End of Religion

Virendra Kumar Singh

What does religious terrorism represent in the first place?

We can provide a proper answer to this question only when we know what it emanates from.  Having been trained in the art and science of sociology, I am aware what it meant classical sociologists like Emile Durkhein, Max Weber and Karl Marx. If Durkhein recognized it as a social fact, it was a historical fact for Marx. Weber approaches the issue of religion as a cognitive system that seeks reasons for evils. I too have heard of Marx’s famous but sarcastically used statement that religion is the opium of masses.

Of the three, we can easily decipher that only Marx had any anticipation about the inevitable irrelevance of religion’ as he alone subjects religion to historical study. It means religion must have birth, life and death. The collapse of the Soviet System in late eighties and early nineties allowed, at least to ever waiting crowd of theists all over the world, to proclaim once again that religion is eternal and universal fact of human life. But, after all, it was only a mirage; the surreal was taken to mean the real. It must not be a daredevil act to say that religious terrorism is akin to childish sense of excitement and euphoria. It is there for all to see and judge.

Notwithstanding the above historical aberration, I do not think religion today resembles what we have known from its classical description. On the contrary, it appears to be just a skeleton of what it once was. It is a dying entity that desperately clings to straw in order to swim against the currents of time. It offers no solace whatsoever to modern men and women in their struggles of life. Its prescriptions are ridiculously demeaning to our sense of rational morality and growth of citizenship. It is no longer able to defend its aura and influence by means of only sermons and ceremonies. Here is a cache. The cache is when you change your tactics without changing your ideology you lose either way and certainly. You fail to defend both of your present and the future. Religion takes to arms in moments of intense desperation.

What does it mean to you when you see mullahs / pundits / pastors taking to and talking about arms? It should normally appear to you and all of us as the most allergic and pathetic scene to watch and observe. Yet, I think we can still reconcile with their identities provided they are officially and institutionally declared as rank idiots or people with preoccupying sense of effrontery. Respect and allegiance is no longer integral to religion. Religions are engaged in a tug of war; survival of the fittest is the motto and mission for them all. To be or not to be is the question they face together. They are in a state of war against all.  

It is the barbaric state of our existence. As a student of society, I have always found something really repulsive and hateful about the fact of being and seeing acts or actors of barbarism. But the story does not end here; for it is transcendental. We must also simultaneously explore as to where the religion has been getting its sustenance from all along the course of its history. Its origin can easily be traced back to the institution of inequality. It is the by-product of the process of institutionalization of inequality in society.

The inequality as an idea, we know, holds no water in modern worlds. The fact of inequality is accepted by us only under compulsion or under the sway of imperative subordination. The phrase ‘imperative subordination’ is an act done or purported to have been done in manner which is self-insulting. It means ‘sycophancy’ in plane and simple terms, according to Max Weber. In Hindi, we call it pure chammachagiri.  The capitalism is the last unequal society, said Marx and therefore, it will also be the last refuse of religion. Religion cannot exist without the support of capitalism. Capitalism has used it as and when and how it wanted. It’s already a stooge of capitalism. Religion will have no more institutional patronage by the state. Capitalism can’t afford it. And if it does, it will do at its own peril. Terrorists know that nothing of what they possess is the gift of religion. Their arms and ammunitions, training and entertainment – all come from the mundane world. Modern states possess nuclear power, but religion has only power of miracles. Since miracles don’t happen anyway, we do not exactly know what they really represent. There is no match between the two.  Religion is on its death bed, so is capitalism. A shocking sense of defeat grips them both. 

So, one of the plausible answers to the question we began with will be that the religious terrorism is the representation of a collective guilt consciousness about the fast receding sheen of religious tenets and practices amidst whirlpools of modern civilization. It is dead and stinking. More you assuage it, more it will hurt you. Keep it away if you want to live and laugh. It’s poisonous.  

Religious terrorism does not represent the strength, but utter cluelessness of religious wisdom. It emanates from a sense of decisive defeat. This sense of defeat is today all pervasive and afflicts all religious streams in equal measures. Humanity can no longer tolerate any brand of lumpenism.