Religious fanatics and bigots - Where do they come from? || Acharya Prashant, at IIT-Delhi (2023) - video Dailymotion

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?  Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...    Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?  Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...  ~~~~~   Video Information: 02.04.23, IIT-Delhi, Delhi   Context:  ~ What are fanatic religious beliefs?  ~ What are the effects of religious fanaticism?  ~ What are some critical thinking questions about religion?  ~ Why our festivals are celebrated by the people like they are?  ~ To whom we should blame for false culture and religion?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Sir, I am Saurabh Kumar from Rajdhani College, Delhi University. My question is that there

00:09is one or two days ago there was Ram Navami. Some people were going and cheering Ram Ram

00:16at the mosque and figuring out some flags at the mosque and they are looking like Rabri

00:24Sena. They are cheering Ram Ram. How can people can go this down? I mean they are kind of

00:34rubbish and it is called culture art. I mean please take that.

00:39I do not really know the facts of this case. Even you probably do not know. You can only

00:46quote that which has been brought to you by the media. We do not know what is it that

00:51the media is bringing to you. One has to be very very sceptical these days. Anything can

00:58be shown to you, anything can be proved to you. This is the age of mass indoctrination

01:06and hysteria. Sir, sometimes before that was a northern

01:13Indian kind of things, but it became kind of like all pan-India movement. Some Maharashtra,

01:21Bengal, UP, Rajasthan, it's all over the India. So, it is more concerning how our society

01:28is growing. Even we are talking in this classroom or auditorium, but the others are doing something

01:35very dangerous, so that others are feeling insecure. How can we neglect that thing?

01:43See, those who do all this, irrespective of the side they come from, it doesn't matter

01:51whether it's a Ram Navami procession or a Muharram procession or a Christmas gathering.

02:01Those who are doing this, think of where they are coming from. Think of the entire ecosystem

02:10that breeds such people and then also tolerates them. I am asking you, had we been really

02:18different as a society, would you still have those incidents? Do we want to blame an event

02:30or do we want to rather responsibly look at the entire ecosystem? Please tell me. Whatever

02:37they are doing is more or less actively or passively socially accepted. That's why they

02:44can afford to do what they do. Had they known that for displaying all kinds of perverse attitudes

02:55and behaviours in the name of religion, they would be socially ostracised. Would they have

03:01still dared to do what they are doing? Make it even more personal. Let's say there is

03:08a rioter. The police may not be able to locate his identity. Either due to connivance or

03:21due to incompetence, the police might fail to know who that rioter is. But for sure there

03:27are some people who definitely know who that person is. His wife knows. Does his wife not

03:34know? His kids know, his parents know, his friends know or are even these people in dark.

03:46Think of a situation where this fellow engages in an act of rioting and returns home and

03:52is disowned by his wife. Would he still manage to remain the kind of ignorant figure that

04:02he is? Please tell me. But just as family members partake in the bribe money that you

04:13bring home, they also partake in all kinds of toxic attitudes that we have. When a fellow

04:21accepts bribe, is it so that his family does not know of it? The fact is that the family

04:27willingly, happily enjoys the proceeds of the bribe. The fellow brings the bribe home. Does

04:34he not? Similarly, the family very well knows the attitudes that a person is cultivating and

04:44rioting, mind you, is also a bit of an economic activity. You don't just randomly riot anywhere.

04:52When you riot, you also loot. When you riot, often you also loot. Where do the proceeds of

05:01the loot go? They go to your house, right? The entire family is complicit or is it not? That's

05:08why I am talking of the ecosystem. It's not a person, it's an entire ecosystem. It's just that

05:15the active rioters become visible just as the tip of the iceberg becomes visible. Beneath that tip,

05:24there is an entire system that has upheld that tip, right? Else that tip would have disappeared.

05:32So, we talk of the 10, 20 or 100 fellows that indulge in active rioting. But we do not talk

05:40of the thousands and lakhs who passively support these rioters. And if those thousands and lakhs

05:48disappear, would these handful of rioters still manage to survive? I am asking you. Please tell

05:57me. Okay. One of you starts making boorish sounds here. What would happen? Just one of you,

06:05just one of you, just one of you starts making unpleasant sounds and starts distracting everybody.

06:12What is it that will immediately find? Let's say somebody at the back. If he does that,

06:17what would happen? Everybody would turn to the back and give him angry stares, right? So,

06:26he will have to stop. Is that not so? That's the power of the ecosystem. That's the power

06:32of the ecosystem. This is a society. One person cannot go astray here. The entire feeling,

06:45the cumulative feeling of this oddy has to be corrupted for something seriously active to

06:56happen, right? So, there are one or two fellows at the back who start creating noises and making

07:04faces and doing things. And what will the rest of the hall do then? As shared members in the

07:15conspiracy? They will either just gently smile or they will pretend as if nothing has happened,

07:23right? Somebody throws something at the speaker from the behind and the rest of the audience

07:31keeps sitting as if nothing has happened. What does that prove? Everybody is partaking in the

07:40conspiracy, correct? That's why I am talking of the ecosystem. You are talking of the 5,

07:4610, 20 or 100 people who engage in active violence. I am saying behind that display

07:53of active violence, there is a lot of passive toxicity. And from where does that passive

08:01toxicity come to the society? It comes from a few nodes, TV, social media, some other places.

08:11When that toxicity is coming to you as a general member of the society, then you don't resist. But

08:21when there is arson and looting and murder and rioting, then you start saying, oh, why are these

08:29people actively fighting each other? They are fighting each other because of the content that

08:34is being beamed to you daily on national television and on social media. Now tell me, do we want to

08:46talk about the tip of the iceberg or the entire mass? And since all of us are responsible when

08:57that act of looting or rioting happens, therefore each of us has to turn to himself or herself

09:04and ask, why does this happen? Why does this happen? Terrorists sometimes hide in a particular

09:27house in a village. They cannot hide in that house if the rest of the village is not complicit.

09:37Right? Now do you want to blame that terrorist, that house or the entire village? We will fight

10:02because we are animals. We require the enlightening effect of wisdom literature to

10:16transcend our animal disposition. Note that when someone stabs another one in the heart,

10:36you can capture that on the camera and you are quick to denounce that as an act of brutality.

10:44You just saw that happening in front of eye. The dagger was sharp and it went right into the flesh

10:53and blood, it just sprouted out like a fountain and all that is so dramatic. You can see that.

11:07How about those who are killing you daily by poisoning the air and you are getting killed

11:19daily, right? But is that so visual, so optical and so dramatic? Is it? We never come to know

11:27of that. But the principle behind both these murderers is the same and as intelligent people

11:35you must recognize that. The principle behind the stabber and the polluter is the, and that

11:44is the principle of the animal, the beast. I will live in my self-centered ignorance. That's

11:54the principle of the stabber and that's also the principle behind the polluter. Therefore,

12:02you require wisdom. You require wisdom and that's the entire purpose of spirituality. To

12:13take us beyond the bodily instincts. See how animals fight. If in a particular space there

12:26are n number of rabbits and more rabbits are born, the elder, stronger, typically male rabbits kill

12:36the younger ones because they want to have some kind of a monopoly over the resources. They say,

12:45if we have more rabbits, that's not good for our physicality. Food will become scarce,

12:53divided. That's who we are. We all come from the jungle, don't we? Historically, how long was it?

13:02Very recently, till very recently, we were chimpanzees and orangutans, were we not? You

13:14can say a few million years. That's a blink of an eye when it comes to the historical timescale.

13:20Till yesterday, we were in the jungle as beasts. So, we share our basic instincts with the beasts

13:30and that's the reason we stab and we pollute and that's the reason why we require the Bhagavad

13:39Gita so much. That's the reason why the Upanishads have to be the central documents, the most

13:50respected scriptures. Otherwise, we will continue to be violent, irrespective of whether you are a

14:00man, a woman, a religious person, an irreligious person, a devotee, an atheist, it does not matter.

14:08A Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Christian, does not matter. You will continue to be violent. You

14:18could be very well educated, you would still be violent. You will be violent now in a subtle way.

14:23You could be a rustic fellow, crude and uneducated and you will be violent, violent in your own crude

14:33way. So, the ways of violence will change, the internal violence will remain because the beast

14:41is violent. What is meant by that? Ignorance is violence. Ignorance is violence. What does

14:49ignorance mean? The feeling that I am the body and I have to live by the bodily dictates,

14:57that's ignorance. Ignorance does not mean not knowing. Ignorance means living in the wrong

15:04kind of identification. Not knowing your central identity is ignorance. Are you getting it?

15:17So much, the ignorance is so powerful, it consumes even religion. You were talking

15:34of writing in the name of religion. Do you know that more people have died in the name

15:44of religion than due to any other cause? You have to keep biological causes aside and you

15:54have to keep mass extinctions aside. So, we are not talking of cosmological events here.

15:58We are also not talking of things like the black plague here. We are talking of wars that human

16:06beings fight and the atrocities that they commit. More people have died in the name of religion

16:13than anything else. Think of the Crusades, the long wars between the Muslims and the Christians.

16:22If you study history, you will know how bloody they were. More recently, look at 1971. When we

16:42talk of genocides, we often ignore that place and that year. That was not that much in the name

16:54of language, though language was an issue, Bengali versus Urdu. That was also not so much in the name

17:00of ethnicity, Punjabi versus Bengali. That was more in the name of religion because the Pakistani

17:14army, when it got violent, it killed both Bengali Muslims and Bengali Hindus, but mostly and the

17:25murders and the rapes were just countless and all that in the name of religion. And it's not as if

17:39the so-called peaceful religions have not indulged in violence. Look at Burma. Even the long struggle

17:53that you had in Sri Lanka was religious in some sense, Hindus versus Buddhists. Ignorance is so

18:06powerful and its appetite is so huge. It can consume even religion when the central purpose

18:14of religion is to defeat ignorance. That's Maya. That's Maya for you. To make things worse, you

18:30have religious scriptures that directly command their followers to slay the non-believers. Now

18:36what do you do? If you come across a non-believer, slay him. This is in the name of religion.

18:47Even co-religionists fight with each other. They keep declaring each other as enemies of religion.

19:11So, we will ostracize you or declare you apostates and do all these things. Look at

19:24what happened to the Ahmadiyas in Pakistan. There is a large section among Sunnis that

19:36do not even want to accept Shias as Muslims. And look at how the Hindus have perpetrated

19:45caste atrocities in the name of religion. Till very recently, you had trouble in Great

19:59Britain. You know of IRA? You think of that only as something political? No. There was

20:10the Protestant versus Catholic angle there. Throughout the world, note this statistic.

20:23It is very strange that the more religious a people are, the less educated they are,

20:31the poorer they are and the more is the number of kids they beget. Maya ashames religion

20:41as well. This is hard data. The more religious you are, the less money will you have. The

20:51more religious you are, the less educated will you be. And the more religious you are,

20:56the more will be the number of kids you will have. And religion was supposed to be a liberating

21:04force. And this is what we have done to religion. Namaskar Sir. I am Mukesh Sayal. I am 1983,

21:23passed out from IIT Delhi. My first question is, the writers are not born writers. That

21:33is my feeling. Whatever I say is my feeling. Whatever we have seen so far, a writer is a

21:42writer when it is between two communities, well-defined communities. Everybody knows,

21:48I don't want to name them. The writer is a sanyasi when the third community takes out

21:56a similar position through the same street. Do you think there is a motivating force behind those

22:03writers to make them writers selectively and make them sanyasi selectively? That is my question.

22:13I didn't get the sanyasi angle. I am sitting in my house. I find today X community. I will not

22:28name that community. I am from Y community. X community is taking out a position through

22:37a street, through the same street. Then I am throwing stones on them. I am abusing their

22:44priests or whatever you name their religious persons and doing all sorts of nonsense. So,

22:55in that case, I am being motivated by somebody to become a writer. If the other Z community,

23:03passing through the same street, I am sitting on my sofa and I am clapping and participating,

23:13not actively, maybe passively, through my balcony and enjoying their position. So,

23:21do you mean to say or I have a feeling that that writer is being motivated by

23:26somebody to become a writer against that position of a particular community?

23:32What you mean to say is that a lot of that is reactive, purely reactive. Because there

23:40are conditions. A Hindu watches a Muslim, let's say. There is no point hiding names. You are

23:46talking of Hindus and Muslims here. That's okay. That's the fact. So, there is no point. Yes. So,

23:54what we are probably saying is that the Hindu watches the Muslim indulging in some things and

23:58as a reaction, he too becomes aggressive. That is likely. That is quite possible. That is possible.

24:04My question is, why he is a writer or starts pelting stones on a particular religious

24:12position if the similar position passes through a different community?

24:19Third community you are saying?

24:22Third community. He is enjoying that position. He is enjoying that satsang being played there.

24:29He is enjoying the Shabad Kirtan being played.

24:32So, you are then predisposed to oppose, obviously.

24:36No, but he is not born as a writer. He is being motivated as a writer.

24:40You are conditioned. You are brought up. That's the role of the ecosystem we talked of. The kind

24:46of things we consume from the TV, from the family, from society. If continuously those things are

24:52present in the environmental and cultural elements, then obviously slowly something is being built up

25:00and if you are lucky, that will never explode. If you are not so lucky, it may come to a tipping

25:08point someday and then there might be active violence. Even if there is no active violence,

25:12passively you are being indoctrinated to be violent within. So, we know how that is happening.

25:20Yes, that's true. See, I'll come back to that. We are animals and animals are not supposed to

25:32understand. Animals live by their bodily instincts. They don't really understand.

25:41Understanding is not even needed. No animal ever sits down and wonders. There are no transcendental,

25:52philosophical, spiritual questions in their mind. They are meant to do as their body commands them

26:01to do. So, we will favor those of our type. We will oppose those of the other type. The lion was

26:11never taught to hunt the deer. It comes from his body or does it not? The fish was never taught

26:18to swim. It comes from its body. Similarly, from our body violence comes. It is the body. Violence

26:26comes and that will remain till we are not properly spiritually educated. It's about rioting

26:37and it's also about our otherwise so-called peaceful looking life. Look at the relationship

26:44between the man and the woman, the husband and the wife, the father and the son. Don't you see a lot

26:49of violence there? It's just that the violence is tacit, implicit, hidden. Violence will be there.

26:57I repeat, ignorance is violence and what is ignorance? Living without knowledge of the self

27:07is ignorance. If you don't have self-knowledge, you will be violent. If you are crude, you will

27:13hit the other in the body. If you are not so crude, then you will pollute the air and do all kinds of

27:19hidden things, but you will remain violent.

Religious fanatics and bigots - Where do they come from? || Acharya Prashant, at IIT-Delhi (2023)

Category

Transcript

Recommended