Religion As Control
Manojendu Choudhury
21 September 2007, 16:19Amongst the clutter of information fed to us, there was one piece that caught my attention.
Next month the first Malaysian will blast off to space in a Russian spacecraft, and the particular religious group (to which the majority of Malaysian population belongs) has passed edicts on how to pray, wash and even be buried (in case of death) in space. The guidelines stipulate that the astronaut need only pray five times a day, just as on Earth, and that the times should follow the location where the spacecraft blasted off from — in this case, Baikonur in Russia. A twenty page booklet has been issued detailing all the guidelines.
This reminded me, among many other such stories, of an Indian cricketer who had to face much flack last year because he dared to let his hair loose and appear for an ad campaign for an alcoholic liquor. Being a Sikh he was not supposed to let himself be photographed with his hair let loose. The fact that he appeared to be extremely handsome in that particular getup is a complete non-issue.
Every organized religion has such edicts passed onto their followers, and the reason given is that lack of discipline results in faltering in one’s path towards salvation. Hence the whole mass has to follow some generic rules to prove to the religious leaders that they are indeed well endowed for salvation!
I do not want to get into the details of the rules of any particular religious community, nor shall I give mention the leeway given to some other prominent members of the various religious communities who break certain edicts and yet enjoy the privilege of not being censured in public, simply because they have close access to power. My argument is completely in the philosophical regime, regarding the issuance of such community wide edicts on every individual following a particular form of worship.
Since mankind has not reached the level of consciousness where it can be guaranteed that the ordinary individual will not cause harm to his fellow human beings, every society needs to formulate and implement laws, rules, edicts to safeguard the spirit of humanity. Historically these laws were guided by the religious sentiments, whose main purpose was to control the negative tendencies of human nature by the fear of the unknown, using the concept of a universal creator, saviour and destroyer called God.
The set up is very convenient as it gives the power into the hands of a small minority who control the masses by the manifestation of this fear of the unknown. These small minorities that constitute the leadership, in every religion, creed, or sect, identify certain commonalities among its followers and create an aura of exclusiveness of their particular group. They create certain rules to preserve the exclusiveness of the group by passing community wide edicts.
Their actual aim is to preserve the exclusiveness of their power over the community, in the guise of the protection of the exclusiveness of the group. The eagerness of people to form exclusive groups is a manifestation of the fear of the unknown. The group provides security (through numbers) and the exclusiveness gives the assurance of trust among the people.
But the basic nature of humanity is a desire for freedom. Knowingly or unknowingly, each individual is fighting a battle for freedom, and that involves fighting insecurities; the fear of the unknown. This fight can take the form of letting one’s hair loose, or blasting off into space beyond the confines of this earth.
The leaders who pass edicts and formulate rules need the security of the group behind him, and whenever they see any individual breaking away from their grasp they first try to bring him back into the fold by passing harsh strictures against the individual. In case the individual covers enough distance to go beyond the confines of their control, they attempt to vilify him and make him an outcast to ensure that others in the community do not follow his example. Which happened in the case of the cricketer, who had to withdraw his pictures.
In case the breaking off movement is too strong, like blasting off into space, the religious leaders provide some modified version of their exclusive rituals to placate their sense of control over the mass. In either case they can’t afford to slacken their hold on the community.
It might very well happen that certain individuals want to follow the traditional rules, because the majority do not want to take up the responsibility of thinking and charting a path for themselves. But evolution demands that some individuals will break the mould and start charting his or her own path, even in some very small manner: but when this breaking away results in passing edicts from the religious leader, it is called fundamentalism which is caused by insecurity.
Loss of power is something no one ever learns to cope with, and the fear of losing it makes religious leaders lose their broader perspective and become very narrow minded. They do not learn from history, that closed minded control never works. In spite of exerting control over the thinking process of the masses, a Galileo will always breakthrough the cage of unrealistic dogmas. For, the force of evolution, the urge of man to be free, is the basis of natural progression and hence unstoppable.
It is time for humanity to redefine the regime of religious dogmas, and this is not confined to any particular religion or region. This sort of fundamentalism in religion is getting increasingly common the world over. It is time for clear debates to be organized to address this growing menace.
