Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
If political parties are as popular as they claim, why are they polarizing on religious line? Modi’s Goebbels was engaging viewers with this question on Times Now last evening. The verbal acrobatics, however, were far from seeking the answer.
If one tries to find out the answer, he/she may reach the religions. Religion puts people to opiumism that makes them too inane to oppose exploitation.
The rabid proponents of the system of exploitation that are seeking mandate are afraid of admitting that political economy of capitalism practiced and promulgated by Manmohan Singh has ruined India; because, thereby, they shall be attacking their own political economy.
Therefore, they are using religions to their benefit by obfuscating the voters and are trying to gain from the majority community in India by polarizing them on communal lines.
Communalism is the other name of religious opiumism caused by religious fanaticism and so, agents of capitalism, after capitalism as a political economy is showing symptoms of its failure all over the world, are not electioneering on issues of political economy; but have been using communalism as the main medium of vote-catching in Indian Elections 2014.
Since when fellows with more physical prowess and wild avarice started exploiting the weaker ones, religions are grown and used as shock-absorbers in their vehicles of tyranny. Even intellectual endeavors in Puranic days to save the human society from the mischief of religions have been overturned by agents of the exploiters.
Geeta a Victim of Religious Notoriety
As for example, umpteen attempts are made in India to convert Geeta into a religious canon, because herein alone, for the first time, a clarion call was given for discarding all the religions.
“Sarva Dharman Parityajya” (After discarding all religions) “Mamekam Sharanam Braja” (come only to my refuge), says the author Vyasa in the lips of his main character Sri Krushna in his epic ‘Mahabharata’.
The word ‘Mamekam’ (me alone) was elaborated in projecting ‘Vishwroopa’ (concise form of universe) of Sri Krushna. Arjuna saw the entire Vishwa in concise form in the body of Sri Krushna and, finally, stayed content in the human form of Sri Krushna. This indicates that in Geeta, by saying “Mamekam Sharanam Braja” Sri Krushna, in general the concise form of the universe, had been defined as human society in particular, in interest of which, all religions were required to be discarded.
This concise form of Universe/human society was further refined into the concept of unity of the people when the Devi defined herself as united form of the nation (“Aham Rastri Sangamani”) after showing her Vishwaroopa too.
And the concept was fully projected in Kali, the assaultive flame of awakening, arising out of the dormant society lying like a Shava (corpse) and with that awakening, the Shava becomes Shiva (destroyer of demons). Shiva in Indian mythology is also the last of the Trinity (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) regarded as the final arbitrator in whom all the Gods find their refuge. So, in mythological perception, Shiva is amalgamation of all religions. This indicates that Kali puts all the religions down at her feet and rises as the assaultive flame of people’s wrath against tyranny. So she also symbolizes that, when determination of the people to destroy the tyrants becomes aggressively active, it is necessary to discard the religions to dust of the soil, so that human society as a whole shall benefit.
So, Sri Krushna in concise form of Universe is the same as Kali in the age of mass awakening (“Kalou Kali, Kalou Krushna, Kalou Gopala Kalika: Tara Rahasya).
Sri Jagannatha (Lord of the Universe), regarded also as Sri Krushna, is, therefore, worshipped as Kali in His citadel at Puri (“Niladrou Sri Jagannatha Sakshat Dakshina Kalika”). So, Sri Krushna is, like Kali, conceived as eliminator of tyranny and its offshoots –the religions – to safeguard the interests of the exploited peoples. In other words, he symbolizes the collective conscious awakening of the exploited people of the world and their assaultive prowess. His views were clear: Religions are the obstacles to emancipation, discard them in entirety. Getting extricated from religions, the proletariat must fight against the exploiters, he had emphasized.
Paragon of revolutionary progressivism, Sri Krushna of Vyasa had called upon the proletariat (landless Pandavas) to fight against the land swindlers (Kauravas) as that fight only can give them emancipation (“Hato ba prapsyase swargam, jitwa ba bhogyase mahim, Tasmaddutistha Kaunteya yuddhaya krutanishchaya”). But religious taboos were hindering the progress, besides being factors of disunity of the have-nots, which was making them too pusillanimous to fight against the tyrants. Therefore, the call was given in Geeta to discard all religions. But religion being the vehicle of exploitation, attempts to transform Geeta into a religious canon has been made by the practitioners of religions.
World’s Parliament of Religions was aimed at foiling May Day impact
In modern time, we see how religions were used by the Industries to foil the effect of May Day.
May Day, celebrated as the International Workers Day, has its origin in Chicago of USA where workers in strike for their right to rest and reduction of working hours to eight hours a day, were subjected to State terror that brutally extinguished innocent workers through bullets and gallows to please the exploitive private industries and avaricious owners of means of productions.
At Chicago’s Haymarket Square, on May 4, 1886, to serve the interests of the private empires of exploitation, the Police had pounced upon the workers to disperse their peaceful rally. And the exploiters used an agent provocateur to throw a dynamite bomb at the police in order to precipitate the situation for gunfire from the police to extinguish the leading lights of the labor movement.
The exploiters-police nasty nexus, having caused the mayhem, known as Haymarket massacre, had tried to terrorize the awoken working class by using the judicial system. Eight of the labor leaders were convicted with one of them given imprisonment for 15 years and the rest sentenced to death. This judgment was delivered and enforced despite the fact that the prosecution had blatantly failed to prove who of them had thrown the bomb. In fact, none of the convicted had thrown the bomb as evidence on records had shown. Yet, four of the seven death row convicts were hanged on November 11, 1887 while two were saved from gallows as Governor Richard J. Oglesby of Illinois had commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment; one had died in the prison. People had continued their protests against the exploiters-police- Judiciary nexus when a new Governor of Illinois John Peter Altgeld had to condemn the wrong done to the workers through the stage-managed trial, for which, he had pardoned the surviving ones in 1893. By this year – 1893 – Chicago had become a seat of the working class consciousness that the exploitive class was no more able to face.
As the exploiters were eager to extinguish the fire of class consciousness of the workers, religion was the only way they found congenial to their design. So, to get a monumental audience easily for their purpose, they convened a World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, when the city was agog to have the World Columbian Exposition in 1893. Swami Vivekananda had joined this Parliament projected as representative of the Hindus and contributed his might to protection of the exploiter class through religious jargons. His speech was found so suitable to the exploiters that he was encouraged to continue preaching Vedanta, the philosophy that aims at making the people acquiesce into the system of exploitation in the name of God, as thereby only, emancipation would be achieved, if not in life-time, in the next birth.
The working class uprising against restless exploitation in Chicago that gave birth to the May Day, which the world observes as the International Workers Day, discernibly dwindled after that Parliament of Religions held in 1893, the year which had found the Governor of the State, as noted supra, condemning the wrongful trial of workers following Haymarket massacre.
The technique of suppressing working class consciousness is used by the exploiters always under the guise of religion.
Chanakya Method
Chanakya, the author of the Arthasastra (canon of political economy) had advised the kings, that, if any of them desires to expand his territory, he should depute his trusted ministers to the targeted area to generate amongst the inhabitants thereof a strong faith in a God while linking the same God to himself to cultivate their faith also in him. Once confidence in a God grows, self-confidence would recede and there should be no difficulty in grabbing their land, because people lacking in self-confidence would never stay strong enough to give a battle to protect their territory; even as they will not hesitate to go against their own king in support of the king they believe to be the man of their God, Chanakya had elaborated.
And India has witnessed how territories were subjected to fierce battles in the name of different Gods, projected as presiding deities of the quarreling kingdoms. Subjects of the kings were worshiping them as incarnation of the Gods they worship and tolerating horrific tyranny of the kings and their officers, because of the fear that the God would be dissatisfied if His incarnation- the king – and his acolytes are resented to. So, faith syndrome makes the tortured people too pusillanimous to revolt against oppression and exploitation. This is ensured by religions.
Thus Chicago was chosen
Therefore, the same Chicago, where workers were massacred by the rich owners of industries by using the State’s Police and Judiciary, as the workers were demanding for recognition of their right to rest, the World’s Parliament of Religions was willfully organized in 1893.
Religions were used to foil the instant impact of workers’ awakening and their supreme sacrifice that Haymarket had witnessed.
Satya Yug Ayega, Sab Thik Ho Yayega
The then Government of Orissa had put me in Jail in August 1983 as a preventive measure when the Communist Party of india had given a call for Bharat Bandh against pernicious rise in prices of essential commodities. Despite all sorts of oppressive steps taken against Communist activists all over the country, whole of India had responded to the call like never before and the Bandh was observed even in places where Communist influence was not that defined. This unmistakable rise of the masses against price rise had sent such shock waves that the profiteers and hoarders and their agents in political as well as executive governments both in the Center and the States were stunned.
However, on release from jail after a week, as I was waiting at Khuntuni of Athgarh for a public bus to proceed to Cuttack, four persons with buckets of colors and sprayers and brushes alighted from a car and proceeded to the nearby ‘bus-stoppage-shade’. They sprayed white color on the side-walls of the shade to cover whatever was written there earlier. As the white color dried up, they wrote “Satya Yuga Ayega, Sab Thik Ho Jayega, Jay Guru Paramatmaka” (Good days will come, every problem would be solved, Glory to Guru Paramatma). Onlookers read the apparently innocent lines and nodded in approval. “Yes, unless Satya Yuga comes, our misfortune won’t end” they were murmuring.
Everywhere in Orissa the same display was painted by the said hired artists and while going to Bhopal after a month, I had seen the same painting up to Bina at rail side vintage points and on road sides from Bina to Bhopal and in Bhopal Township too.
Who were those painters? Who had funded them to write this particular set of message? And why?
After many months, when I was in the chamber of a lawyer friend, I found him giving advice to a delegate of a business chamber to settle the issue mutually as otherwise, once the matter reaches the Court, it would be embarrassing to them.
I gathered that the said business chamber had engaged the painters mentioned above to write the above message as a part of the chamber’s campaign to erase the effect of the CPI led Bharat Bandh against price rise. But as the painters had not been paid with the promised amount, they had preferred a dispute, which the Chamber’s lawyer was trying to settle through compromise.
In fact, within a short time of writing of this message, I had observed how the effect of the Bharat bandh against pernicious price rise had evaporated. People had relapsed into the previous state of non-agitation believing that “Satya Yuga Ayega, Sab Thik Ho Yaega” under the grace of “Guru Paramatma”.
People of India are discernibly condemning Manmohan Singh for his wrong economic policies that has ruined India and, particularly, for his inaction against price rise. But the man who asserts to replace him in the top post is leading his campaign on the basis of religion, as he has no other political economy than that of Manmohan Singh.
Irrespective of which party bags how much votes, the people will continue to suffer as long as religions are allowed to keep them too opiated to believe “Satya Yuga Ayega, Sab Thik Ho Jayega”.
Modi’s Goebbels, as expected, keeps mum on this.