Fundamentalism at its extreme fringes

Dec 27:  The recent violence in Kandhamal district of Orissa has sent a clear cut message to the administration to take stern action against fundamentalist forces who are acting in the name of religion and trying to offend the very essence of ‘unity in diversity’, which has been a signature of India’s age-old cultural richness.

What one needs to understand is that those of few fundamentalists, who attacked churches in Orissa on a holy day of Christmas, forgot that with these kind of gruesome activities, they not only attacked a few people but also disrespected our Hindu tradition and ideology.

Fundamentalists have no religion and no religion advocate such hate crimes against any other that upset the whole humanity. For this kind of nonsense act what the state government needs to do is to take strict action against those so that such incident don’t reoccur again.

Orissa, considered as one of the peaceful state looking at its communal history again reminds the most unfortunate night of January 22, 1999 when Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt alive by a feral mob in the Manoharpur Village of Keonjhar district. The main accused is serving life imprisonment but again the same problem persists in which communal violence is occurring in the name of conversion and reconversion.

If fundamentalism defines a strong following of religious doctrines then where does it stand? No religion sees rightness in destroying other religious symbol, killing people and distressing other’s sentiments and beliefs. Then where do these come from?

Fundamentalists only believe in the correctness of their thinking. So it is not restricted to either Hinduism or Muslim but to a large extent in Christianity and in every other major religion.

The recent incident of well known Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin who is living in India while searching a safer place from Muslim fundamentalists; is facing a serious crisis as both the West Bengal government and the Centre are reluctant to come with any clear statement of her future in India. This is nothing but just another addition of politics in the name of vote bank to appease the minority Muslims.

After 1984 Delhi riot and 2002 Godhra massacre the concentration of communal forces are now trying to reach other parts of the country and our so called secular government has so far failed to take any solid step. If India is a secular country and everyone has right to follow any religion then neither Hindu nor Christian organisation has any right to forcefully convert and reconvert people; let the believer decide.

After all, conversion puts a question mark on the religion that lure many such people in the name of service and God; is it necessary to convert the other person to be able to love them?

Then such religion is questionable…