The "R" Word: Reflections on the Spiritual Trouble of Academics

I thought that perhaps my previous post would be the last post I made from India, however this past weekend I was in Bhopal, MP attending a conference called "Religion and Communalism." It was sponsored by "Peace and Justice" Bhopal, and People's Research Society (PRS). Like all academic conferences, it was a lot of talking (necessarily so) and most of the content was bashing religion. Papers had titles like "Religion as Wellspring of Communalism" or "Bad Hindutva, Good Hinduism?", and covered topics from secularism and science to terrorism and riots. My own paper was entitled "Beyong Mandirs and Masjids: Communitarianism Through Civil Society" and focused on social solutions to communalism (although the problem of communalism is by no means only social).

There were a few problems I had at the conference. The most predominant one was that everyone presented in Hindi while I presented in English. Discussions sessions were also conducted in Hindi...

So while I was greatful for finding out that I could understand much more than I expected, I realized just how little I understood and needed to be able to understand. Many of the papers were in English so I was able to give intelligent comments in response to what I read and this seemed to be appreciated despite the fact that I couldn't give my comments in Hindi. Sigh.

The other problem I had was content based. This is a problem that would have been in many places had the same topic been discussed. And actually, the fact this problem presented itself was far from surprising. That is religion bashing. Most of the people there, from what I could gather, were not religious. In fact, if they had been in the least, they probably would have admitted this only grudgingly. Poor bastards (Totally Unrelated Note: Did you ever wonder why there's a word in English for "fatherless child" but there's no word, at least not in popular usage, for "motherless child." Shows you who is more important.).

Now why is it that 'religious' has acquired a similar kind of nasty connotation that 'feminist' acquired? Well, that's a fairly straight forward one. 'Religious' for one, at least in academic circles, equals ' lemming.' And lemmings, for those who don't spend time with academics, are despised. Blind following of is not something that academics do. There needs to be questioning. There needs to be some sort of challenge to the thing. Apparently religion doesn't do this for many people, even though it's been my experience that the most spiritually mature individuals are those who have questioned and struggled. Struggle makes us grow. That's a good thing. Not too much, or that would break a person, but a little struggle is a good thing.

'Religious' also brings to mind a lack of logic or rationality. There's no reason or logic behind behavior that is motivated by belief, and therefore it is dangerous, and frankly should be stopped. This is how the argument goes. I would say they're missing it.

Religion is about the heart. It is not meant to be an awful thing. It is meant to explain the unexplainable, to articulate a code of ethics/provide a guide to living in society, and finally it is meant to nurture the heart. It is true that any set of scriptures can be interpretted a thousand ways, and even the most liberal thinking person's words and ideas can be used to create a lock-step regime. However, this is not only a religious phenomenon. It happens with every ideology. It happens with every philosophy which becomes manipulated by those in power to control and oppress those without.

Now, my guess is that something happened to these people to turn them off to religion. Maybe they are emotionally and intuitively dense and so they haven't experienced some of the magic that comes through religious experience. There is a reason we use this phrase 'religious experience' to explain something unusual and powerful. People often convert or come back to faith because of a strong experience. Quite a few people in the Bible had the same kind of thing happen to them - they had a moment of doubt or were embittered and suddenly God comes down and shows them something they could never have imagined.

I am not claiming that religion is perfect, or that religion has all the answers, but I will assert that like feminism, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It has it's place and it's worth, and prejudice, irrationality, faith, and belief affect all groups of people - even atheist social scientists.