In every issue there are unanswered general attitudinal
problems.
It is high time that BJP delinks itself from the fanatic
fringes of RSS brigade otherwise it will prove as costly and as destructive as
for Congress hanging on to the apron
strings Nehru family or the left
lingering in its 16th century slogans.
Brevity is neither my forte nor my favorite form. So here
goes my reply.
Most politicians and religious leaders of all hues and
parties are soaked in superficiality, showmanship, sycophancy and pander to
pseudo and parochial populist schemes. They are churned out of some such
socio-cultural bias or ideological and organizational compulsions. Such people
always resort to executing wrong priorities under pressure and execute them
without the necessary diplomacy, delicacy and hypocrisy of a seasoned
missionary.
So nothing comes forth from them only froth.
The populace which hoisted them into power and position laps
up the bubbles of this froth. It is vicious circle where certain imagined
identity is ideologically acquired and most people are vulnerable victims to
this unconscious vicious circle. Once they are into it they suffer from
identity crisis. This is how both politics and religions exercise command and control over many.
One creates
beliefs while the other policies and
both are euphemisms to block individuals from rational thinking.
They fail to differentiate between the chaff and grain; they
mistake the symbols for substance; some scratch the surface of the symbols and
claim it as great and new interpretation like Devadutt Patnaik does and it is interesting to read
because he unravels the bridge between the symbols and substance with lot of
erudition and solid academic reference work but too much of labored
interpretations.
Anyone who grasps even an iota of the great nectar of
substance/intrinsic value would stop dabbling in any debates or discussion and
if at all they do it would only be enlightening like the philosophical probing
of Ramana Maharishi, JK, Swami Vivekananda, Bertrand Russell, Sri Aurobindu
etc.
Coming to the specific issue of ban on beef here based on
these above observations it is not at all surprising that some politicians act
very foolishly at times and it sets people into debates for and against.
It is a common malady of human species as a whole to
misinterpret scriptures and misuse them out of context or beyond their
contextual validity [we all must remember that religious scriptures too have an
expiry date] abuse, misuse ideological inhibitions and insinuations. But it becomes
a social problem when such misinterpretations are enforced on others.
I am a vegetarian I have never tasted even omelet and mostly
avoid even cakes. I have a spontaneous genetic rejection towards anything that
is not vegetarian. However, I am not a pure vegetarian, no one on earth is. We
all swallow our saliva which is not vegetarian. Whenever we open our mouth or
breath we inhale many microbes…
If going by the commonly misunderstood notions of
vegetarianism, if the whole world turns vegetarians then the fish will breed so
much that sea water will submerge most
of the coastal land.
What are going to do to those who are habituated to eat
beef? What are you going to do to those who made their livelihood by selling
beef? Where will you house those bulls which were hitherto consumed by so many?
Do you have shelters for them?
What is violence? Who is to decide it? Killing and war has
been very well justified in our scriptures in specific contexts. Most
developments of the world have taken place out of violence and its
manifestations.
Some gems on violence and non-violence from Jiddu
Krsihnamurti
“We human beings are what we have been for millions of years
— colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with
occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear
and gentleness; we are both violence and peace.”
Krishnamurti, Jiddu. Freedom From the Known. 1969.
“Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when
we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we
obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the
name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle,
much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence. When you
call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything
else, you are being violent. Do you know why it is violent? Because you are
separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by
belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is
seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or system; he is concerned with the total understanding
of mankind.”
– Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp 51-52
Many more here :
On war and killing
Over emphasis, for wrong reasons, on our past glory and
quoting our scriptures to either justify anything and everything or patting
ourselves
The problem of having to deal with an enemy within
The need to move ahead
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