BUREAUCRACY OF RELIGION

                

We are living in a India which dwells more on the past and creates an image painting a better future. A future in which God himself will descend from the heaven and take away all the sufferings of human kind. And in the present, there is huge organisation similar to bureaucracy, working for the God.

They are marked by the same traits that our present state of administration represents. Let’s take them one by one.

·         Status-quo – They like the things exactly the way they are. There is no need for innovations and to fulfil the traditions of the past should be the summum bonum of life.

·         Nepotism – Only those who have blessings of God will be able to experience him. Apparently everyone can try to be his favourite but only few will be selected.

·         Redtape – The process is very demanding and time consuming. The file has to be passed from the lowest branch in the house to the highest in hills of Himalayas.

·         Buck-passing – Every administrator tries to pass the responsibility from one institution to another. There is no grievance redressal system and asking everything comes under the Official secrets act. So, there is no need to expect any transparency and accountability.

On the flip side of the coin, stakeholders of the religion ‘us’ also exhibit similar behaviour. We are ignorant to the meaning of the organisation. We just need to get our rituals done on time. And we will even bribe to get ahead in the darshan line.

Then the nexus of two has created bigger problems. Both are engaged in rent seeking activities and classes/castes have captured the decision making power. They make rules and regulations for the masses. And with the inter-mixing of religion and state, every religion has been carving out space for itself.

There were philosophers like Kabir and Guru Nanak who in chronology are medieval but act as link between past and present. Their simple and unequivocal views about religion have made them seminal.

It’s not that attempts were not made for bringing transparency and accountability (T&A). The number of temples has increased to give people the choice. Temples have started giving donation slips to increase T&A. The debates and discussions between scholars of different religions are organised to compare and validate the best religion.

Ironically those fortunate enough to reach the end of the line realise what this bureaucracy had been saying was true all along – God exists among us. The problem is not only the vices of the institution of the religion but also the blind trust of people that there exists something beyond the present. The false hope crushes all the individual ambitions. The group is more important than the individual. But we always get mixed up with the real intentions behind the idea. It is like USA targeting Afghanistan for the greater good of the world.