It is the irony of humans that whatever they cherish and value most often turns out to be one of the reasons for their suffering. This happened with many of their discoveries like gunpowder and nuclear power, but even more commonly it happens with things like love. Whom you love most are often the ones that become the reason of your suffering and dispair, one way or another. And this is also true of religion, the supposed source of ultimate strength, belonging, peace and self-awareness, which has time and again become the biggest factor for violence, division of human societies and their conflicts.

Invariably, we wonder why the children of god....the same god, as there is only one god, and surely all of us are his creation....fight among themselves so often. But what is totally beyond logic is why, in the world, should we fight in his name, and even more absurdly, as if we fight to save him! If not, why use the word 'holy' for such destruction. How can killing the children of god, OUR GOD, for whatever reason, be considered "holy"?! There is surely something wrong in this kind of thinking. There is some fallacy of reason and we need to find it, if we want to stop such conflicts.

The best way to begin is to differentiate between 'religion' and 'community'. Religion is a person's own private affair, a matter of her faith and belief's...a very personal and private relationship of her spirituality with the perception of almighty creator of this universe, and an unwritten, unstated subordination to that great creator, whom we tend to address in our own way and language. This personal and private affair should never have lead to creation of 'communities' if it was not for politics.

Human beings have an inherent strength of organizing themselves as groups. The unity of the group allows each member a certain amount of safety and insurance against calmities like natural disasters, accidents, attack by others - humans or non humans, and also provide them a sense of identity, belonging and self esteem. That is why man is a social animal. However, this inherent strength turns into inherent weakness the moment there is struggle for power between the groups. Such a struggle can be for any possible reason, and the basis of formation of groups can be anything like race, language, ethnicity, genetic relations, ideology, political stands, social or economic similarities or religion.

Thus religious communities should be just another form of groupism. But what we see is that in today's world it is probably the most common cause of widespread violence, with the exception perhaps of ethnic violence in places like Rwanda (1994, Hutu Tutsi violence) and Darfur (ongoing). The reason it is so common, is largely due to two factors. First, a belief that it is the duty enshrined by one's religion to fight against other religions; and second the foolhardiness and lack of accountability of those who somehow, time and again, gain control of these religious communities. The second reason is generally more important in communities where questioning anything said by these religious masters is considered blasphemous, allowing them to literally get away with murder, often of their own kin!

The solution for this problem lies in the foregoing discussion. We need to target communities as potential source of trouble while allowing and promoting free practice of religion. We need to make the leaders accountable to somebody, below the almighty, as well. We need to ensure that no scoundrel is able to run a semi-dictatorship in the name of religion and holy father. We need to find the cracks from where the devil can enter our faith, and fix them, for once and all.

Learn more about this author, V. Kumar.
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