Dr. M. C. Gupta's Journal

ABOUT WORLD RELIGIONS AND CULTURES

ABOUT WORLD RELIGIONS AND  CULTURES


[The ills associated with a particular religion basically reflect the mindset of the followers. Culture determines the behavior of a society / nation.]











Those who insult religious leaders act wrongly. They wrong humanity itself. Religious leaders have a large human following and shape the course of human destiny. It does not lie in the mouth of a squeaking individual, centuries later, that the leader of his times, and of times to come, was a rogue or charlatan.





Leaders are human, be it Ram or Krishna or Moses or Jesus or Mohammed or Gandhi. Pointing out a flaw in them proves nothing. They are remembered and revered for what they did and taught. They and their teachings can’t be held responsible for wrong acts on the part of followers. The maker of a movie can’t be hanged because someone who saw the movie was inspired by it to murder somebody.





In that light, no guilt attaches to what the personalities named above did. If people followed them in their life time and later, they must have been worth following. We, centuries later, have no authority to decide whom the people of those times ought or ought not to have followed.





The ills that attach to Christianity and Islam today are not the ills of Jesus or Mohammed. They are the ills of a socio-cultural-political milieu that characterized the Arab and European mindsets in those times. For example, given that mindset, Europeans would still have tortured and massacred the Native Americans and Australians as also Goans had there been no Jesus ever. A plunderer will plunder, in whosoever’s name. The same applies to atrocities in the name of Islam.





The essential determinant of the mass behaviour of society is its culture and philosophy. It is universally agreed that these were highly developed in India 13000 years ago. Mesopotamia was another centre of culture a little later, but that culture was destroyed by the Arab marauders in the name of Islam. Roman and Greek cultures came later and were learned and advanced, but they were overpowered and replaced by Christianity. In India, the culture continues. In spite of all the songs hailing the British as having a penchant for preserving the old, it is the Indian culture that stands the final proof—demonstration through actual acts. The British tried to destroy India’s cultural heritage and language and traditions and tried to convert Indians to their style of thought and behavior, not by persuasion but by violence. The USA came into existence slightly more than five centuries ago. Its culture, right from its inception, was dominated by exploitation and extreme cruelty towards the natives and the African slaves brought to work for the white. That culture of cruelty, selfishness and exploitation continues till today with a democratic veneer: a democracy glistening with human rights, both of which are sacrosanct for the American citizens but are actively denied to others through propping up banana republics, dictatorships and kingdoms across the world, basically to ensure supply of cheap oil, labour and farm produce etc. to itself. It specialises in fostering tensions between other states so that both the warring sides may approach it to buy obsolete arms, thus enabling itself to produce more and more sophisticated arms and weapons reserved for its own use to terrorise others. It is culturally acceptable to the USA to drop atomic bombs on other countries; to knowingly speak and spread a lie (about the WMD, for example), and to attack other countries and humiliate and kill their presidents, using the lie as an excuse. The US culture finds it acceptable not only to not feel sorry for the falsehood, but also to defend the beastly action taken in the name of that falsehood. It is because of the origins of the US culture, steeped in violence and cruelty, that the USA behaves like a bull in the china shop, toppling and crushing this regime here and that country there, as if its sole pre-occupation is to make itself and break others.





M C Gupta


14 September 2009