Religion poisons everything’ says Christopher Hitchens repeatedly in his seminal book, God Is Not Great. The brunt of his argument is that everything in nature can be scientifically explained without assumptions of an omnipotent creator and a divine design. He declares that religion and God are more of a bane than a boon and they should be summarily shunned.
When protest is the pain
It is always in the name of aam aadmi! He is the rallying point, be it for the Government, opposition or activists. But with so much of ears and tears directed at his plight, is he any better? Indeed, the real question is not that, but what hurts him more, the official policies or the ‘protests’ targetting them!
To speak or not to speak…
Even in times when it was believed that one man’s freedom to be nosy ended where the other man’s nose began, the borders were hazy. Today, with cultural and geographical barriers melting away in the heat of high voltage communication tools and media options, drawing out lines of control for freedom of expression is akin to making markings on water or in the air! In this context, the raging debate on free speech seems tiring and outdated.
Is anyone there?
Water is a great ground leveller. Add grim, total darkness wrought by the now familiar power outages to the scenario and terra firma mingles seamlessly with the atmosphere above, creating a uniform morbid nothingness that the senses cannot pierce or perceive.
A status report
This is a status-driven society. Everyone and everything needs a niche. All things created by God, be they sentient or not, have to fit into some man-made category or the other. Of course, G himself appears to have his own classifications, but that is a dangerous religious terrain and we will skip it. In any case, intra and inter-religious conflicts have proved that even God is subjected by His subjects to status questions like true and false.
