Current Events
The Emperor Has No Clothes, Part III :
India's Religiosity
SOURAV MITRA, Tehelka
India’s world-revered religiosity is not the most magical salvation trick that man ever made up. It is, in fact, an immaculate sham.
If not, all our religious sects would not be so tainted with scandals of corruption, crime, misdemeanour, jingoism or terror and this self-proclaimed god-fearing nation would not degenerate into the depraved level of corruption and crime it has. So much so, that the "India Against Corruption" movement was terminated by its own obvious futility.
How could India's nation-robbing leaders let any upstart conscience-keepers try to deny them their birthright, the intoxicating reason for their entry into politics -- unearned income and disproportionate assets. (As an adjective ‘nation-robbing’ is more appropriate than plain ‘corrupt’, because it highlights the victim of their exploits).
The great hullabaloo about governance is only a cover-up for the under-handed deals that reap all the dirty money. It is not so much corruption bogging the government as government bogging corruption.
Organised religion today is no more than a money-making racket. Every chant and every incantation has one eye on the money. Whose soul do we expect to be saved by this travesty of faith?
My attempt to show India as an emperor with no clothes is not to open it up for derision, but to incite concerned Indians to move in the right direction and install a true and pure democracy that will nurture our diversity benevolently and remove corruption and crime as a career alternative from every level of society.
Those who decry the metamorphosis of the anti-corruption agitation into a political movement need to answer one question: do you want a corrupt India or a corruption-free India?
If you want India to be corruption-free, and if apolitical agitations are proving to be only as effective as waving a twig at a tyrannosaurus, would you not seek an effective alternative?
I perceive politics as the only way to cleanse the system from within. But there will be infinite obstacles and pitfalls. Corruption is propped up by favour-seekers willing to pay bribes and kickbacks for such favours. The incumbent politicians and their devious supporters will never surrender their Ali Baba cave positions without a fight to the death.
Will any anti-corruption party survive their ruthlessly mercenary manipulations? Time will tell. But until then, the misdirected intolerance of anti-corruption politics must transmute into electoral support so that an attempt is made to displace self-serving politics with nation-serving governance.
Please forgive me if this hurts like an impossible dream.
[Concluded.]
Edited for sikhchic.com
August 15, 2012