Opinion Fanatics become fashionable

My third fanatic sighting was in a video that came from Gujarat of an event organised by the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad, where the aide of an illustrious member of the Sangh Parivar used very coarse language to describe Muslim men. He then proceeded to declare that Muslim women were now in search of Hindu men so that they could produce sons like Luv and Kush. My distaste for fanatics increases when extreme religiosity robs them of their boringness and turns them into raving and ranting lunatics.

There was a time in India when fanatics and crazy religiosity were rare. I remember returning to the motherland from reporting trips to Pakistan and feeling an overwhelming sense of relief. In the Islamist Republic next door, religiosity and fanaticism are things you notice from the moment you land at the airport. Bottles of liquor, in long ago days when I could bring them for friends, often got seized at the airport when they were revealed by the x-ray machines.

It was hard to interview almost anyone without encountering religiosity. Sometimes I encountered it from total strangers. I remember being told by women walking by me in a Lahore street to dress more appropriately. I wore salwar-kameez but had forgotten that long sleeves were religiously ordained. On another occasion I remember having words with a mullah who ordered me to cover my head. You do not need to be an alcoholic or heavy drinker to observe the absence of bars in Pakistan, which was a complete contrast to the old India. But, in the ‘new’ India, the Chief Minister of Bihar recently declared that people who drank liquor should not be called Indians.

Fanaticism and religiosity go together, so it is difficult to say whether it has been the extreme religiosity of the past few years that has created this deluge of fanatics, or something else. Perhaps, they always existed in dark corners somewhere and have been emboldened to come out of the shadows because fanaticism has become fashionable in the ‘new’ India? Whatever the reason, it is time for sane Indians to speak out against fanaticism and religiosity, because if there is something that is truly against India’s ‘national interest’, it is these two things. Incidentally, it is also against the fundamental principles of the Sanatan Dharma.

The thing that always made Indic religions superior to the Semitic religions was that none of our religions include such fanatical ideas as apostasy and blasphemy. Is it possible, though, for us to still say proudly that our religions are superior to the Semitic ones? As a Sikh I have been horrified by those incidents of people being beaten to death in gurdwaras on charges of sacrilege. Guru Nanak would have been appalled. Legend has it that he went to Mecca and fell asleep with his feet pointed in the direction of the Kaaba. When he was told off by a mullah, he is believed to have asked in which direction did God not exist so he could point his feet that way.

These are the fundamental traditions and ideas on which India’s religions have been founded. Of course, we had our share of fanatics but usually these were people we treated with contempt and usually they remained hidden away in their own gloomy corners. They did not show up at public events to declare their intentions to defile women. They were never in a position to hand out certificates of good conduct to vegetarians and teetotalers. And it was because of this that religiosity and fanaticism were never India’s defining traits. It is deeply disturbing that these traits have come to loom so large because of political patronage of fanaticism.

What is as worrying is that those who have become more fanatical in recent times justify their idiocy on the grounds that it is a valid and appropriate reaction to secularism. The secularism as practised by the Congress party was flawed, but the answer cannot be extreme religiosity. All that this idea of religion does is to breed fanatics, and fanaticism turns the best people into bores.