Sunday, October 17, 2010

Monotheism is an unnatural concept

Anything more aligned towards nature is better than less aligned, because otherwise it can break our ecological system. Naturally team work is better than one man. All the biggest human achievements are result of team work e.g Rockets, satellites, airplanes, movies etc. Every monotheistic religion claims that it is better than polytheism and better than any other. monotheistic religions were created by one man. Christianity by Jesus, Islam by Mohammad, Judaism by Moses, etc. Whereas polytheism came into being by natural evolution when human beings started living together e.g. our Hinduism. So, polytheism is a result of team work and thats why monotheism can never be better than polytheism. In fact polytheism proposes many Gods, so obviously many Gods are better than just one God. So the idea of polytheism is more aligned towards team work. Team work is better because it reduces the risk of going wrong. Why democracy is better than monarchy, simple team work. Why capitalism is better than communism, simple because the idea of communism came from one man Karl Marx whereas capitalism came into picture as natural progression of humans.
In the earlier stages of development the human was in awe of nature and was not able to control its fury. Sometime he faced floods sometimes famine, epidemic etc. He came up with the idea of Gods related to nature like Sun, Rain, or some tree. This naturally culminated towards polytheism. Since women do the miracle of giving birth to a child there were women Goddesses. With time these religions acquired bad customs like sacrificing humans or animals for God. This is also a natural process because if you don't maintain something properly it deteriorates. Then came a reformist who awakened people towards the bad customs of their religion. Like Jesus changed the behaviour of people towards ill, weak and physically challenged. In the western and Arab world monotheism completely took over polytheism. But because of their principle of one God and insistence on that my God is the only true God, all of them came into conflict with each other. This is a major drawback of monotheism. At the same time we can see that reforms mitigate these drawbacks. Despite the historical presence of very strong anti-semitism in Christianity, today Jews and Christians are partners in their development. This is quite remarkable achievement for both and the credit goes to modernism, liberalism and reforms.
In India we got religions like Buddhism or Sikhism as reform measures. These religions are not strictly monotheistic and they do not insist upon that theirs is only true God. So we do not see any conflict between these religions or with Hinduism.
Monotheistic people despise Hinduism and thereby polytheism for the existence of casteism and other social issues in our society. First thing is bad customs has nothing to do with polytheism and any religion without maintenance will acquire them e.g. Racism in western society.
Western religions got further reforms during the time of cultural renaissance. They came up with the idea of democracy and today they have controlled issues like racism in their society. In Islam reforms happened in the form of Sufism. But with the advent of Wahhabism these reforms were negated. Wahhab said that people are not following Islam properly and he attacked and killed liberals and sufis. Today this Wahhabism has manifested itself in the form of Talibanism and global terrorism. Islam came to India in the form of violent crusaders like Ghori, Ghajini and Babur. Here also it got reforms in the form of Akbar and Sufism. Akbar in fact started a new religion Din-e-elahi and removed Ziziya tax imposed on non Muslims. (If you don't know what ziziya is then just google it, in fact Talibanis are imposing and extracting this from Sikhs, Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, many people have been killed too). But all reforms became null and void with the Indian Wahhab named Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb reimposed the ziziya on Hindus and insisted on going back to original ways of Islam like Wahhab(Aurangzeb came earlier than Wahhab). Overall reforms are unsustainable in Islam. In fact there are many modern day examples of this recurring phenomenon in Islam. Before 1979, Iran used to be a progressive country and quite liberal, at least more than India at that time. I have seen some photographs on Internet where women can be spotted in skirt on road or in a college campus. Today it is hard to find women without burqas after the Islamic revolution in 1979 led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Now what was the motivation of Khomeini to start revolution. He said that people are going away from Islam and we should bring them back to original Islam. This revolution is well known but during the same period another very important event happened in Islamic world which many people don't know. (me too, I came to know about it very recently) and that is the seize of Mecca Masjid, the holiest place in Islam by an armed group led by Juhayman al-Otaibi. (again you can find details online). You can imagine the seize of Golden Temple in Amritsar by Bhinderanwale. Juhayman appealed to the army men to revolt against the king and support him. The army attacked them and the leader was arrested. Later he and his other aides were beheaded publicly as punishment. But why Juhayman seized the Mecca Masjid ? He said that the King of Saudi Arabia is corrupt and people are going away from Islam, too much westernisation is happening, so lets bring people back to original Islam. His seize of Mecca masjid failed but he succeeded in scaring the King. To prevent any such event in future the King announced lots of pro Islam measures. So that no one can blame the King for not following proper Islam. We all know how Afghanistan was under Shah in 70's and what it became under Taliban. What is the aim of Taliban and Osama bin Laden. They want pure Islam rule in Afghanistan and all over the World. All these examples prove the point that reforms are unsustainable in Islam. There is another very important feature to be noted. All these terrorists Aurangzeb, Abdul Wahhab, Juhayman, Mulla Umar, Osama etc. are very pious and religious Muslims.

In Hinduism further reforms could not take place as we became subject to foreign rule first by Mughals and then by Britishers. Now the focus shifted from reforms to survival. We got some reforms under Britishers in the form of Raja Rammohan Rai, Swami Dayanad Sarswati, Swami Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar etc. Because of foreign rule and because of narrow minded communist leadership after independence we have still not resolved issues like casteism.
Today as we all know a very significant change has happened and that is liberalisation and Information technology. Today we are not intellectually slave of our government because we can get the information from around the world. Today I am not forced to hear that boring and pathetic speeches of Rajiv Gandhi on National channel doordarshan news rather I can choose to hear inspiring Barack Obama presidential campaign. I think this liberal and information age has the power to start the cultural renaissance in India and we will be able to contain the social ills of our society.
The other good aspect of polytheism is its flexibility and more scope of reform because of its inherent flexible idea of many Gods with different shapes and views. Overall Polytheism gives more freedom to it followers and freedom is natural.