Today when I look back upon my school days I don’t find any chapters of my textbook or any curriculum that taught me about the plethora of faiths existing in our country and customs appended to each therein. Yet as we grow old we seem to judge them by their merits and form our own opinion about such religion without much difficulty. There is nothing wrong with forming opinions, rather it helps in our analytical thinking but with religion, we often tend to end up with obstinacy and biased love for the religion in which we are born (mostly) and to think of that, had actually no control over it. But somehow our love translates into haughtiness for one faith and crucifies others. Indians, cutting across race, creed, caste, and religion are an emotional lot and they love to emote. Our ingrained love for our families and the extreme possessiveness that we nurture for our family members, be it our parents, our brothers, or our sisters mirror in the same kind of love for our religion that we are born into and born with. Such dearness is confined within the close limits of our immediate family and does not expand for our neighbours. Like an Indian mother always ignores the follies of her son and praises him before her neighbours, it is the same predisposition with which we develop our fondness to our religion. We are not taught to love and respect our religions at schools, nor that we know much about the faith and the customs of other religions, but we follow our respective ones dearly, with all our hearts.

Our founding fathers desired to keep religion as a private affair and so have they hid it under the carpet. A country that has given birth to three major ‘Sanatan Dharmas’: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, has given shelters to the fleeing Zoroastrians of Persia in eighth century AD, has seen travellers like Saint Thomas coming in with Christianity as early as 1st century AD, has acknowledged Islamic rule for hundreds of years, has rightfully placed the idea of ‘secularism’ as her credo. India had no other option than to go for faith-neutrality. And therefore we don’t learn about the myths and customs of other religions in our schools and textbooks. That makes us ignorant and no expert on the subject of inter-caste faiths.

India suffers from a boon called ‘Plurality’. It suffers from a curse called ‘Plurality’ as well. Any attempt at homogenising this rainbow of ethnic influences ranging from enterprising traders to intrepid invaders, from Greeks, Scythians to Mongols, Huns to Central Asian troopers has failed in India and will always fail. A melting pot is not easy to sustain with uniform rules and laws formulated to tame its citizen who practice different customs, believe in different rituals and trusts entirely different sources of power speaks in incomprehensible dialects counting to a whopping 20,000 (and 22 official languages)! The Britishers realised the trouble for two centuries and gave in. They failed in the attempt at homogenising and therefore antagonised the army in the 1857 mutiny.

 We, somehow, are still managing the doctrine of mutual respect. This is what is of much importance. And this mutual admiration leads to acceptance of various faiths we co-live with. But that mutual respect is only possible when we are well aware of the customs that my neighbour professes and the religion that he pledges to. Then only we can draw a much-informed opinion about our religion. Subscribing to one thought and holding on to it with closed doors and windows for other alien concepts, not letting them in is not only stupid but also dangerous for a democracy like ours.

One needs to remember that we have been subjected to foreign rule, much harsher for the last two centuries in our immediate memories and we haven’t completely gotten over the pains and blisters that it had endowed us. The agonies and complexities of foreign rule has programmed us to look at any unfamiliar practice that we don’t seem to relate to as ‘foreign’ or ‘Martian’ and we brandish the axe promptly thinking our own faith /religion might be in danger. Thus we fail to understand the values of other thoughts, the religious beliefs of our fellow citizens. Such an unschooled mindset allows hatred, germinates unfounded anger, and publicises its own religion with a spectacle not letting it remain a private affair any longer and therefore intimidating the basic tenets of our Social fabric of secularism. The cause of this distorted belief lies in our education. We need to learn about the prevailing major religions in our country and the customs that they follow. The history of our schools begins with the influx of a concept and the idea of taking shape into a religion. That’s it. It never teaches the practicality of that religion and is left for higher studies and till the time for higher studies come our mind has already grown its inclinations and abhorrence for various ideas we call religion. This, I believe, is a major problem when it comes to intolerance and has the potential to rip the basic fabric of our nation on which nit is so proudly built and the leaders must take the bull by its horn, address the issue and introduce it as a carefully oriented subject in schools.

 As an adult, we are needed to make choices, take sides, indulge in discussions every day. There’s no way one can escape the mandir-masjid debate during prime time, even after 70 years of independence. Hence, educating at a tender age about the good things of the various myths and religion today will yield a better & tolerant tomorrow and when they will sit for a debate during any such prime time it would end up with churning and not tug of war!