Are all religions the same? An inquiry into resolving this riddled question has become increasingly complex. In India, the answer would often be an emphatic “yes,” reflecting the secular outlook that has shaped the nation for the past few decades. There is nothing inherently wrong with conceptualizing harmony among various religions, an approach that India has long allowed to flourish.
However, the complexity of this inquiry deepens when comparisons are drawn between Indic and Semitic religions. Their respective approaches to life, and to humanity’s progress along the path of spirituality and fulfillment, require careful and diligent examination. When does such a comparison typically arise? It most often emerges when the world is confronted with adversity, whether in the form of wars or when people’s aspirations are crushed under radical interventions and acts of terror. In many such situations, religions have often played a culpable role.
One of the most recent horrific incidents that reignited this discourse, grounded in the differing ethos upheld by various religions, was the Delhi blast. The question was why terror and radicalized thought are extensively supported by Islam. The Delhi blast also shattered the commonly conceived notion that religious radicalization and its subsequent hatred for other faiths and bloodshed are mostly due to the impecunious background of a particular community, a community that unfairly admonishes that it has always been crushed under the feet of a populous and flourishing majority. At least in India, this narrative has consistently gained applause. This thought has always enjoyed political ramifications too. Parties across the country have designed it as a constant flashpoint to gain electoral benefits. The consequential outcome was that they gained a vote bank for decades and remained in the corridors of power.
Though this perspective on poverty as a reason behind religious radicalization, especially in Islam, enjoyed substantial backing across the media and liberal academia, the Delhi blast came as a stark reminder to those who propagated this belief. It became an eye-opener for India when the bitter reality about the conspirators and perpetrators came into public knowledge. A new group of offenders, possessing strong academic credentials in the medical field but driven by Islamic radicalization, carried out an act of terror that could have claimed the lives of hundreds of people. But this is not new. Interestingly, education was never a roadblock. From Osama bin Laden to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to Ayman al-Zawahiri, all were educated but knowingly emerged from the same religious backing and processed their minds for hatred and destruction.
It was neither impoverishment nor lack of education that motivated them. Rather, the most demystifying truth was that they sought to execute what they believed to be a religiously predetermined philosophy, so a right. To others, it may be a philosophy of hatred, but to them it is the fulfillment of their religious aspiration. Non-believers, the infidels, are viewed as deserving punishment. This argument principally stems from a Semitic exclusivist view. The world has witnessed the destructive power of this argument and the counterintuitive reactions that have caused widespread chaos. Terrorism across the globe reflects this exclusion of the “other.”
In India too, it is almost the same. In fact, the issue becomes more intense. Its plurality, to those who provoke its amiability, is a challenge. Within Islam, religious paraphrasing is often centered on its expansion across the globe, and violence is sometimes projected as a means to attain this goal; therefore, it gains common acceptance. Influenced by holy texts and the chanting of verses, perpetrators in Delhi have made it loud and clear that terror, in principle and practice, enjoys religious endorsement. Their focus on India is therefore significant. We can, if we pay attention, sense a dubious silence across the community that, in other situations, collectively comes out revenging the government and other institutions. While external influence from neighboring countries like Pakistan is obvious, the situation becomes grimmer when educated sympathizers, though silently, within the country echo the chorus of terror.
On the Delhi blast, the left-liberal ecosystem sharply attacked the government for intelligence failures but maintained a studied silence on the issue of radicalization. Interestingly, when religions refuse to reshuffle their thoughts through timely inclusions and deletions for the common good, their interventions in social life are bound to be catastrophic. Indic religions, especially Hinduism, have followed a different logic; ancient in values yet consistently redefining them to fit the demands of modern times. Despite India’s enormous Hindu majority, its existence as a democracy has never been threatened. Under its constitutional framework, all religions, especially minorities, and Muslim women in particular, enjoy significant freedom and breathing space.
In contrast, many Islamist states impose severe restrictions on women while men enjoy greater freedom. In India, a democratically elected government has brought justice to Muslim women on multiple fronts, helping them confront subjugation from within the religion. The ruling dispensation under Prime Minister Modi has implemented a wide range of laws to protect minorities, and various policies have been framed and executed to support their education and overall well-being.
The basic conflict arises when religions become supremacist, with aggressive conquests and atrocities being justified as part of a divine command. There has been unspeakable horror and misery throughout such conquests, and India has had its share of these perils for centuries. Expansionism through conquest, along with deliberate destabilization of countries from which large-scale migration to alien lands becomes possible, has often gone hand in hand with forced conversions, enslavement, and brutal destruction, forming part of a broader global agenda.
Conquests have always been a reality in the past, and they remain a reality even today. An ideology that demands the conquest of the entire world can be easily activated through various, often unfamiliar, means. This ideological intrusion, as witnessed in many parts of Europe today, has become so disruptive and threatening that people are beginning to see the erasure of their cultural heritage within the span of a single decade. History bears witness to brutal conquests carried out in the name of religious beliefs, and to this day, this process of cultural intrusion remains a harsh reality. If a spiritual belief accumulates inflammability for the world around and formidably disapproves pluralism through exclusivist violent views, the days ahead will be more perilous and deleterious. The question is not whether all religions are the same; it frequently fails to comprehend why some religions become intolerant when they must sensibly interact with pluralism. The world is one, and to remain accommodative is the best way for its survival.