first official compilation of Quran was made in 650 AD about 20 years after the death of Muhammad, it is believed that the sets of Quran was not revealed to Muhammad at once, rather it came in pieces from 610 AD till his death in 632 AD. Each time when a new verse was delivered upon Muhammad, the Muslims learnt it by heart, and those literate noted it down.

Now no one can judge the authenticity of the texts that was written after 20 years of death of the reciter, who himself recited it in pieces over a period of 22 years. The laws mentioned in Quran (which are difficult to interpret) were made to govern a small community of Arabia, but later Islam grew to a large extent such as the laws seemed further adaptations to keep relevance. This was achieved by different interpretations of Quran at different point of time and place.

The logic here is pretty straightforward that the advent of Islam was a political movement to unify the Arabs (undoubtedly a noble mission) taken up by Prophet Muhammad, which of now is seen as religion.

Talking of Hinduism, it has never been a religion per se, since its establishment in fact the word establishment is not fit for Hinduism since we cannot judge a date when it began, it has existed as a way life since a long back of the inhabitants on the banks of the river Sindhu, which was pronounced as Hindu by the Persians.

If we go by the documentation, then we can say the advent to the Vedic ages, where first being the Rig-Veda composed roughly from 1700 to 1100 B.C. (much ahead of any other religious school of thought prevailed in the world!).

Hinduism is a philosophy which of now has been misconstrued as a religion full of rituals. It is the only religious philosophy in the world where atheism has also been given due importance and respect, in-fact the The Sarva-darsana-sangraha written by Madhavacharya begins with a discussion on Carvaka darshan (one of three Nastik darshans of Hindu philosophy).

The rituals, caste systems crept into the Hindu civilization much after the Vedic era, the rituals were described in the Dharmashastra major source of which being Manu Smriti which was further based on the revelations given by Manu, to the sages. The words given by manu were believed to be given by Brahma himself.

The rituals per se as defined in Dharmashastra were the laws to be followed by the society.

(Quoted from Radhakrishnan & Moore: A Sourcebook of Indian Philosphy page 172)

“The Code of Manu, a metrical work of 2685 verses, deals with religion, law, custom and politics. The author is familiar with Vedic literature and refers to previous teachers and traditions of dharma. The book discusses certain philosophical topics and offers solutions based on the Samkhya of the Vedanta, but its aim is not the exposition of a philosophical system. It is essentially a dharmashastra. It gives respectability to customs and conventions at a time when they were being undermined.”

I would limit my discussion on different religions at this point as it will lead me away from the topic proposed.

What I wanted to stress through the discussion over history of the religions is that they all have one thing in common. Advent of any religion began as a motive to form a better society and lay down the laws in which the society will function. They all began as a philosophical movement and ended up in creating separate classes of people believing in one philosophy or the other which is now known as religion.

Again the question arises why do we need any religion in our current times, when the conditions and life styles have changed so much from the time when the laws of the religion were written, isn’t it a time when we should get above the rituals and try to understand the philosophies of religion.

Only he needs to follow a religion blindly who has no faith in himself, the one relies on an assumed supernatural power to help him lead his life. It is a tool for the people who love to keep their eyes closed and are afraid to ask to question, “Why?”

Once we gain the strength to ask why, we shall be able to break of the shackles the religion imposes upon us and we will be free to know and grow.

Here I present an example of a person who dared to ask the question “why”.

Swami Vivekanand who is often confused to be a religious follower, (rather he is publicized as such by the bodies like Ramkrishna Mission etc) was actually a Hindu Athiest, In his famous speech at the world congress of religion in Chicago, he said “ Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd-Therefore, there never was a time when there was no creation.”

There are many more examples in the history across the world, who challenged the authority of the religion and brought significant change in the society ; although each one of them is important but discussing the contributions of each will be a long task, so I am restricting my discussion till here.