Taking Religion too seriously

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and after waking up in early afternoon, I was just getting ready to go out. I was in the toilet and suddenly the phone rang, was happy to know that it was from a good friend in India. She sounded disturbed and very much not at ease. I could draw reference to the fact that she was getting married soon and that something has gone wrong in that area. My friend practices Islam and comes from a devout Muslim family. She fell in love with this other friend of mine who is a Hindu and like her he comes from a devout Hindu family. The problem….well the parents don’t support their very decision to get married.

This wasn’t the first time that I was dealing with a situation like this. A couple of years back two of my other friends, after a long courtship, decided to get married. The only problem was that though they both being Hindu came from different caste. The girl’s family though modern in living had strong age old beliefs and was not ready to have the marriage happen at any cost. The result……both of them sacrificed their love life and their beautiful relationship for the sake of their respective families. They never wanted to hurt their parents and separated their ways.

I’ve been thinking about these two instances for a while now and not being able to understand the reasoning behind the parent’s behavior in both cases.

The family pride and a good social standing is always a prime concern for an Indian household. No parents want to hear from their relatives or friends anything bad about their children and their respective conduct. But, does a parent’s kid getting married to a different religion/caste person that big a deal? Who are these society people anyways? Do they help you when you are sick or in financial trouble? Are they there supporting you unconditionally? The answer is NO. Then why care about the society. Today’s children are an educated and responsible lot and the days of eloping are certainly gone. The parents need to respect their children’s decision and counsel them if they sincerely think they’ve made a wrong decision.

The other thing that I’ve heard from a few parents is that, “if he/she comes from a different religion, how they’ll adjust with our rituals and beliefs”. Well, there is for sure a whole lot of difference between various religions/caste but are they bigger than human relationships. We are not given a choice when we are born to pick our religion and all of us as kids just blindly follow the rituals and religion that our parents have been following for years. So, does it make a difference if some people go to a mosque to pray or some to a church or some to a temple? I don’t think so.

We are living in a globalized world and geographical boundaries are fading away. The world in itself is becoming a cultural fest and to be successful in professional and personal life one has to be tolerant about various cultures and religion. Parents need to teach the same thing to their kinds from the very beginning.

I still remember being in Mumbai couple of years back and how desperately I wanted to go to Haji Ali (a religious place for Muslims). I was just so drawn by the beauty and tranquility of the place. I was visiting Mumbai with a Sikh friend of mine and when I floated the idea of going to Haji Ali, he didn’t contest it. We reached Haji Ali and he refused to come along with me inside the shrine. He talked his heart out later and told me how he’s been so angry with whatever the Muslims did to his religion people in the Delhi riots of the 1980’s. He was a small kid then and how he and his whole family had to survive in those dangerous times. Everything was either destroyed or looted of his family belongings and then there was the reconstruction phase.

I posed a question in front of him, so because some miscreants of the society (believed to be Muslims) created trouble for your religion people for which do you consider the whole Muslim community at fault? Also, is he teaching the same hatred to the young kids in his family? To my nightmare, his answer was Yes.

Well, the above is not true with my Sikh friend’s family only, this is a reality in various households in India. From a very young age kids are told which religion or caste children they need to mingle with or which one’s to stay away from. Kids are never given an opportunity to explore on their own the circle of friendship and love which can be made up of different race, creed or religion.

To believe in something as beautiful as God is fantastic but it is time we stop bothering about which form of God we believe in or the rest of the world. I just hope that my Muslim friend and my Hindu friend end up marrying each other soon and become an example of tolerance through their beautiful relationship.