Vincent Kundukulam
Religions are mainly about love; love of God, love of nature and love of fellowmen. All religions advice their followers to look after neighbors, strangers and the needy. The Sacred Scriptures speak about compassion and inspire believers to strive for peace, harmony and justice. At the same time, we find that violence is permitted in religion as a disciplinary measure to reach its goals. For example, animal and human sacrifices are endorsed by certain religions as part of worship. In some other religions, cruel punishments are given to those who make serious violation of religious rules. Now and then we see around us how the individuals and groups who revolt against the existing unjust laws in major institutionalized religions are physically and mentally isolated, tortured and even persecuted by those who are in power.
Religions take violent measures not only against their own community members but also against other religious communities. When the tension arises between religious groups on account of social or economic issues, certain leaders make use of religious sentiments of their adepts in order to achieve social cohesion. They exaggerate even the minor differences between the religious sections as unbridgeable chasms and thereby evoke stronger hostility against the other. They give narrow meanings to the sayings and events in the Scriptures, and the groups which were until then considered to be friends are slowly interpreted as the enemies.
SudhirKakar, in his book, The Colors of Violence, has lucidly shown with examples how the fanatic minded leaders use stories and myths to inculcate hatred against the opposing communities. There is a tale regarding the birth of the city of Hyderabad towards the end of the 16th century. The petit Prince Mohammed fell in love with a Hindu girl called Bhagmati. Her residence was on the other side of river Musi. The petit Prince used to cross the river to meet her. One day, when there was storm and consequent flood, the petit prince heroically saved Bagmati. Compelled to accept his son’s choice, father Sultan Ibrahim built a bride across the river, which is known today as PuranaPul. Later, when Mohammed became Sultan, he married Bhagmati and built a city in her village, which is now called Hyderabad.
The above-cited legend of Hindu-Muslim bond is presently interpreted by the Hindutva leaders in a different way. Their narrative goes in the following line: ‘Mussulman has always fucked our women whenever he has wanted to. Whenever he took our woman, he never allowed her to continue her religion and thus they were forced to get converted to Islam’. In this manner, the communalists transform the legends regarding the amity between religions into stories of defeat and shame. As they become part of cultural memory of people, they could be revived at the turbulent periods of social life and lead to further conflicts in society.
The result of such kind of misinterpretation of symbolic events is the devaluation of the target group. At times, it may reach up to the level of dehumanizing them. Making the enemy non-human helps the involved attackers to get rid of the guilt feeling about destroying them. The important thing to be noted here is that the root cause of problems with other religious communities are not at all religious but political, economic or social. In fact, these problems are to be resolved by equipping one’s own community in wealth and power through legal and democratic ways. Instead, the religious heads with vested interest give communal color to the problems. The effective method to curb communalization of people is counter cultural formation: to educate the mass with the objective version of historical events and to unveil how the extremists tactically misinterpret them to inculcate violence in the innocent people.
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