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If Salman Rushdie was worried if his brand of defiance was
passé, the recent upgrading of the bounty on his head (by $500,000) would come
as a great relief. And in a subsequent interview, the author reiterated his
belief that blasphemy is necessary to promote modern thinking.
Whether he intended it or not, the Booker-winning author has
brought into focus one usually-ignored truth — that blasphemy has brought about
progress and development as we see it.
The development of science has always been in the
blasphemous path and many men who followed reason gave their lives for it. If
they hadn’t challenged the faith-driven interpretations of nature, we would
have been still with medieval mindsets.
*Imagine the whole world believing than someone created the
first man from dirt and a few days later the dude wakes up with a missing rib
and a naked woman at his side. And since this is the original man-woman pair,
the entire humanity is a mass of inbreds.
And we would be living on a flat earth and not sailing too
far from land for fear of falling off the edge. Not to forget that the universe
would be orbiting the Earth.
People with mental illness would be seen as possessed with
evil spirits and subjected to brutal treatment (not that this has really
changed even now).
It was not long ago when my mother’s colleague died of high
blood sugar because his prayer group believed it is against god’s will to take
medicine. After prayers failed to keep his soul attached to his body, he left
behind an unemployed wife and five little children (yes, the sect also believes
that family planning offends god).
If people were to not to allow the ‘mysterious ways’ to
decide their behaviour, the world would definitely be a better place. Caste
divisions, communal riots, ethnic cleansing, genocides, female genital
mutilation and a million other inhuman practices would have no takers.
Think of the absurdness of some random guy in India going
around burning government buses in which he travels daily because of some
offensive short film made in the United States. How does your thunder and
tirade help, buddy?
We wouldn’t have had the misfortune of our greatest
contemporary artist, MF Husain, dying in exile if his artistic freedom hadn’t
‘offended religious sensitivities’ and made him a target of legal harassment
and vandalism of his works.
Imagine the amount of money you would be saving, or spending
on matters of your tastes and choice it wasn’t diverted to people who claim to
have a hotline with god or can broker your way to salvation (for a price).
Couples would have been living happily if they weren’t
forced apart because a couple planets or stars aren’t favouring their union.
And when you want to do something you can do it at a time of
your own choosing and not wait for some board-reader to tell you the
‘auspicious’ time for it.
Colour of the flag or name of the sect doesn’t manner,
religious bigots have been there all throughout human history. They thrive on
ignorance, blind faith, complacence, nepotism and the desire for status quo by
the privileged. The lines are redrawn and rules are bent to suit their material
gains and controlling power.
Life is short, let us use our brains (unless already muddled
by religions) to be better human beings to our brothers than be dictated by
criteria to avoid the purgatory.
*Removed from the printed version
(This article was published as the editorial column in
Postnoon on September 19, 2012)
