Freedom of religion = freedom to live life as one wants to!

Freedom of religion = freedom to live life as one wants to!

Freedom of Religion. That is, freedom to practice, profess and propagate one's religion. Various interest groups keep pressing hard in exercising this freedom of theirs. Their concerns towards restoring their fundamental rights to themselves in well appreciated.

But, to understand the logic behind their actions, their violence, their protests, their angst, their hatred and their frustration, we need to know, what is religion. Religion, as has been understood since times immemorial, is a way of life. Religion is something which, simply speaking, lays down the rules as to how a meaningful life needs to be lead. Every religion ultimately converges at the basic truth - at one Ultimate Universal Truth. It's just that the paths leading to this one end differ from one another subtly.

When this is the truth, I just do not understand, why and how people say that their "religious sentiments" get hurt, time and again, deeply and irrevocably. Religion is something very personal and intrinsic to one's personality. It embodies a person's mind and soul to the fullest extent. It is the basic set of principles, morals and ethics which defines a person. So, when this be the fact, how can a person's sentiments towards something as personal and intricate to his existence be hurt, or even touched upon, by some remote acts or omissions committed by some Tom, Dick or Harry? How can an external factor disturb something so intimately internal to the soul of a human being?

Well, if people do crib and complain that their religious sentiments are being hurt very often, and their religiosity is being questioned, then they have not done enough asking as to what constitutes a religion, and what, basically, constitutes life. People who act baby-sensitive to the speech and expression of their compatriots need a lot to do, to understand their religion, that is, their way of life, and only then can they take the apt and necessary steps to bring back to themselves their lost freedom, if there be any such loss!

I believe that, as human beings, if we fail to understand our own lives and its ways, we tend to externalize all this subconscious frustration and vent it out in the form of outrage and defensiveness towards the seemingly justified act of trying to protect one's religious integrity. But, in reality, it only shows how fragile our own belief system has become, how loosely knit is our faith in the God within ourselves, and how easily can we be provoked into defying and disbelieving our own life-ways!

True social development starts from the development from within. No amount of government subsidies or help can match up with the exponential synergy created by a self-realised self-fuelled intrinsic development. When such a self-introspection ultimately leading to self-realization dawns upon the humankind, then all the sufferings,  communal riots and wars, cease to exist, and there would be perfect peace and harmony everywhere in the world.

Let us understand our freedom of religion. Let us pry into what it means to be religiously free. Only than shall we demand for the restoration of our rights, in case they get infringed. It is submitted here that, seldom are the chances of our rights getting violated when every single human being understands the true spirit of his/her religion!

Jonathan Swift once famously remarked, "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." How right he was, when he said this! Let us try and cull out so much love from our religions (I bet, there is a lot more of it than can be thought of by us, and hatred is just our creation!) and let us help build ourselves as not only rights conscious, but also duty-conscious citizens of the world!

Let us live freely! Let us live as we want to! Let us live as we ought to!