Your religion decides whether you are killed or not.

It seems if you stay in Gujarat, all you have to do is just collect a lot of weapons and keep in mind as many people of the opposite religion you can. There's almost a free for all every year. These thing really make me feel ashamed to be an Indian.Sometimes even to be a human. Peace is no longer a sign of tolerance and unity among religions.It's just a ticking time bomb. And wherever you live in India, it can and may happen in your neighbourhood sometime or the other. Although perhaps the state may not be as supportive to one side as in Gujarat. Some of the incidents are too painful and scary to even hear let alone witness. This blind and fanatical belief in religion is gonna destroy India. The perpetrators are not only going scot free, they are national leaders. However much India should be proud of it's culture and traditions, this type of behaviour is just unacceptable. When will these people realise that we are living in a country that is multi cultural and many religions stay here. Until the ridiculous pride in one's religion and contempt for other religions stays there's no hope atleast in me of seeing a peaceful 'human' India.And there are no signs of improvement. The anti muslim tirade is gonna come again.

This is a topic I feel very strongly about and don't think I can do justice to it right now. May be I'll write a post later.

Here's an earlier post I had written just after the last free-for-all in Gujarat.

India no doubt has made incredible progress since independence but lot still has to be done. The things that India prides itself upon are actually some of the things that desperately need some change. One of them is religion. It may be the source of spiritual inner peace but it sadly is also the one of the main reasons of the lack of peace. Though there is technically ‘peace’ around right now but everybody knows how fragile it is. Inside there still is a feeling of hatred if I may say so among the people towards other religions. Ok it’s a bit difficult to remove traditional prejudices but encouraging it?! That’s a shame! But yes that’s what is happening here. `Trishuls’ are being given to people to protect them. From whom you ask? Well whom do you think? People from other religions of course. And this is a civilized and democratic country we are talking about. Then there are speeches and rallies that scream of the superiority of a particular religion. And yes of course there’s that most important problem of the century. Whether there should be a mandir or masjid on a particular piece of land where supposedly a character of Mr.Valmiki’s world famous book was born. What do the learned, elderly respected people do? The most mature thing of course-take a few thousand of people and just demolish the `inferior’ religion’s place of worship. Who cares peace and order or even Law for that matter? Well how proud their God would be of them! And what is a political leader’s job you ask? Well it is protecting a religion from (probably) extinction. Probably what they thought was written in their holy books was –these are the things that thou shalt NOT believe in-1) non-violence2) respect for other religions, because this is exactly what they are doing. Yes sadly that’s what religion’s become-a thing that decides whose side you are when riots take place. That is certainly not what the founders of religion would have had in mind (hopefully). But it has become that. And we have to curb this non-sense before it engulfs and burns down the whole of the country. As illiterate people (not academically but intellectually) are so readily available in India the people who want exactly that, have easy prey. This is of course even though there have been more number of people preaching non-violence and respect for other religions here than any other place on earth. But the fact is there have been even more number of people preaching religion. God knows what can rid the minds of the people here of these stupid prejudices. This ridiculous love for culture that forces them to consider everything that’s being going on since centuries as right. I for one sincerely believe there should be some sort of censor board that keeps tab on things that are very religious-if you know what I mean. Education should be in the right sense of the term education not mugging practice. It’s time we change and accept globalization and modernization although keeping our identity intact not only the rich few but for the country as a whole and that can happen only and only if the `national leaders ’ take let us. But that is probably just a fantasy.