Durban - So the South African Hindu Dharma Sabha is waging war on conversion. Well, it’s about time!
We really must stop these young guys buying perfectly good cars and then converting them by lowering the suspension and installing sound systems that are more expensive than the car itself.
I mean, some guys install huge speakers in the boot and there’s really no place for anything else.
Then I wondered why the Sabha would be concerned about conversions. Surely they have better things to worry about?
Oh, okay, I see my mistake: they are protesting against the conversion of Hindus to other religions.
Apparently, they want to secure 500000 signatures for a petition to submit to the International Court of Human Rights and the UN under the aegis of the Global Hindu Foundation. Okay, I’m so glad that they were not complaining about converting cars and installing terrible sound systems.
I read through the recent article in POST and smiled when the Sabha’s president was called a “maverick” by the president of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha. Holy cow! This is shaping up to be a better wrestling match than between Tiger Singh and the Bengal Tiger.
But what really are they disagreeing about? Our Constitution guarantees each and every one of us freedom of religious belief.
We can believe in whatever we wish and change our minds as many times as we want because it is a fundamental constitutional right.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether I would have to seek permission from the Sabha if I wished to convert?
Can they really prevent me from converting? It is as though I am unable to make up my own mind or think for myself. Well, it is a bit presumptuous and paternalistic, don’t you think?
One of the most perplexing challenges for me as a parent was whether I should encourage my children to follow what I believed in. I decided against it and they were allowed to choose and follow whatever they wished.
My daughters decided to attend church and now they follow a Hindu belief system and my son, who wasn’t really interested in any specific religion, is now a Christian.
My parents hardly discussed religion with us and pretty much allowed us to follow whatever religion we choose for ourselves or, for that matter, not to choose any religion at all.
I suppose having that freedom allowed me to take my time to weigh up my options. So, it was not unusual for me to join my Christian friends and sit through a Sunday service without thinking that I was unfaithful to my parents or whatever Gods they chose for themselves.
My parents prayed and fasted every Friday. My mother would clean the lamp, arrange the fruit on a tray and place it in front of pictures and sculptures of Saraswati and Krishna.
Saraswati, as you know, is the goddess of knowledge, music, arts and nature. I was, and still am, intrigued by Krishna and the many stories that describe a somewhat mischievous child, a naughty young adult, a passionate and faithful lover, a fearless and wise soldier, and, a loving God.
It is easier to just “believe” but my sceptical nature always prevents me from “believing” before “thinking”.
I suppose I can blame my parents for that because they introduced me to Goddess Saraswati. After all, I couldn’t believe in the Goddess of knowledge, arts and nature by being ignorant.
Neither, for that matter, could I believe in Lord Shiva and be ignorant because, as in the famous sculpture of Shiva Nataraja doing the Cosmic Dance, even he is shown trampling on the malevolent dwarf “Apasmara”, who symbolises darkness and ignorance.
But, all too often, we have come across parents, who claim to be Hindu but who cannot explain to their children what they believe in or why they follow certain rituals and traditions.
I suppose we must separate the belief in God or whatever spiritual essence one believes in from institutionalised religion with its rituals and traditions.
Institutionalised religion, in my view, is bad news. As comedian George Carlin once quipped: “More people are killed in the name of God than for any other reason.”
The claim may be funny but it is not necessarily true because wars are sometimes fought for other reasons, such as greed and nationalism.
Still, religious wars accounted for many deaths. The crusades, for example, are estimated to have caused between a million and three million deaths alone.
Religion, unfortunately, has become an industry and a business in its own right. According to The Richest.Com, the richest religions in the world are the Roman Catholic Church (a value estimated in trillions of dollars), and Islam (estimated to be worth $1.6trillion (R23.4trillion).
The US religious industry is valued at $104trillion annually. Researchers at Georgetown University put the religious industry in the US in 2015 to be worth $1.2trillion annually which, as they point out, is more than the combined revenue of the top 10 technology companies combined.
Yes, religion is a richer industry than the revenue of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon combined!
My God, God has become very expensive and rich! I wonder what God does with all that money.
Perhaps God gives it to those who pray for it? Well, the National Catholic Reporter says that the Catholic Church in the US alone paid out $3994797060 to settle sexual abuse claims from 1950 to 2015.
To top it all, I read that the Gupta family (from state capture fame) are reportedly building a R200million temple in honour of their father in Saharanpur, India.
Of course, they are not the first people to build temples and somehow include themselves among the gods; the famous Second River Temple in Cato Manor has sculptures of the donors among the sculptures of the deities around the dome.
Perhaps my parents were wise not to force me into any religion. And I see no reason to convert because I’m quite happy to worship knowledge, the arts, music, love and nature