Religion as control

Many of my allegories stem from cricket, or has some connections with the great game and its proponents. Sports links to life as much as anything else, also it doesn't exist in isolation, especially the sportsperson, that too in a sport that involves big money! But how does religion get attached to sports? I am sure you are aware of many such possible connections, but here is one of the less common one.

Now take this photo of a very special cricketer, Harbhajan Singh. Yours truly blogger holds him in great respect for his fighting attitude, carefree demeanour and athletic exuberance. In his fairly young life he has had quite a few come-backs, from various circumstances, involving minor controversies on and off the field, but with each come-back he has emerged a stronger personality. His is a recognised face all over the country, being a superstar cricketer, and it will need a very dumb nitwit to not to recognise the person in the picture.




Now here is a picture of his in which, well, indeed he has quite a different appearance, a rocking image of a flamboyant persona that he is. Indeed it took me sometime to recognise the valiant sardar in this rock star look. The swagger in his gait is evident from this freeze of a split second in a still frame. This event was a fashion show where a few Indian cricketers took on the to the ramp.






But this picture stumped me completely. Despite being an admirer of his cricketing abilities and fighting spirit and a swagger like approach to his game (and plausibly, life), I never envisaged this person as such a handsome guy, and here he is in a controversial advertisement for an alcoholic liquor company. The advertisement has been made controversial because the religious head of his congregation has publicly admonished him for letting himself be photographed with his hair let loose. Every organised religion has such edicts passed onto the followers, and the reason given is that lack of discipline results in faltering in one's path towards salvation, and hence the whole mass has to follow some generic rules to prove to the leaders that they are indeed well endowed for salvation!

I don't want to get into the details of the rules of the particular religious community to argue whether he was in his limits or not, nor shall I give arguments as to the leeway given to some other prominent members of the community who live on by breaking certain edicts and yet enjoy the privilege of not being censured in public. My argument is completely in the philosophical regime, regarding the issuance of such community wide edicts on every individual following a particular form of worship, irrespective of any particular religion.

Since mankind has not reached the level of consciousness where it can be guaranteed that the ordinary individual will not cause harm to his fellow human beings, every society needs to formulate and implement laws, rules, edicts to safeguard the spirit of humanity. Historically these laws were guided by the religious sentiments, whose main purpose was to control the negative tendencies of human nature by the fear of the unknown, using the concept of a universal creator, saviour and destroyer called God. The set up is very convenient as it gives the power into the hands of a small minority who control the masses by the manifestation of this fear of the unknown. These small minorities which constitute the leadership, in every religion, creed, or sect, then identify certain commonalities among its followers and create an aura of exclusiveness of their particular group, and create certain rules to preserve the exclusiveness of the group by passing community wide edicts to preserve the exclusiveness of their power over the community, in the guise of the protection of the exclusiveness of the group. The eagerness of the people to form exclusive groups is the manifestation of the fear of the unknown: as the group provides a security (by large numbers) and the exclusiveness gives the assurance of trust among the people.

But the basic nature of man is that it seeks freedom. Knowingly or unknowingly, each individual is fighting a battle for his freedom, and that involves fighting his insecurity, i.e. the fear of the unknown. The leaders who pass edicts and formulate rules need the security of the group behind him, and whenever they see any individual breaking away from their grasp they first try to bring him back into the fold by passing harsh strictures against the individual. In case the individual covers enough distance to go beyond the confines of their control, they attempt to vilify him and make him an outcast to ensure that others in the community do not follow his example, because anyone following the example of having an independent philosophy slackens the hold of these leaders on the community.

It might very well happen that certain individuals want to follow the traditional rules, because majority do not want to take up the responsibility of thinking and charting a path for themselves. But evolution demands that some individuals will break the mould and start charting his or her own path, maybe in some very small steps: but when this breaking away results in passing edicts from the religious leader, it smacks of fundamentalism which is caused by insecurity. As long as the person is not causing harm to anyone, he has the freedom to dress in whatsoever manner he may like, and passing strictures against him is violation of the basic tenet of civilization, of evolution.

Loss of power is something no one ever learns to cope with, and the fear of losing it makes the leaders lose the broader perspective and become very narrow minded. They do not learn from history, that closed minded control never works. Despite of all extreme control over the thinking process of the masses, a Galileo will always breakthrough the cage of unrealistic dogmas. For, the force of evolution, the urge of man to be free, is the basis of natural progression and hence unstoppable. Therefore this decree of stigmatizing Harbhajan Singh for having the gall to appear in his most handsome avatar is a churlish attempt to control his urge to express his own handsome self. It is a crime against humanity, and religions that profess such edicts have lost their philosophical moorings. It is time for humanity to redefine the regime of applicability of religion, and this is not confined to any particular religion. This sort of fundamentalism in religious setups is getting increasingly common the world over, and the time is nigh that clear debates are organised to redress the growing menace.