Believe in Oneness. Man must have an identity as a human but not by caste or religion. Caste is a status born with what we do. History teaches it. Religion is what we believe. Religious beliefs are necessary for a person’s peacefulness and promote harmony. It had evolved to teach the human about the right or wrong at that instance of time.
There is one basic principle common in all religions, that you as an individual is just a human. The people around you are similar such kind of humans. To so far what I have read in any religious scripture or shlokas, any sayings, stories said by religious leaders, what I chose to believe is “There are a lot of human values in every religion.” To me, any religious book is like any other normal book which I read to improve my understanding on unknown topics. Before you chose to believe any culture, tradition, religion try to realize analyze the origins of the practice.
To my knowledge what I was taught in my 3rd standard, there are few little paragraphs in my social book about religion. There it was mentioned about Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Buddhism which are very dominantly believed by global population. The concise and straight point I understood is that “There is one supreme power who monitors human activities.” From that age, my respect for other religions rose gradually.
It’s not fair that individuals should live with a religious, caste identity. I learned I believe, remember just a two-word statement but a bottom line, “History repeats.” There is great inner depth in that statement.
The way the life on earth started on earth, in a step by step manner, I mean, the evolution, is the same way as it ends. Charles Darwin had written about the evolution of living things which includes the human beings. As per which life on earth had undergone many metamorphic changes during the evolutionary process. For humans, animalàbarbarianà Nomad à early manà… fast forward… à civilized manà modern man. That is the simplest way to express and understand, apart from technical details. From my observation and thought process, the evolution has not yet stopped. It’s a cyclic process. There are discussions and postulates from the scientific community that the evolutionary process is still on the way.
To what extent scientific development may be, what may be the comforts of life, the end will be like that animals, and of course, humans are also called as social animals. We can understand relating to humans. You are born naked- your life burned or buried naked.
One should try to believe in and protect the culture, but never try to predominate others beliefs, because your own culture is not yours. Just look the past history. Your culture has undergone many alterations while passing from your ancestors to your granny, papa, and mama. Example, you may not wear the dress exactly, the way your granny or papa used to. Question to yourself, why are you practicing a tradition, culture. Don’t say I have no problem as I am happy about it. But an intriguing fact is that you follow it as per your comfort. More interestingly when you are in a foreign land, a different place where your action may be against the local beliefs, you may even think and fear a lot to do your daily activities.
The one who protects and provides the comforts to the people became the king (Leader). People with their work provided revenues to the king. Here both are mutually dependent on each other. There is no supremacy. When the king acted like a man or human people respect him, support him. If the king or any leader acted like he is the only supreme, suppressed people, oppressed for his own comforts, humiliated, forget other fellow human beings like self, a revolution started. If you look into any historical background of great kings and their dynasty, the founder of one dynasty had been a working soldier/ minister in another dynasty.
Whenever the greed for “me, my, mine” rises, there humanity dies.
One must accept the deviations in culture, tradition. Change has been the constant thing ever happening. In the course of humanity changes in culture, tradition, happens. They should be considered and to be acknowledged.
One must think, during the development of the history of caste or tradition, any race, a group of intellectual individuals at that time had thought to believe some principles which are necessary for their work proficiency or a survival practice, shared with close associates and accordingly the seeds for a caste system, a race developed roots in the human society.
Example, those people who need to offer prayers to god had thought that you need to be holy while offering prayer to god. What is holiness?? How to be holy? To be holy you should not eat meat, to be non-violent, to be peaceful so that god is satisfied. Those group of people became Brahmins.
Contemporarily what the culture we are seeing now is not the same as how it looked in the past nor how it originated. One can clearly notice cultural changes and you can understand the reason behind the changes as individuals thinking, human intellect, human consciousness is not uniform in the course of the human history.
Follow what you believe, practice what you trust, try to protect your individual identity, but never deprive, humiliate, disrespect other beliefs.
-16th June 2012
