In Your Face | Conversion is a primary reason for religious discord in India, must be stopped immediately – Firstpost

We need to realise that religion is a map that helps bring us to the door of spirituality; we can either open the door or wander aimlessly looking for God

Representational image. Reuters

I do not believe in religious conversion because I do not believe that a persons religious faith can decide the fate of his/her soul. Being a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or an atheist is not a gateway to heaven. Religions and religious interpretations are the root causes of conflicts around the world.

Religion corrupts the mind, while spirituality awakens the mind to the reality of our cohesive existence with all of Gods creations.

The root cause of conflict in todays world is religion because one religion wants to enforce its superiority on people of other religious faiths. I wonder if I were born not as a Christian but as a Hindu or a Muslim, how I would have been different in my thought and action. My quest to understand God and the universal consciousness would not change. I would be a seeker, irrespective of the religion I would be born into.

If most religions profess to preach unification of people, then how can religious institutions and their clerics divide people based on their religious beliefs? Such is the blind faith of people in their respective religions that they are willing to fight, and wage a war only to prove the supremacy of their religious beliefs.

Islamic radicals will go on a rampage if a cartoon is made of Prophet Mohammad. In their rage they will kill anyone seen to be standing on the other side of the religious divide. A teacher in Europe last year was brutally killed by the father of a Muslim girl, just because the young girl told him that the teacher mocked Islam and Prophet Mohammad! Upon investigations it was learned that the girl was not even in the class when she claimed the teacher mocked Islam.

Overzealous believers from the Christian community have been advocating the path of salvation being Jesus Christ alone and have arduously pursued this agenda to convert people of the Hindu and Muslim faith in India.

Priests and pastors constantly mock Hindu beliefs and gods. Many evangelicals claim that they have come to India on a mission to save the demon-worshippers and bring them to the knowledge of the true God and saviour Jesus Christ. Sometimes the allurement is education, healthcare, employment and a better life as a Christian than being a Hindu, especially for the marginalised in the social community.

Muslim preachers too have been vehemently propagating and proselytising their Islamic faith in India and around the world. In fact, Islamic radicalisation has over the years intensified globally. Most Islamic radicals want nations around the world to come under the Shariah.

To fight the onslaught of conversions in India, certain Hindu groups have initiated reconversions to bring the converted natives back to Hindu fold. I am not sure whether the person who converts and then reconverts understands the tenets of the religions he first converted to and then reconverted into.

Religion is the single most dividing factor that leads to violence and conflict around the world. I cannot come to grips with the thought that states, My God is better than your God.

Its difficult to comprehend how any sane person can kill another in the name of religion. Its difficult to fathom how one can atone for ones sins by sacrificing an innocent animal. Or, how the killing of persons from another religion will bestow you with 72 virgins in the afterlife!

The nature of God cannot be encapsulated in an image or a religion or a book or a dogma. God is an energy beyond comprehension. We come in touch with this consciousness when we empty ourselves from our religious biases and reach into the depths of our humanness or soul.

Conversion is a cruel joke on all of us, because God is within and around us. No God can be bigger or better than another God because even the religion and its institution cannot guarantee that their faith is the only true path to salvation. And seriously, what is salvation? What do we need to be saved from? If we have come into this world, we have come here with a purpose to live out our karma and do our dharma.

We need to realise that religion is a map that helps bring us to the door of spirituality; we can either open the door or wander aimlessly looking for God. We just need to open our eyes to see this truth; maybe, then, there would be peace in this world.

As Norwegian sociologist Johan Vincent Galtung once stated, Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the absence of violence in a time of conflict.

The author is the founder of GoaChronicle.com and a BJP leader. Views expressed are personal.

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In Your Face | Conversion is a primary reason for religious discord in India, must be stopped immediately - Firstpost