Religions play a major role in unifying and at the same time dividing people and have been the primary cause of wars and enormous human loss. The banning of Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam is an example of how far these sentiments can be used to take political advantage at the cost of freedom.

It is common for people saying ‘it is hurting my religious sentiment’. It is generally used to protect their cause at the cost of someone else’s freedom. How far one has to be careful in order not to hurt someone else’s sentiment? Is there any standard mark that we all can stick to or individuals have different levels of sentiments on different issues? The world is so big and so broad that anything we say, do or eat is going to hurt somebody’s religious sentiment. What you do regularly may sound normal to you but definitely someone else will claim their sentiment was hurt by that.

How many people who demand protecting their religious sentiments have attempted to protect others religious sentiments? As an example, most Hindus consider cow as sacred animal. I’m not here to say eating beef is good or bad, but by eating beef you certainly hurt the sentiments of lot of people. How many people from other religions attempted to avoid hurting the sentiments of these Hindus by not eating beef? The religions that do not take any action not to hurt the sentiments of Hindus get offended when another religious community eats Pork as a delicious meat. So sentiments are double standards for our own convenience.  In almost all religions it is commonly said that ‘we are all the children of god’. How many of them ever paid any attention to the sentiments of rationalists and other non-believers who believe that they are the children of their parents and not of an imaginary non-living object. These non-believers have learnt to live with that rather than taking arms and bombs to protect their sentiments. Can we all become dumb and be hungry in order to protect sentiments of others?

So in a true secular society people can say anything and eat anything of their choice. Rest of us must learn to respect the freedom of others and live with rather than going violent to protect our own sentiments.  The society that learns to respect the freedom of others rather than the sentiments of others will be stronger and everlasting, simply because we can never stop people eating beef or pork. Finally, religions do not provide solutions for our living but commonsense does. Until people look at the world beyond their religion there will be wars and killings triggered by sentiments. 

Article Posted By : tamil  On February 03, 2013lView All Articles

Occasionally find time to write on topics that I care about. For further debate on this topic visit Vishwaroopam

Article Source :

http://www.veethi.com/articles/vishwaroopam-ban---protecting-the-religious-sentiment-at-the-cost-of-freedom-article-1505.htm

Keywords :
Religion , Sentiments , Vishwaroopam