By Valson Thampu

Sure, Sonu. You’ are right. Religion should not generate noise and public nuisance. But that should apply to all, don’t you think, across the board. Why only to Muslims?

I am firmly against triple talaq. Because it is an injustice to women perpetrated in the name of religion. It doesn’t matter which religion it is associated with. This is something that cannot be justified as the will of God. Even if God were to come and say to the contrary, we should excuse ourselves from it.

The connection between triple talaq and polygamy too needs to be addressed. By the way, polygamy is not exclusive to Muslims. It is widespread in other communities too. Also, there is something worse than polygamy: adulterous promiscuity.

Polygamy can, up to a point, accommodate love and responsibility. Promiscuity cannot. Promiscuity unleashes the animal among the crops. It devastates the harvest called life.

I am against making a public show of religion. Religion is an awakening of human interiority. Our inner world is the only temple where God dwells. When we get obsessed with externalities we are lost to God.

The more people lose touch with God, the more they revel in showing off their religiosity. The more such public shows inconvenience people the more pious and religiously fervent they are deemed to be. It is as though we have acquired a license to inconvenience man and insult God.

Why is Sonu not bothered about the noise pollution during Diwali? As compared to the deafening noise and choking pollution Diwali generates, azaan is like Sonu singing somewhere in my backward. It disturbs my sleep only when my mood is bad. I’d blame my mood, not Sonu’s singing.

The extent to which people are inconvenienced by religious processions is insane. No religion pays road tax. I do. But my right to travel freely on these roads is taken away by religions. This is not fair.

Also, we are a nation crippled by holidays of competitive religiosity. If we don’t have the guts to abolish all religious holidays, let us do at least one thing commonsensical. Make all days of religious festivals restricted holidays and none of them, including Christmas, public or gazette holidays. Allow employees to avail only two restricted holidays per year. Citizens should be left free to choose the days and festivals they wish to celebrate.

Dear Sonu Nigam, do you have anything to say on the State subsidizing pilgrimages? I do! It mocks the secular character of the State. Religious establishments in India are rich enough to subsidize such pilgrimages. They are choked with funds. These funds breed corruption. Corruption, dear Sonu, is not a godly thing even when it is done in the name of this god or that.

In 2000 I was a Member of the Delhi Minorities Commission. Sheila Dikshit, then Chief Minister of Delhi, called me for a discussion in connection with Jesus Jayanti.

“I want to do something to commemorate the early advent of Christianity in India. It is great that India became Christian centuries before Europe did,” she sounded keen.

I took time to think.

“I am thinking of naming a park in Delhi after Jesus Christ. What do you say?”

“Sheila ji,” I responded, “I don’t think that will do Jesus any good. Let me tell you what Jesus said about himself, “The foxes have their holes. The birds in the air have their nests. But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Sheila ji became thoughtful. She resumed.

“All religions have their public footprints in Delhi. Christianity alone is confined to churches. I am keen that all religions are acknowledged alike. That is why I was keen to establish the Delhi Minority Commission in the first place.”

I was aware of the religious eclecticism in the Chief Minister’s house. She had told me, “All religions, except Christianity, are represented in my family.”

“All right then,” the CM persisted, “let us think of other possibilities. How about starting a few orphanages in the NCR to celebrate Jesus Jayanti?”

“It is a better idea,” I replied. “But it is more like the State outsourcing the caring task to Christians. Sure, there is a strong emphasis on the caring culture in the teachings of Jesus. But why should Christians assume that they alone are specialists and monopolists in care-giving? Spiritually the right thing to do is for the State to become an instrument of caring,” I replied.

I noticed that the Chief Minister was becoming increasingly disillusioned with me. Not surprising. She was not reaching anywhere with my help!

“The State becoming an agent of caring?” She asked me. “No, no. That’s the last thing the State can.”

So, nothing was done. 2000 AD came and went. There is still no millennial Jesus footprint in the NCR. I am glad that it is so.

It would have been a terrible injustice to drag Jesus Christ into an eventual land dispute, such as has been raging in Ayodhya for centuries now.

Things like this never fail to make me laugh till my sides split. We say the whole cosmos belongs to God. And then we fight for a piece of land to accommodate the poor god!

God has only one seat. That’s human heart. Surprisingly, Napoleon Buonaparte knew this. He said, “Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and myself established huge empires. But the days of our empires were already numbered. The kingdom of Jesus will stand for ever; for is the kingdom of love.”

Now, because the political wind is blowing in a particular direction, it is fashionable, even profitable, to show public resentment against the practices and customs of a particular community. So, we must expect more and more Sonus speaking out on various points of irritation. But this opportunistic posturing has nothing to do with religion. It is merely entrepreneurial; a sure-shot way to draw attention to oneself.

The true spirit of religious reform needs to be directed against one’s own religion. I am responsible for the garbage accumulated at my door-step; not your door-step. I am spiritually alive when I feel bold enough to admit that this garbage is really stinking.

India as a nation cannot progress unless our religiosities are reformed and rendered rational. I know that my religion stands in need of reform more than any other does.

All religions emerged in the distant past. They were revolutionary in their thinking then. Humankind has travelled long and far since then. To hold on to the same trappings today that were radical and progressive, say, three thousand years ago, is to remain anchored in the dim, distant past and to disable oneself from going forward. Stagnation is death.

Europe began to progress only when they learned to exclude this archaic baggage from public life.

Wonder what Modi, unlike Yogi, has to say on this!

(Valson Thampu is the former principal of St Stephen’s College, Delhi)