Don't Encumber Poor Kids With Kalma Or Gayatri Mantra
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
5 August
2022
Why Do
Humans Pray? We Pray Because We're Genetically Programmed To Pray And We All
Have A Misguided Belief That There's Someone Up There, Listening To Our Cheap
Entreaties, Masqueraded As Prayers.
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A school (Florets International School) in Kanpur, UP, is in the news for the recitation of Kalma by the students as part of its morning prayer culture for years.
Whether
it's Kalma, Gayatri Mantra, Hymns and Psalms from the Bible, Gurbani, passages
and Gathas from Avesta and Zendavesta, among others, why envenoming the
impressionable minds with religious studies and overtures?
A school's
cardinal objective is to impart egalitarian education, not this theological
bunkum whichever religion it may belong to.
Religious
studies or theology is for those grown ups who consciously opt for it like
yours truly without any allegiance to any man-made bogus faiths and their
equally spurious gods and scriptures.
When I was
growing up, I was fortunate to have no religious atmosphere at home and school.
My parents rejected god and religion and my school also exempted me from
joining the useless prayer assembly every morning. I'm thankful to them for not
bringing me up in a religious or spiritual ( just a euphemism for religiosity)
way. This helped me form my independent thinking sans god or religion.
Why can't
the same be applied to Indian schools? When a few years ago, a 14-yr-old Tamil
boy refused to pray at his school in Sri Lanka, the school management
eventually dispensed with the whole shebang of morning prayers in the
school.This is modern and revolutionary thinking. If a child can understand the
futility of prayers, why can't the adults? The answer is: That 14-yr-old Sri
Lankan Tamil boy was unencumbered by any religion and unnecessary fear of god,
hell, heaven, devil, and all that jazz. So, he could protest and get the rules
changed. But all adults are slavishly burdened with faith, god and their
rigmarole. So, they cannot do away with these religious inanities and
turbidities.
Now the
question is: Why do humans pray? We pray because we're genetically programmed
to pray and we all have a misguided belief that there's someone up there,
listening to our cheap entreaties, masqueraded as prayers.
That's why,
there's a very wise and attic joke: The trouble with being a god is that you've
no one to pray to ( Terry Pratchett). We've found an object ( call it god or
some supernatural power) to direct our entreaties to.
Buddha and
Mahavir ( the so-called 'founders' of Buddhism and Jainism, both faiths being
predominantly atheistic) knew the unevolved humans' inherent need and weakness
for prayers and groveling submission. So, Buddhism formulated chanting in
Chaitya Griha ( from ' Chat' in Pali, refer to Dharmanand Koshambi's
'Dictionary of Classical Pali and Buddhist References,' published in 1949; this
could also be the etymological root of the English word, 'Chatting') as a
substitute for prayers. Now, chanting is praying in Buddhism and also in
Jainism.
Humans need
to grow up and divest themselves of all sorts of submission to a fictitious god
they've never seen and will never see. But, the million-dollar question is,
will that be possible?
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam,
Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to
Islam. He has contributed articles to world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/encumber-kalma-gayatri-mantra/d/127650
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