Mass-produced Anti-love Pills: Bigotry

 

Manufactured, tailored hate is one of the vilest human creations. Caste, creed, class and religion are the evil threads of this fabric of organized hatred. The industry is for mass production of detestation and prejudice under standardized norms. People take sips of hate, anger and disgust and give battle cries for individual and collective salvation.

Bigotry is the biggest challenge against practicing collective compassion. The very air becomes vicious. The sense of reasoning gets blinded. We sleepwalk into the pandering arms of violence and take society away from love, sympathy, care and consideration. Beware!

Intolerance and narrow-mindedness are the symptoms of a sacred disease. Its affliction leads to a peculiar addiction and gives pleasure because it becomes the channel of all the pent up emotions, frustrations and stress. No wonder bigotry dwarfs the individual soul, keeping the rays of truth, and essentially love and compassion in its wake, from one's inner self.

Bigotry simply murders the larger possibilities of an enhanced self, fooling the individual to see virtual ghosts around. Very soon you hit the pinnacle of insecurity. Standing at the height of phantom fears, you drop your loving self to hold onto hate and malice. And mind you, bigotry is no copyright of a particular religion. All of the so called popular faiths have their patent claims to a lesser or greater degree.

Organized efforts promote fear, hatred is just the reaction. Bigotry is nothing but an effort to stifle truth to death. It's in fact the primal seat of the evil in the modern world. Tyranny, aggression, cruelty and injustices are the foot soldiers in its army. They attack the castle of truth where the treasure of love lies. And unfortunately, castles of truth are falling in society after society, unseating compassion from the throne and installing modern day tyranny in the form of racism, fundamentalism, casteism, sectarianism and sexism. No wonder, the world, despite trillions of science and technological conveniences, is as unsafe and dangerous as it was thousands of years back. Then where is the progress that we so proudly proclaim to have achieved?  

So my dear bigot, watch out, there is poison in your plate!

My dear terrorist, the epitome of hate and abyss of love, I have a very simple question for you. Why does killing come so easy to you? Each and every breath of a newborn is literally purchased by its parents and wards in lieu of love, affection and care that go beyond any monetary value. Why then you simply get ready to sniff out lives, the very same lives that have been taken care of tirelessly and unselfishly by parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.

Killings in the name of religion is what defines we earthlings as of now. Quite surprisingly, the fundamental tenets of every religion aim to make the followers better human beings, better not just for the self, but for others as well. Religious texts seem imploring a person to become an instrument of betterment, a heaver of humanity forward on its march to better days. The core of all religions is meant to be love and compassion. Why then so much of hate and blood-bathing in the name of religion?

The walk between good and evil is very dodgy and testing. Like a rope-walker is inclined to fall, with each step it’s about evading the fall. There is a natural pull for the fall. Only with each careful step and awareness one can move on. Goodness requires practice. It doesn’t come naturally anymore. There has been too deep a wound in Mother Nature. It has set into motion a vicious circle of stress, tension and frustration in the social systems as well.

Malice and cruelty have their own instinctive, convenient outlet through the little channels of ego pervading through our self-consciousness. Hate has its own natural pull. It just shoots off, gathering its own force once let loose, like a boulder rolling downhill. In hate you can do anything; it’s a terrific ignition. In anger you can rant endlessly.

In contrast, in love and peace you have few options. Love is going uphill. You have to hold it in your heart. You have to carry its weight. You pant and perspire. Man, it needs effort, simply because it does no longer come naturally. Thousands of years of struggle to survive has genetically ingrained fear, insecurity and hate almost to the core of our being. We are on the verge of fully losing the essential loving nature of our self forever. At both the individual and collective levels, altruism sounds an absurd concept. Things, situations, people, places, organizations, institutions and governments are on a hair-trigger alert. Slightest trigger and the arrow is shot.

Mention love and how many words you can speak out. Love after all is the single-word language of peace, silence and harmony. Try to make a list of the good deeds to be done around, you will twiddle your hair to find anything good to do around. Now mention hate, anger and destruction. And you have the options scattered around you to carry out the task ranging from verbally abusing somebody, slapping, screaming, breaking heads, throwing bricks to even killings.

Religion in practice is like bamboo in the hands of a rope-walker. It is meant to avoid the fall. It is supposed to prevent your collapse with each step. It does so by making you aware of your goodness, helping you take one step, then another and then another to complete the journey.

The religion in the hands of bigots doesn’t remain religion at all. It’s a poisoned pill. Condemn it in direct terms without fiddling with diplomatic maneuvering and falling in the clutches of impotent concept like secularism. Bigots are just plain murderers of religion. Throw them out of their authoritative seat. Hold them by their neck, kick them on their ass and spit on their version of religion that ordains killing innocent people. Not only they force a fall from the rope of life, they kill the soul as well. They kill the soul by sidelining love and replace it with hate. It imprisons the soul. It is skin deep addiction for some abnormal gratification of the senses. It pampers the evil side of the personality.

There is always a choice to be either good or bad. The evil book of bigotry robs one of this natural choice. Only dark force with its ghosts of hate, jealousy, anger, insecurity and frustration remain in the fray. It grips you and makes you an instrument of the evil, a foot-soldier of chaos. You don’t see the light from within. You are a blinded, crazy robot, ready to strike. And when you strike you just kill, without bothering about who you are killing. The victims are mostly innocents. Here lies the biggest tragedy.

When a child, who understands religion no more than the alphabets in her books, is killed in the unsparing spool of violence, what lines in the book of bigotry can justify the deed? When innocent people out for shopping, going to office and out there on the small stage of life get killed, which God in which heaven is appeased? If He is appeased, then to the hell with such a God!

There are many secular souls around who will point out the correlation between terrorism in the world and Islam. Aren’t most of the acts of terror perpetrated by Muslims, they say. Before we get into the debate, let us take a look at the plight of a Muslim boy. I can spot a few factors that allow the seed of bigotry to grow a bit faster than other societies.

Ever wondered why so many Muslim boys take to the self-destroying path of violence? In my humble opinion, polygamy may be responsible. Multiple wives, many children and family strife mean that children grow beyond the axis of love and affection required to groom a loving and caring persona. Long before you love the world outside, and become responsible to keep things in order, you need to have your own quota of love, your share of affection, your portion of trust within the family.

In polygamy you get tested. You get isolated when you need your near and dear ones the most. You end up competing instead of being loved and love in return. A polygamist family lacks the positives of a cohesive unit, nurtured by the sweet shower of parental and sibling bonhomie and affection. Life becomes a struggle at the home itself, the point you start from, and where things should be stable to groom a healthy personality. Your father abandons your mother at his mere fancy, gets a new wife, your mother either sulks as a secondary object in the same house, or leaves to either rot in poverty, or remarry, and you with your real brothers and sisters, get pushed around the corners. How will a young sapling take roots? Childhood gets uprooted.

All religions have adapted to get attuned to changing times. Religion according to me is just a set of adaptable principles to facilitate life and living as per the changing times. Muslim clerics and theologians should encourage monogamy. It will sow the seeds of trust, love and stability in the family, the point a child begins his journey. Islam means peace and monogamy will help the real spirit of Islam. With peace and trust in families, Islam will become the great religion it is meant to be.

Not that the problem lies within polygamous Muslim households only. It sets the trigger though by pushing young Muslim boys into the corridors of hate because they grew up beyond love and affection. The powers that be, the developed countries and those who nurture the wish to rule the world, set their geostrategic boats rapidly sailing in the fast paced currents of Islamophobia.

Women are the spring source of the fountain of love in the household. Women-centric reforms in Islam, giving females more free space on the open stage of life, will let loose the cool waters of love and affection that will surely douse the fire and fury of anger and hate.