[Times of India - September 9, 2004]
Stop this non-census, we don't need religion
by An Indian
For me, there is only one takeout from all the brouhaha over a few census figures. Why in the world do I need to list my religion? Isn't it religion that is causing hate killings all around? Being used by politicians to divide?
And if it is imperative to list something, I want the choice to write A, for Atheist. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh - give me a break, this is 2004. Where I am coming from it doesn't matter.
It is a little unbelievable that in an age when a nuclear scientist is my country's President, religion should define my identity. In the global village that I inhabit, the H or M or C or S has no significance.
How good an engineer I am, which business school I went to, how much money I make, where I work, what car I drive, where I holiday, where I shop has absolutely nothing to do with what religion I profess. And all that does define the man I am.
And yes, occasionally my brown skin as a south Asian when I am screened at a US airport post 9/11. Will my telling them I am a Christian make them let me off easier? Unlikely.
Religion is an intensely personal experience that I give no one the right to define for me. If at all it has played a role in my social consciousness, it is as a tool of manipulation.
At best an opiate of the masses. At worst a weapon of mass killing, used by a few people to mislead a few hundred to massacre a few thousand.
Just look at the hordes that run out screaming murder when riots break out in the name of religion. For most of them each day is spent fighting poverty and hunger.
All that energy could have been expended in something positive if religion was not an issue. I sit in my home, watch them murdering each other on television and say "tch, tch!"
Realistically, religion should be banished to the privacy of homes and places of worship. And without the loudspeakers please while we are at it. Matters of belief are not to be confused with your social identity.
Would the fact that I believe in God, any God, change if I refused to tell the census man or the university admission form what religion I follow.
The government enumerator may need to know for his records what religion I belong to. Good enough he's doing his job.
But what if I have no religion? What if like minister Mani Shankar Aiyar I am born to one faith and attracted to another without going through the motions of conversion because I just couldn't be bothered. Listing my father's faith would be giving false information. Should I be lying to the government?
Let's face it. This generation has grown up fighting tougher battles than the "I am Hindu, you are Muslim" tussle. The next generation's battles will be even tougher. The search for an identity has gone far beyond these basic aspects.
It might have been pertinent 50 years ago when the wounds of Partition were very raw. But that belonged to the last century. So let's bury it with the last century and move on.
The next time someone gives me a form and asks me to list religion, I shall just write: "I don't give a damn."
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