Permissible Blasphemy

Given some recent incidents in my life, I was taken back to a memory from over twelve years ago.

My mother, my sister and I, were on the train in India. I forget the destination, but it is very likely we were returning to New Delhi. Our seats were in the same division as another Bengali family, as well as a pair of young adult Christian siblings. As was usual at the time, conversations began. My mother struck up a conversation about Swami Vivekananda with the gentleman from the other family. At some point, the conversation veered to other semi-religious figures.

At the time, I knew less. I believe my mother was talking about my grandmother's devotion to Bharat Sevashram. Like any smartass, I made a mild joke about the naming system of sadhus at the institution. I said it was all just religious nonsense anyways. My implications were clear--that women who go to ashrams are essentially stupid fools, no different from the dreaded Hindu nationalists that lynch people of other faiths, and religion is nonsense anyway. The set of Christian siblings laughed at my joke. But I could see I had disappointed my mother.

Later on, my mother expressed her disappointment. She said that at the end of the day, everybody is allowed to practice their own faith as long as they don't disrespect other people's faith.  She said that had I instead brought up a joke about Catholics (she didn't specify, but an example would be a history of Catholic priests molesting children, and the practice being too widespread to be isolated incidents), the sibling duo would have been very offended. Most religions have some history of violence, persecution, discrimination, irrationality, and injustice, and even today, most religions have such practices in most parts of the world, but that does not mean we have the right to make fun of the faith of individuals because it's true that religion also bring solace and community to many. 

At the time, I was indignant for a while. In the following paragraphs, I describe the reasons why.

The first reason was because I don't practice faith. In my family, it is said that I take after my father more. Like him, I have been agnostic since birth, even though most of my family is Hindu. It was not because of political reasons. In middle school, I tried to be religious for a while, having my own thakurer ashon an all. My devotion felt forced, like a series of activities I was doing hoping I would see some point--mental, emotional or ethical--to the endeavor. But over time it became clear that religion somehow never brought the solace to me that it brings to many people, and it also did not help me become a better person. I also noticed that even in hard times, I never, ever prayed to God, simply out of instinct. Perhaps if my child was dying, I would become helpless enough to finally resort to a higher power, but in my levels of suffering it simply did not happen. In tough times, I somehow forgot that God existed and instead started thinking of circumstances around me. For a while, I truly believed I was intellectually and socially superior to religious people. I didn't need a God! I was strong enough on my own! I believed in reason! All the usual stuff.

The second reason was that I was young, and even though I thought I was fair and nuanced, I was not. My worldview was simplistic. Hindus were always the villains (unless it was in Western countries, where Christians are always the villains). Men were always more privileged than women. White or upper-caste or Hindu speaking people could never have anything worthwhile to say if they were not "standing up" for the less fortunate because all I needed to do was say "You're privileged," and all their arguments would fall flat to the ground and they would be forced to shut up. I was too naive.

Over time, I obviously grew up, and I saw that privilege is not so straightforward. As the SJW culture grew, and I started meeting more people like me, I started to see my mother's point. I started to see what political correctness meant, and how political correctness nullifies pretty much any argument that somebody can make as long as they were somehow discriminated against. In the real world this was how it manifested--I was more obligated to side with a Muslim making legitimate complaints of discrimination in India than my Sindhi neighbours who had recently migrated to India due to severe persecution in their hometown in Pakistan, or I was more obligated to see the sufferings of women (and I do acknowledge those sufferings can be severe) but not the higher rates of suicide and mental illness in men, and on a lesser severe scale, the fact that realistically, good men feel more pressure to be breadwinners for their family than women do.

My grandmother's village was burnt to the ground during Partition. She witnessed the killings of family members and unfortunately belongs to the same area where the worst riots in Bangladesh took place. My grandfather was a migrant too, but from what I hear, things were slightly better in his village. In spite of this, they have always supported me mingling with Muslims and have shown no disdain to the fact that we live in a Muslim majority society in Mumbai. They are kind to our neighbors and do not actively pursue hate. Why was I making fun of my grandmother's faith? I mean, let's keep it real. I wouldn't dare crack a joke about any other religion. Just because we are the majority, does that mean we don't have the right to practice our religion? If it's wrong to say all Muslims are intolerant, isn't it wrong to say that all Hindus are intolerant? Take this example--in the United States, even if  Mormon man makes adjustments to his faith to be more tolerant, people would say, "He's so nice, why the hell is he a Mormon?" but we would never say that to a practicing Muslim. 

With the unfortunate rise of Hindu nationalism and the liberal meltdown that has followed, I have had many interesting conversations. Yesterday, I was asked a very interesting question by someone who thinks that India is one of the most intolerant countries in the world and people are killed left right and center for not saying "Jai Shri Ram." This was his question, "If you go to a temple, and say 'Ram chhoot hain, do you think nobody would beat you up?"

But see, that's the point. If people are at a temple and practicing their religion, do you have the objective right to go over there and call their deity a chhoot? Can you do that in a mosque? Can you do that in a Jewish temple? Can you do that in a church? How is going to a temple and saying "Ram is chhoot okay on any level? How is it not intolerant. One is allowed to say whatever they want outside of a person's place of worship, but in a place of worship? Time for more nuanced questions--if we say again and again that out of 1.8 billion Muslims most are good people, why do we not think the same about 1.08 billion Hindus? Is there any objective evidence that Muslim majority areas in the Middle East and others are significantly more tolerant that Hindus in India? Is there any evidence that these countries treat women better? Is there any evidence that Sindhis are treated better than Muslims in India? But why the caveat for one group and not the other.

(As a caveat, I would like to say that this is not just applicable in the Indian context. A survey recently reported that the United States to be one of the least safe countries for women in the world. I wholeheartedly disagree. India was reported to the least safe country, and therefore I would be accused of bias, but I am sure there are many countries in Asia, Africa and South America (including India, I admit) which are far less safe than the United States is. It is notable that the methodology behind this research was self-reporting of women who reside in their own country, which could explain a lot. I mean, I may be wrong about this, but I think it's true for me as well, because if I were born in Pakistan, I would be a lot more afraid of writing this blog post. However, I invite my Pakistani friends to debate me on this, because I probably just don't know.)

One could ask me why I am writing this in the first place. The world is becoming more and more right-wing. In more and more countries, heads of state are being elected on the basis of the religious identity of the majority. People argue that it's simply because of ignorance and illiteracy, but that would not make sense because, in those very countries, more secular parties were elected just last term or the term before that. Like it or not, elections are about numbers, and do you think that if hundred people voted, and during one term sixty people were enlightened and forty people were ignorant, in the next term forty of the people from the first group became ignorant and forgot all their enlightnement, and suddenly became illiterate fools. Enlightenment does not work like that. 

What does work like that is a feeling of being shortchanged. When I was doing research in the slums of Kolkata, every one of those slums had a temple, which shows that their faith was important to them (this is in one of the most communist states in the country). These people were oppressively poor, living next to train tracks, expecting a fatality every week. They did not have access to water, sanitation, jobs or more than 4'x1' of space for families of five. They may not be persecuted for their religion, but they are for being bastiwallahs. Crimes are often pinned on them, and their young men taken away to jail. Even if they are exceptionally good people, I really do not expect them to care more about Rohingya refugees than their own selves. Do you think they want enlightenment from the liberals of Jadavpur University and NRIs? Do the liberals of Jadavpur University and NRIs know more suffering than these people do? Do you think the Bangals of Baubagan Rail colony, in their abject poverty, know less about being a poor refugee than liberals who live in bubbles? The fact is that these poor people could not use their identity. For long, their sufferings were weighed against the sufferings of other by people who really were not suffering that much. People made fun of their religion and linked them having faith with illiteracy and ignorance. For them, perhaps voting right wing is the last resort. In most populations, there are many, many people who live in desperate situations, even if they are the social or religious majority. What the left in media and university campuses does is weigh their suffering against the suffering of others, forgetting that suffering doesn't work like that, especially in poor countries. So, yes, the left pushed too far for too long, and when you push something too hard it breaks.

As I conclude, all I can say, is that I am very saddened that at the end of the day, the world is becoming more and more polarized, and we, the university-educated privileged individuals are way more responsible for it than we think we are. In the future, I anticipate even more division amongst people, and I feel I can do nothing about that. 

(Considering this is a controversial topic, I request people to be respectful in the comments. I would welcome written debate with points written down the same way I have cared to do. However, I would not want to be called names, or be directly accused of religious intolerance or racism.)