The Notre Dame de Paris, vibrant and unique as it is, also boasts of millions, given in donation for the supposed rebuilding of the ancient architecture. Most of this amount can be traced back to the wealthy, the sophisticated, the luxury-seeking, just a handful of families around the world. To me, the question is not if this money could have been used in the welfare of the needy, because I stand by their right and discretion to spend their own wealth. But the critical question is, even to the creamiest strata of the society, religion does have a significant impact.
Now, heading back to India. Although the ruling party made no apparent movement to suggest their affiliation to any religious body, the intellectuals (and somehow many of them liberals) did cry out loud that the politicians were using religion as their weapon of mass mobilisation. What they supposedly thought, was that such aggressive revelation would make people morally conscious of their choice and chose the otherwise.
But I would question this. I fail to understand why is religion given a second seat, to issues like education and infrastructure (** the next phrase is important) given the context of Indian elections. A country where people are as clueless about reformation in the education system as they are about how to spend their daily internet data. A country where at the end of the day, more happiness is derived from festivals than from the GDP rise of the country.
I thoroughly understand the importance of welfare and support the claim that it should be the primary goal of the government. But I don’t think the analysis of a few men in AC rooms has an impact on the mindset of the millions of youth down in the streets living a frustrated life. Call it the limitation of democracy or the incapability of opposition, I firmly believe that religion does and from now on will play a stronger role in deciding the next leaders.
The last of the question that remains unanswered is should we stay silent in the face of the riots, misgovernance and apathy that might become common in the days to come. NO. Every government that wins the will of people must be given its due term before sentenced guilty. And it must be clear to my friends, it’s not the government that wants to stop your beef, it is the people who vote for it. These people are not our enemies, they are our fellow countrymen, and their choice is no way inferior to mine or yours.
Of late there have been many, foretelling how the next five years would unfold, I have a problem with that. I have a problem with the intellectuals looking down on the people, after an exercise where they failed to get their opinions approved. It's like the whining kid who always blames the race. For, a change maybe we can start to inculcate the religious sentiments as a primary player, than living in the illusion that welfare and morality is the only rational human variable in the contest for power.