It's not your life?

Reader discretion is advised.

Thanks to JM for starting this conversation.

They tell you that you are worthless, that you are flawed, and that you are the product of the original sin. You are a disgrace and living off God's Grace. God's Grace is the only one which is going to save us at the end of days.

You are worthless, a sinner, a good for nothing. You who have nothing do not even have possession over your life. This soiled life is a total ownership of God. He has exclusive rights over you. You have no right to take it away. Even when one's dignity is lost, his existence may burden himself and those around him; nobody has the right to take it away.

It is better that he suffers and makes others' lives a living hell. Life has to go on. God has plans for him, and these hiccups are part of his grander scheme of things. Our role is to be herded through and let Him do His mysterious work. We must be herded by the shepherd. It is not our position to ask whether the shepherd has our interest at heart or whether we are being fattened for the slaughter?

The biggest thing a human being can get is the ability to live life. From a time when living life would mean conforming to the masses laid down by the community and prospering with and for the community. Any deviation from this social norm will render that individual an outcast. He will lose his right to live in the commune of people who live in a symbiotic manner. Losing his right to be accepted into the commune, he would probably end up as a hermit, living off alms and handouts.

Over time, this arrangement has lost its mojo. Society became self-centred. The idea of each man for himself crept in. The talk of the town now is individual development and human rights; no more progress of a society. Everyone wants to mould his life and live it however he wants.

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A time to reflect?

The Bishop's Wife (1947)
Director: Henry Koster

Even though 'It's A Wonderful World' (1946) may be hailed as the best Christmas movie of all time, the message behind 'The Bishop's Wife' is the same. Christmas is a time of giving (to the needy) and caring, and it is a time for peace on Earth. 'The Bishop's Wife' is nowhere listed as even the top thirty of X'mas films.

Christmas is in the air, but there is no peace in the life of Bishop Henry Brougham. The stress of getting funds to build a new cathedral is proving too much. He neglects his parish, his wife and daughter. The Bishop asks for God's guidance, and God sends him an angel to sort things out. In the neighbourhood, there is also a learned professor who has been procrastinating on his book writing. A wealthy widow is also trying to figure out how to utilise her husband's cash, give to charity, or contribute towards the cathedral. A nondescript angel, Dudley, comes in the form of a debonaire Cary Grant.

It is funny that the leaders of the same religion that calls for peace on Earth are the very same ones that call for war. The same people who call for equality are the very people who create trade imbalances. Somehow, when God supposedly created Man as equal in his own spitting image, He meant to make some more important than others. Some were designed to be slaves and to be whipped to submission. Others deserved to be colonised and bullied for their possessions.

They justify all these by building places of worship to glorify their own religion and erecting schools that denigrate other peoples' belief systems. A group of preachers are also hellbent on evangelising and converting as many lost souls as possible as they preserve prosperity in their own Motherland. The rest of the world can burn; they would find perfect bliss in fiddling!

Hey, it's Christmas. The message of peace on Earth, the glory of God and the joy of giving are the season's flavour. Come the new year, it is business as usual.

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Love thy neighbour, they say!

Fauda (Chaos, Hebrew/Arab; 2015-2019)
(Miniseries S1-3)

Is it not ironic that the Western nations want to police the whole world but failed miserably at finding peace at the heart of the Judeo-Christian stronghold. It seems that the brothers of the Book perform poorly when it comes to showing brotherly love. Also funny that a place that four great religions of the world look up to as their holy land cannot be protected by their Protector. A land hardly larger than 30,000 square kilometres, but this piece of land had not seen peace since time immemorial. 

The feud has lasted so long that nobody can remember who drew first blood. Both parties, the Palestinians and the Israelis, claim legitimate historical rights on that piece of land. Looks like all that talk of the religion of peace, the religion of love and the religion of compassion is mere rhetoric. The reference to 'brotherhood' is only offered to the brethren of the same faith, not of the whole of mankind.

I am sure God must be in a quandary. It is like the old Indian saying or maybe an old movie dialogue. It is akin to asking a mother which child she wants to support; she would say, "you are asking me whether I love my right eye more than the left eye. I love them both." Probably that is why there are no permanent solutions here. Let both brothers fight it out till both exhausts each other. The trouble is that their course has sympathisers from people elsewhere. Everybody else is drawn into the bottomless wormhole. 

This miniseries shows, from an Israeli viewpoint, is about a group from an Israeli counter-terrorism unit in the Israeli Defence Force. They are often referred to as Mista'arvim, meaning living amongst Arabs. They speak Arabic and assimilate into the local population to collect intelligence on the latest Palestinian terrorist activities. In the series, we find a power struggle between the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas and the newbie around town, ISIS. It looks like PA wants to maintain law and order, but everyone else has their idea of which brand of Islam should prevail on their land. They want more possession of land, which they assert was theirs anyway, to start with. To die for such a course is divine; they have been indoctrinated and have the rest of Palestine (and the world) follow suit.

This is, of course, the Israeli perspective of things. The Palestinians should rebut with their own version of the ground situation, but then, there will be confusion on which version is acceptable. Each faction of society would insist theirs is correct and proclaim their claim is a pursuit worth dying for.

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Back to the driver's seat!

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Ram Swarup

The thought of my simple-minded mother heartbroken over her beloved son's conversion from his birth religion into an Abrahamic religion was deterrent enough for me to maintain the status quo. The vision of her disappearing into the horizon as I am saved by the second coming of Christ at the end of times and the image of her burning in hellfire whilst I, because of my foresightedness in following the Shepard, savouring the sweet nectar of bliss was just too much for me to stomach.  

I cannot blame her for feeling the way she felt. After all, it is her life experience. In her eyes, as the script of Ram Swarup's view suggests, there is no reason to embrace another religion as the Hindu religion has it all. It has been around since the beginning of time. There must be a reason why unlike the other new kids of the block, its philosophy of living in harmony with our inner self, the environment and the cosmos resonates with other Eastern, African, American Indian and other ancient belief systems.

My mother perceived the Abrahamic religions as disruptive, combative and condescending at best. Her childhood encounters reinforced the idea that the nuns that she had met had ulterior motives in their niceties. She had seen families torn apart and marriages disrupted because of the divisive natures of Western belief systems. In her eyes, Hinduism has been and is still able to provide emotional solace and intellectual support to last this lifetime and the ones beyond. Period. 

Ram Swarup is a respected figure. Starting as a freedom fighter, he later was a prolific writer on matters critical against Christianity, Islam and Communism. Through his association with the publication house, Voice of India, he churned out many Hindu revivalist articles. The West sang praises of his scathing articles about communism but was not so complimentary on his views of Abrahamic religions. 

In this book, he asserts that the political differences between tribes, people from different parts of the world were content with their pagan beliefs, living in harmony with Nature with their own set of social mores that kept them going as a society. The Hindu type of faith spread eastwardly as far as Japan and westwardly as far as Central Asia. In fact, the Lithuanian language shares keen similarity to Sanskriti language. The last pagans in the Baltics who were forcefully converted by the Templar Knights had many Hindu deities. In fact, the Africans were not in a dark continent, but, on the contrary, were illuminated with their own advanced philosophy.  The Native Americans, whom the Spaniards looted were not just bison-hunting savages but with their profound way of life. The Aztecs and the Mayan who were systemically infected and forcibly converted to accept Christ at gunpoint had a shared belief system with the Hindus.

The Abrahamic religions need to put their act together. They need to engage in public relation to erase their checked past to rebrand themselves. They should erase the perception, to the non-believers, of a jealous God who is hot on the trail of a recruitment drive. Or perhaps, their past intentions persist, but their modus operandi may have varied. The perception of a heathen is the religions are means to exert power and a modality to squander money.

Ironically, India, a subcontinent that was referred to as the fatherland of mankind, exuding with advanced knowledge and skills has morphed into an ignorant, divided, self-hating society that has forgotten its past glory and needs validation for its own existence.

On a happy note, the author believes that the future is bright as India has reawakened. Even though it was pushed under the wheels of the bus of the Industrial Revolution, it has wriggled itself out to clasp its hands on to the driver's seat. Now, it needs to steer its wheels.

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