The News Editor, Panjim Goa, Sir, Request you to please publish the below article in your publication Thanks and Regards,
Ifa Saldanha Near St. Jude’s Chapel, Largo de Estesao, Cansaulim Goa 403712 Phone No 0832 2755045 Are our leaders tramplers of the Indian Constitution? A good leader should sow the seeds of Unity as Unity is a beacon of hope and of prosperity for our Society and the Nation at large. Any discrimination on the basis of creed, caste, class, is a stumbling block to progress. History is replete with all the atrocities unleashed due to caste and religious conflicts; the damage it has caused and which it continues to cause is irreparable which has kept India even to this day as a backward developing country (though it is supposed to belong to the richest and oldest Indus Valley Civilization) and this weakness was capitalized on by imperialist nations.Yet we refuse to learn from our follies and are ever gung-ho with our fellow Goans on the basis of our petty disparities. Everyone seems to be ego-centric, trying to promote their own community, caste and religion while being disparaging and downgrading of others. Is India a Theocratic State for our leaders to impose whichever religion they choose on those who are living within the ambit of the Indian Constitution? To quote from the Preamble to the Indian Constitution “India is a sovereign, socialist and SECULAR and democratic Republic. Secular implies a State which has no religion of its own as the recognized religion of the State. It treats all religions equally. It secures to all citizens liberty of faith, belief and worship. In a secular State, the State only regulates the relationship between man and man and is not concerned with the relationship of man with God (that is left exclusively to the clerics of every religion, as they are trained in philosophy, theology to understand supernatural entities to guide their flock spiritually). One may worship God according to the dictates of his or her God-given Conscience. However freedom of Religion is not an absolute freedom but a freedom subject to regulatory powers of the State, so that in the name of Religion nothing can be done against public order, morality and health. If it is so, should not the infiltrators of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti on our Goan soil, who are sowing the seeds of religious discord among our pluralistic and diverse religious society, that has and continues to cohesively coexist, with a great bond of amity for centuries, be denied future entry before any further damage is done to the tapestry of our religious diversity harmony? Why are our watchdogs among our political leaders and the heads of the religious communities mute to this? Are they waiting to fish in the troubled waters once the evil is done? Don’t they realize that this evil should be nipped in the bud right before the cancer spreads? Is it inexorable? Can we allow the prophets of doom to preach falsehood and hatred in the name of God? Has any Hindu God decreed that only Hindus can be occupants of this nation even at the cost of violence? As Satish Pradhan one of the members of Janajagruti, while addressing the convention at Ramanathi Ponda stated “ Hindu dharma nation, traditions and sacred cow are on the verge of annihilation. When the state of affairs is going from bad to worse it is high time we use weapons to protect the nations dharma and our traditions”. Is it not perfidious and a blasphemy to attribute to an unlimited and universal God such sectarian or partisan connotations? Do they not reflect their ignorance of what God really is and should be? Are they relating to their God of their imagination as they cannot fathom Him with their sensory perceptions? If we rake up the Genesis of Religion when Man was totally insecure on the planet Earth and at the mercy of the natural forces which overpowered him and being afflicted with fear, he worshipped the elements of nature thinking he could appease them and could get relief (so there was his concept of the Rain God, Sun God, God of the Cattle, etc ). Gradually as the human brain evolved and Man delved deeper to fathom God, he realized material things cannot be equated with God as they are limited and transitory but God is a permanent entity which no limited mind can perceive but only with intense faith through meditation and detachment like Gautama Buddha, we can experience the imminent existence of God. All those who rant in the name of Religion must accept the fact that God is One, the Alpha and the Omega (with no beginning and no end). He is above everything and above everyone as He is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnibenevolent. He is a universal God of Love who has no limitations and cannot be confined into the four walls of the church, temples ,mosques, gurudhwaras etc.God cannot be fathomed by a blinkered or limited mind. It is unfortunate that Religion is misused as an opium to misguide the people for their own vested interests by certain unscrupulous elements. Generally these religious threats are used by our leaders to polarize the electorate and whip up frenzies of irrational passions and hatred, to divert the attention from the prevailing serious problems (like corruption, rapes, scams, etc) and buffeting the Society, which can be hurdles to their electoral success and unfortunately the poor gullible fall prey to them. But these fundamentalists who in the name of Religion create social divisIon or discord incur the wrath of God, who exposes them to natural calamities like earthquakes, cyclones , tsunamis etc through which God forcibly teaches them how to live cohesively in a diverse society and with nature. To elucidate when Latur was ravaged by the earthquake everyone forgot their caste, class, creed and aided each other to save their lives even by donating blood which was for a positive good .God knows how to put them right, yes! If man cannot, God can bring revolution through natural calamities and many other ways and there are many instances in history to demonstrate this. All these bigots should imbibe the liberal values of Swami Vivekananda whose 150th birth anniversary was just celebrated, who accepted and respected religious pluralism. He believed in the universal Brotherhood of Man which can be a powerful means to promote inter-religious peace and harmony. Being an intellectual with a vast repertoire of knowledge and more than that a true follower of Religion,he was aware that insistence on one' sole religious identity can spell disaster to social unity and halt development. He even came to Goa and interned at the Rachol Seminary to learn Christian Theology. All those extremists who are fanning the flames of discord, should like our great leader Swami Vivekananda do a deep introspection into their hidden agendas and researching into all religions, which would help them to know the Truth - that is God and in turn the Truth will set them free from their shackles, to live in peace and harmony in this Universe, which is ultimately under His dominion and we are just caretakers. It would be wiser to be aware that division on the basis of caste and religion only weakens the Society through constant conflicts and only blocks development; as Gandhi advises us to transcend all our differences, remembering that we are ultimately human beings who ought to be human to each other working in harmony for the advancement of our great Nation. Janajagruti as an Organization should realize that social, moral and religious degeneration is the outcome of economic bankruptcy, which should be tackled seriously at the Government level. As the old adage goes “When poverty enters the door, love flies out of the window” resulting in corruption, assorted crimes, assaults on our Environment, scams, etc. Our dream to make Goa a paradise can be realized only if we all pool our efforts for a greater synergy, shedding all our prejudices to make Goa a model State. Finally they should realize that our human brain being knotty and stubborn, it is difficult to have one uniform thought for a nation riddled with a barrel of diversities. Let all the Religions live in an integrated manner because all the Religions are manifestations of the same God. God is only One, a Creator of this mighty Universe. Religions which are man made are different interpretations of the same God. Since all religions were culpable for injustices against each other they need to introspect and give up the retaliatory attitude and tender mutual apology so that there is Love, Forgiveness and Reconciliation. More importantly they ought to have inter religious dialogues to sort out all the prejudices distancing them and resolve to live in harmony (but these dialogues should not be like monologues speaking about their own religion as otherwise the purpose will be defeated). Ifa Saldanha Near St. Jude’s Chapel, Largo de Estesao, Cansaulim Goa 403712 Phone No 0832 2755045