THE MEANING OF RELIGION AND GOD

I wonder if the Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh understands the power and influence of love or the right of every adult in a democracy to follow whatever faith he wants and to convert whenever he wishes to? The first is critical to understanding human relationships, the second to the future of our secular country. This also means my doubts are potentially very disturbing. After all, the Sarsanghchalak is no ordinary person.

Now, several newspapers have reported that at an event last fortnight in Haldwani the Sarsanghchalak said hindus who convert to other religions to get married are committing a wrong. “Those who do it are wrong”, he said. It suggests, he explained, lack of pride in one’s religion and even in oneself.

I’m sorry but the man who is wrong is the Sarsanghchalak. Perhaps as a bachelor he doesn’t realize that changing your religion to marry the man or woman you love is the greatest testament of your affection. It says nothing, not even God, can stand between us. I’m certain that God – no matter by what name we know him – would wholeheartedly agree.

There is, however, a deeper sense in which the Sarsanghchalak is mistaken. What right do others have to comment upon, leave aside judge, an individual’s decision to change his faith? It’s a deeply personal choice taken at the very core of our being. It reflects not just our thinking and personality but who and what we want to be. No other person can interfere. They should not even try. To do so, is to cross a moral boundary that must never be trespassed.

Yet this is more than just a moral issue. It’s also one of constitutionally guaranteed rights. An adult can change his faith whenever he wants, as often as he wants and to whatever faith he wishes to adopt. There’s nothing right or wrong about it. Just as you can freely leave Delhi to live in Chennai and vote for the BJP in preference to Congress or the Communists, so, too, can an adult change his or her faith without any other person deeming it right or wrong.

However, I want to go one critical step further. Pavan Varma’s latest book ‘The Great Hindu Civilization’ suggests Hinduism itself has no problem with its adherents converting to other faiths. The Rig Veda says “Ekam satya vipra bahudah vadanthi: the truth is one, wise people call it by different names”. This is how Pavan elaborates: “Hinduism accepted that so long as the goal was the ultimate truth, there could be several paths to reach it … This breadth of vision is Hinduism’s calling card to the world.”

Indeed, this is also the message that lies at the heart of Swami Vivekananda’s famous speech at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893. “We accept all religions as true” he said. “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

When challenged by what Pavan calls “the narrow orthodoxies of some hindus”, the Swami hit back pithily but strongly: “I am afraid of you people and your society. You know nothing of God and the scriptures.”

Now, I’m not a deeply religious man. When young, I was fashionably agnostic. Age has made me god-fearing. But of one thing I’m certain – we may call him by multiple names, view him in myriad forms, pray to him in different ways but their can only be one God. So how does it matter if I worship as a Hindu or a Christian, a Muslim or a Jain, a Zoroastrian or a Buddhist?

Swami Vivekananda’s Hinduism makes sense. It opens doors and allows us to embrace each other. The Sarsanghchalak’s confines us in compartments. It seems to separate and divide. It makes us narrow and small.IANS