Monsoons are eagerly awaited throughout India because the country’s prosperity and the ruling Governments popularity depend on whether the monsoons have been good or bad. In case the rains failed in large parts of the country there would be all round misery with poor agricultural output and consequent rise in price of food articles and suffering for the people, mainly the poor. The cascading effects of failed monsoon would affect the industries too with poor demand from the farming community, which accounts for a major proportion of the Indian population. During the worst droughts that hit the country in the past, people in rural India were the worst affected with a number of cases of deaths due to starvation or diseases.

During one of the worst droughts some years ago, villagers in one of the states suffered badly and starved because of loss of failure of crops and unemployment. The problem before the Government was how to help the villagers to earn enough to buy food in the market and keep their body and soul together! It is not easy to suddenly come up with some alternative employment for the farm labourers. So the Government decided to repair the roads in the villages for which the labour force could be used. Huge boulders were brought to the villages and the villagers were employed to break the boulders. Some UN observers engaged in relief work were aghast at the sight of poor half starved farmers engaged in breaking stones and sweating under the sun! Those foreigners believed that such work could be given only as a punishment to criminals or jailbirds and not for half starved villagers who were already weakened by malnutrition and needed help in the form of food and medical help!! Relief measures should not be so harsh!

Khadi cloth or “Khadder” is a cloth woven from hand spun yarn. Ever since Gandhiji made hand spinning the symbol of India’s breaking away from British shackles, “Khadder” is the choice of all politicians, compulsory for the Congress party worker. Even after sixty years of independence “Khadder” continues to be the cloth for the Congress worker.
Hand spinning had some meaning in those days before the independence, and Gandhiji spun yarn on a Charkha to convey some meaning to the masses. It is doubtful that Gandhiji intended to make it a profession for livelihood for himself or for the masses of India because a single spindle Charkha, which was in vogue in those days, could hardly be expected to produce sufficient quantities of yarn for making a living. But after independence successive Governments wanted to promote hand spinning and Khadi as an employment opportunity for the villagers. So a Khadi board came into existence and later the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC).

But for the introduction of a four spindles Charkha by Mr. Ekambaram, Khadi would have become extinct long ago. Mr. Ekambaram’s Charkha came to be known as the Ambar Charkha later. Present Charkhas have six or eight spindles, but still the production is not economical compared to mill production and lot of subsidies go into Khadi industry to keep it going. B.K.Nehru, in his memoirs “Nice Guys Finish Second” states that a former finance minister who was reputed for his business acumen and commercial sense, Mr. T.T.Krishnamachari, thought very poorly of the Ambar Charkha and told that it would ruin the country (or something to that effect!). Ekambaram’s Charkha was an innovative product and after many years very little improvement has happened on the Ambar Charkha except some cosmetic changes that mainly benefited some MNCs in the textile machinery Industry! Now we hear from news reports that a new E-Charkha has been “invented” awaiting introduction of some 2 Lakh Charkhas at a cost of Rs.3000/- each for the hand spinners!! The E-Charkha is not an improvement on the Charkha for increased production of yarn or to reduce the load on the operator but it is a Charkha to which a dynamo is fitted. When the handle of the Charkha is rotated electricity is produced which is used for charging a battery. This battery can light up an LCD lamp! Such a mechanism could be attached to any device having rotating parts but why the Charkha and increase the load on the operator whose productivity is already low!! The device could be attached to a bicycle or a bullock cart or a scooter or any other device! Usually when elections are near lots of funds are channelled through KVIC for political purposes!! Ha!! Rupees sixty crores !! Wow!!

Now take Biogas, or Gobar gas as we Indians would call it. Many press reports have appeared about its advantages and India is in the forefront of Gobar gas production units. India has over 2 million installed in the country for producing gas for cooking in households. There is no clear figure of how many are working on a regular basis or how much is the production. But this much is clear: We have the world’s largest livestock population of 250 million, which produces close to 125 million tonnes of cow dung. Using this we can produce enough methane gas to entirely replace LPG and kerosene in cooking, and substitute petrol in transportation. Methane gas can also produce enough electricity to meet all requirements, at least in rural areas. The by-product can serve as excellent organic manure, substituting chemical fertilisers, which require LNG as feedstock.

Just consider what has been happening in other countries on the biogas front: (From BBC news site)
“The world's first biogas-powered passenger train is taking its first passengers between the Swedish cities of Linkoping and Vastervik. Nor is it just trains. In Linkoping, the 65-strong bus fleet is powered by biogas. Indeed the city boasts that it was the first in the world to try out its buses on methane. The taxis, the rubbish trucks and a number of private cars also fill up at the biogas pump, housed under a dinky green corrugated iron roof. “
I understand that the reputed German automobile manufacturer BMW is producing electrical energy from landfill gas, methane, to meet almost 20% of their energy requirement. They are getting the methane gas from a distance of about 9 kilometres through pipe lines to gas turbines for production of electrical power. This is really great.

If the world’s richest economies are concerned about the depleting resources of crude oil, what is India doing with the world’s largest livestock population of 250 million?

We must wait till another Dr. Kurien, famed for the milk revolution in the country, takes the initiative to form co-operatives to collect cow dung and produce biogas on a commercial basis in every district of the country.
.

In our day-to-day life all of us are engaged in some activity or the other, presumably in pursuit of happiness. We may not be all the time aware of or conscious of the fact that the ultimate aim of all our activities is happiness. Happiness that we are after is that which comes from fulfilling our desires. We work to earn to keep our families in comfort, though we may not be quite liking the work that we are doing. Then, it is not the immediate happiness that keeps us on our jobs and business activities, but the happiness that can be procured from performing the activities that may not, per se, we like. It is said that altruistic people do good deeds and help others not really to meet the need s of the underprivileged or helpless people, but it gives them a sense of fulfilment and happiness. People loot and murder not because these deeds give them happiness (may not be true in case of sadists or psychopaths!) but to fulfil the other desires. When we analyse thus, we would reach the conclusion that we are always in pursuit of happiness. How lasting is this happiness is something we hardly bother to ponder. Most of the happy events are not even noticed in our lives, but if the desires are not fulfilled, however small the desire is, there is a positive pain, very recognizable and nagging.
But happiness that we derive from wealth, security and other material objects, is known to be short lived and desire for these keep growing endlessly until our last day on earth. There is never a point of satisfying all ones material desires.
In western societies happiness is mainly derived from material pursuits, physical activities such as water sports, bungee jumping, wind surfing etc and a whole lot of other activities, which for one thing the majority of Indians can hardly afford. What does the Indian do for happiness then? He has to find activities that he can afford, because most of the leisure activities cost a lot for the ordinary Indian to indulge. The most affordable activity of the ordinary Indian is pilgrimage. People go on pilgrimages for different reasons. Faith in God has great healing powers because the poor has nowhere to go except go in search of God.
When the French colonial rule ended in 1956, Habib Bourguiba, who advanced secular ideas, led Tunisia for three decades and these included emancipation for women - women's rights in Tunisia are among the most advanced in the Arab world - the abolition of polygamy and compulsory free education. But the people of Tunisia were far from happy due to a feeling spiritual vacuum and it was reported that at one time people thronged and crowded around a replica of the Kaaba in an exhibition and waited for several hours in long serpentine queues to have a glimpse of the sacred place of the Muslims. They prayed with tears in their eyes as though they were witnessing the original. Immediately following the Bourguiba regime there was a strong surge of religious activities in the country, as though the people where longing for a spiritual revival and many women who threw away the veil earlier adopted it again.
Like in the west, affluent societies do not need spiritual pursuits for happiness, since they have the resources for seeking happiness through many material alternatives – if that can be called happiness. But these societies also come to a point of saturation after a time and the heart will seek for spiritual fulfillment. We see the revival of religious or spiritual revival in many affluent societies. One difficulty with spirituality is that the seeker does not know what he is seeking. The seeker can at best wait for an experience, which is new and exhilarating but can one explain what it is that he is waiting for. A true seeker may be one who abandons everything in pursuit of the “Unknown” but when one embarks on this pursuit, can any one be sure of any kind of outcome? It is said that, knowing the “Unknown”, that is the realization of the truth, that is realization of God is the ultimate happiness, which is endless and which does not expire after a time!
The Hindu thinking is that, life is all about seeking the ultimate truth. The purpose of birth is to strive towards realization of God. God Realization is the ultimate experience, the ultimate knowledge of all. A realized person has no desire for any further knowledge because he knows everything. The law of Karma does not bind realised person. He is one with God. That is to say “He is”. He is bliss itself!

There was this man who cursed a lady and called her a bitch and then went on to explain how sweet a bitch is, the wife of a dog! After all isn’t a bitch the respectable wife of dog? So why should anyone take objection to his calling the lady a bitch. The wife of a faithful friend of “Man”!
I was reminded of this small anecdote when I heard a senior ex-bureaucrat and a well- known leader of the Indian Muslims, in one of the TV debates, trying to explain to the Hindu counterpart, what a harmless a word “Kafir” is! He said “Kafir” means only “unbeliever”, which is not at all a dirty word!
How wicked of the Hindus to even think that it was a bad word. However, for no reason other than being a “Kafir” thousands have been killed all over the world and this will go on till there is no “Kafir” left in the world. One should think that it is perfectly noble to do this!
I was surprised when I saw in one of the Internet message boards that the first thing a Hindu does in the morning is to kiss the backside of a cow! And then drink cows urine and eat cow shit for breakfast!! This is what a Muslim Bhai wrote! But then I saw to my disgust, Hindu Bhais are also no less in countering the insults.
I want to tell my Hindu Bhais, do not do this. After all the Hindu religion is much older and known to be a religion of deep contemplation, and not handed down by a messiah! There is no need to counter the insults.
Will any Hindu stop loving Lord Krishna, after hearing the canards against him? Can any Hindu see Lord Krishna as a fornicator, or a thief or deceitful as our Muslim friends want us to believe. No! Never!! Krishna was not the taker of Love. He is the giver of love. He is the object of Bhakti, boundless Bhakti.
The Hindu need not react to insults. The Hindu should only “Act”, do what he ought to do and not worry about what is going to happen to Hinduism. Hinduism has faced threats from mighty powerful adversaries but it has survived and it will always live because there is no dogma or regimentation. Hinduism is not a set of rules and regulations to follow to go to heaven or hell. It is not something forced on anyone.
Hinduism is a scientific thought, the thought that takes one to his own origins, to the origin of the world and the universe itself. Worship and rituals are all process of this Hindu thought. Hinduism is the wisdom of ancient Rishis. It does not deserve to be drawn to the streets and made into a cause for meaningless arguments and controversies.

Our Muslim brothers say that Jihad is their “Life” – let it be. But the problem arises when it’s meaning becomes “death” to the others. Some time in 1984, a Hindu refugee from East Bengal petitioned to the West Bengal Government seeking a ban on Holy Quran under Articles 153A and Article 295 A of the IPC. He added 37 verses of Quran which preach cruelty, incite violence and disturb public peace, 17 verses which promote on grounds of religion feelings of enmity hatred and ill will between different communities in India and 31 verses which insult other religions as also the religious beliefs of other communities. The West Bengal Government did not take any action and so the petitioner filed a petition in the High Court to take immediate action. This created a furore in Calcutta, Ranchi, Srinagar and other places including Dhaka where more than a dozen people were killed in firing. In 1985 the Judge dismissed the petition on the ground that this book is not prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religions.

In 1986 a prominent member of Hindu Mahasabha published a poster in Delhi carrying the caption “Why riots break out in this country?’ It showed 24 combative Quran verses. The publishers were immediately arrested but later they were acquitted. The Judge ruled that they have made a fair criticism for “with all due respects to Holy Quran an attentive perusal of the verses show that these are indeed harmful and preach violence and have the potential to cause conflicts between Muslims and others.”

Swami Vivekananda said:”Mohammedans talk of universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in reality? Why, anybody who is not a Mohammedan will not be admitted into that brotherhood; he will more likely have his throat cut.”

Aurobindo said: “You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is ‘I will not tolerate you’. How are you going to have unity with such people?”

Many educated and highly accomplished Muslims complain that they are always suspect in this country and that they have always to prove their loyalty to India. Is that so? Then listen, in no other country the majority community is treated with gross injustice as in our country. The self-alienated Hindus who call themselves “Secularists” have started all these problems. Article 30 of the Constitution allows minorities to set up Government sponsored denominational educational institutions. Article 29 says that every minority has a right to protect its religion, language script and culture. So Christian and Islamic theology can be taught in schools with Government Grants, or meeting the full expenses. But start a school to teach children the importance of “Dharma”, culture and the Bhagavat Gita, the burden of funding will have to be shouldered the RSS affiliated Kalyan Ashram! In no other democratic country, the majority community would tolerate such discrimination! The Hindu hating CPM Govt of West Bengal had gone out of the way to harass the Ramakrishna Mission Schools and organisations in the past.

The RSS is being blamed by all the political parties except BJP for all the wrongs in our country. It is laughable that the Communists call the RSS fascists. Look at the history of the Communists! Their God Father Karl Marx had a very low opinion about the Hindu Religion. So too are our Indian comrades! The Indian comrades compare Golwalker to Hitler and Goebel forgetting that their worshipful master Stalin is responsible for the brutal murder of millions of dissidents, a regime more horrendous than that of Hitler. The CPM leaders are so proud to pose before the pictures of Stalin & Lenin, which are the standard equipments in their offices! Do they not know that Stalin and Lenin have been thrown into dustbins in the country of their birth and reign? Leningrad has become St. Petersburg?

Though many RSS leaders were arrested after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, not a single member of the RSS was found guilty. Nathuram Godse had ceased to be a member of the RSS at least ten years before the incident. He left RSS because he found the organisation lacking in militancy. But still the Congress and the Communists and the opportunist “secular” brigade take pot shots at Godse to rubbish RSS. These worthies go on talking about Golwalkar’s ideology. Some of his radical ideas were published in a pamphlet in 1938 which he himself disowned ten years later in 1948, admitting that those were some of his juvenile aberrations, but our friends must go on repeating it like some parrots! Why, it is well known that Jawaharlal Nehru was not a great Indian lover when he was young. During his student days in UK, he wanted transfer from Cambridge to Oxford because he found “Cambridge too full of Indians.” But Nehru, rightly or wrongly became the leader of those whom he disliked so much!

The Hindu revivalists including the RSS want only that the country should remain united. But the communists do not seem to believe in Indian Nationhood. Some of their leaders have publicly stated that India consists of many Nations! Their senior most leaders have even stated that West Bengal would secede from India if BJP comes to power in the centre! It is so simplistic a matter for the comrades! Communist loyalties are elsewhere. As some BJP leader said, if it snows in their fatherland, they would open their umbrellas in West Bengal! During Chinese invasion they sided with the Chinese. For them the slogan was “Chairman Mao is our Chairman”.

Communists are the unadulterated “secularists” of India. They convened a meeting in Malapuram, a Muslim majority district of Kerala about a year ago. Speaker after speaker rubbished the so-called “communalists”, BJP. They have no Qualms to hold the hand of “Muslims” and declare war against “communalism”. They welcomed the Naxal movement and young girls and boys sang songs in praise of the Naxals. The top CPM leaders present on the stage were thrilled to see the huge crowd gathered to greet them and praise the Naxal movement. We have a problem of growing Naxal menace in almost 100 districts in the country and the Government and the administration are worried sick about it trying to contain the problem, and here we have our comrades, partners in the Government welcoming the Naxals, terming the as RSS the greatest danger to India! One doesn’t know weather to laugh or cry!! It is unfortunate and a tragedy that their influence in the Government and administration today is disproportionately large compared to their representation in the Lok Sabha.
During the Khilafat movement of 1921, the Moplahs (local Muslims) carried out a brutal murder of Hindus in Malabar. They plundered thousands of Hindu homes, destroyed Hindu temples, raped Hindu women and burned Hindu villages. But you know what? Such of these Moplahs who are still alive are honoured by the Govt as “freedom fighters” and given monthly pension on that basis. The Moplahs were recognized as freedom fighters, not because they took arms against the British, but because the British took arms against them to suppress the Moplah terror against Hindus.
About one lakh Hindus and Sikhs who fled Pakistan in 1947 and taken shelter in Jammu & Kashmir have not been given citizenship till date. They have no rights to vote or for anything else.
Terrorism targeted at Hindus is continuing without respite for decades. After the partition related riots ended in 1948, several Hindu Muslim conflicts have taken place in India. The cumulative death toll in all these conflicts is about 20000 of which about 25% would be Hindus. But in 1950 more than 25000 Hindus were killed in East Bengal alone. Every couple of years Bengladesh Hindus are killed in violence against Hindus.
All these riot data are completely dwarfed by the East Bengal genocide of 1971. More than a million, mostly Hindus were killed by the Pakistani and local Jamait-I-islami allies.
Who has ever bothered about these figures of Hindu deaths? When Hindus are killed in Kashmir by terrorist, no one bothered. One Australian white is killed by tribals and it becomes world news.
When thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homes in Kashmir the western media reported that they were actually evacuated by the Indian Govt so that the army could move in!
A crude unabashed condescension and indifference is in evidence when the new upper class “secularists” speak about the lower beings such as Hindus!

What the RSS and the Hindu revivalists want from Indian Muslims is their wholehearted participation in our nation building. The Hindus rightly believe that the Indian Muslims should be more forthcoming and leave behind their attachment for the Muslims outside our country. It is a thoroughly misplaced belief that the Muslims all over the world can unite. What the Hindu revivalists believe is that Indian Muslims are culturally more inclined towards Hindu civilisation. Their opposition to the Hindu ways are artificial and incited by fundamentalist groups who have vested interests. After all, the forefathers of more than ninety percent of the Indian Muslims would have been Hindus who would not have accepted Islam, out of conviction. Most of the Hindus would like the Indian Muslims to acknowledge the fact that both belong to the same stock and therefore brotherly relations rather than confrontation should be the natural choice. The matter is different in the case of the Pakistanis. They chose to separate from the family out of hatred. In fact what they lost was 50% of reserved representation for the Muslims in the undivided country offered by Mahatma Gandhi with the full support of Hindu groups. They lost that opportunity and to all independent observers the loss was totally theirs.
Thomas Friedman in his book “The world is flat” quotes M.J.Akbar thus:
‘I'll give you a quiz question: which is the only large Muslim community to enjoy sustained democracy for the last 50 years? The Muslims of India. I am not going to exaggerate Muslim good fortune in India. There are tensions, economic discrimination and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya (by Hindu nationalists in 1992). But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and provides a real opportunity for economic advancement of any community that can offer talent. That’s why a growing Muslim middle-class here is moving up and generally doesn’t manifest the strands of deep anger you find in many non-democratic Muslim states.’
While a Muslim woman sits on India’s Supreme Court, no Muslim woman is allowed even to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states and the wealthiest man in India today, high on the Forbes list of global billionaires, is an Indian Muslim: Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro, one of India’s most important technology companies. I was in India shortly after the United States invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, when Indian television carried a debate between the country’s leading female movie star and parliamentarian—Shabana Azmi, a Muslim woman—and the imam of New Delhi’s biggest mosque. The imam had called on Indian Muslims to go to Afghanistan and join the jihad against America, and Azmi ripped into him, live on Indian TV, basically telling the cleric to go take a hike. She told him to go to Kandahar and join the Taliban and leave the rest of India’s Muslims alone. How did she get away with that? Easy. As a Muslim woman she lived in a context that empowered and protected her to speak her mind—even to a leading cleric.”

A former Ambassador to Pakistan, in a TV interview was very frank when he said that the Pakistani hatred for India is very deep rooted. Even little boys and girls have been inculcated with this feeling of hatred for the Indians. He narrated a story of how one Pakistani child of four or five years ran around his Pakistani host’s dining room shouting “Hindustani Chor, Hindustani Chor” when the ambassador was introduced to him!! The Pakistanis of British origin are so jealous of the success of Indian Muslims in the film Industry that they are circulating a CD rubbishing Sharukh Khan, Amir Khan, Salman Khan and Saif Khan!! That will speak a lot for the Universal Muslim Unity! It is a myth and the Indian Muslims should know it better.

The future of our country and that of the different religions depends on the unity of its people. Most Indians are religious or spiritual. Secularism is a widely used misnomer for pluralism. We should promote pluralism and tolerance and respect for each other. When leaders of caste based politics and communalists brand themselves “secular” we must drop the word from usage. Instead wee must promote usage of the term “Pluralism”.

(For detailed information on the material in this article, please refer the book “ Decolonizing the Hindu Mind” written by Dr.Koenraad Elst.)

In the Fifties, Sixties and even the seventies it was treason to talk about anything that could be construed or interpreted as against the interest or security of the Indian Nation. No one ever talked about any negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue. Words across the border between India and Pakistan were sharper and meant to kill!
Things have changed radically in later years. Today no one talks about military intervention to settle issues, thanks to the changed equation after the nuclear tests conducted by both the countries. But the rhetoric among the politicians in both the countries have changed only very little. In fact no one believes that there would be any solution at all!
In the free market atmosphere the postures and speeches of political and religious leaders have changed too. There is no bar on the language one uses. There are no barriers or boundaries between nations (is it too good to be true?) in this beautiful free world. Whatever be faults of our democratic system the world today acknowledges that Democracy is firmly rooted in the Indian soil. We have our problems but we have our Democracy too, for keeps!
I would like to quote a few lines from the book “THE WORLD IS FLAT” by Thomas Friedman which appeared in the book reviews in the Times of India of 6th Aug ’06.

The largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia. And the second largest is not Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt or Pakistan. It is India. With some 150 million Muslims, India has more Muslims than Pakistan. But here is an interesting statistic from 9/11: There are no Indian Muslims that we know of in Al Qaeda and there are no Indian Muslims in America’s Guantanamo Bay post-9/11 prison camp. And no Indian Muslims have been found fighting alongside the jihadists in Iraq. Why is that? Why do we not read about Indian Muslims, who are in a minority in a vast Hindu-dominated land, blaming America for all their problems and wanting to fly airplanes into the Taj Mahal or the British Embassy? Lord knows, Indian Muslims have their grievances about access to capital and political representation. And interreligious violence has occasionally flared up in India, with disastrous consequences. I am certain that out of 150 million Muslims in India, a few will one day find their way to Al Qaeda—if it can happen with some American Muslims, it can happen with Indian Muslims. But this is not the norm. Why?
The answer is context—and in particular the secular, free-market, democratic context of India, heavily influenced by a tradition of non-violence and Hindu tolerance. M J Akbar, the Muslim editor of The Asian Age, a national Indian-English language daily primarily funded by non-Muslim Indians, put it to me this way: “I'll give you a quiz question: which is the only large Muslim community to enjoy sustained democracy for the last 50 years? The Muslims of India. I am not going to exaggerate Muslim good fortune in India. There are tensions, economic discrimination and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya (by Hindu nationalists in 1992). But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and provides a real opportunity for economic advancement of any community that can offer talent. That’s why a growing Muslim middle-class here is moving up and generally doesn’t manifest the strands of deep anger you find in many non-democratic Muslim states.”
While a Muslim woman sits on India’s Supreme Court, no Muslim woman is allowed even to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states and the wealthiest man in India today, high on the Forbes list of global billionaires, is an Indian Muslim: Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro, one of India’s most important technology companies. I was in India shortly after the United States invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, when Indian television carried a debate between the country’s leading female movie star and parliamentarian—Shabana Azmi, a Muslim woman—and the imam of New Delhi’s biggest mosque. The imam had called on Indian Muslims to go to Afghanistan and join the jihad against America, and Azmi ripped into him, live on Indian TV, basically telling the cleric to go take a hike. She told him to go to Kandahar and join the Taliban and leave the rest of India’s Muslims alone. How did she get away with that? Easy. As a Muslim woman she lived in a context that empowered and protected her to speak her mind—even to a leading cleric.

Most westerners are surprised at the religiosity of the Indians. Everything that an Indian does has a religious under tone to it. From the moment he wakes up in the morning till he retires to bed at night many of his activities are some kind of a religious ritual or the other. For the ordinary Indian living life is a religious ritual.

When one talks of a religious Indian, the picture that normally takes shape in one’s mind is that of a pious, truthful, god fearing, god loving, person to whom all the qualities of a model person can be attributed, but such a person can live only in mythology. Actually he is only one who practises religious rituals, hoping that practising these rituals will purify his life and take him nearer to the almighty.

A religious person may also turn out to be a very cantankerous one, but he would have a very high opinion of himself and might live in the belief that he is a close associate of the almighty in the great goings on in this entire world.
But in reality, a truly religious person is somewhat of a different type. He is one who practises rituals with understanding, devotion and conviction. He does it for spiritual advancement, which in the end should lead him to secularism. He would realise that all religions are good practices if embraced with understanding and love of humanity. He would also know that all practitioners of religion are not the sacred souls they paint themselves as. A religious person, to my mind is not necessarily a spiritual person and vice versa.
A spiritual person is essentially one who does not have prejudices. Neither losses nor gains affect him emotionally. He is one blissful person for whom religion does not really matter. His is a universal religion. This may be a state he might have attained after prolonged practice of one or the other religion. There are also many examples of people who were gifted, or born with some special qualities, which helped them become spiritual, without much effort. However, for most people some degree of spiritual attainment is possible only through study and practice of the religion they belong to, or the religion they are attracted to.
The problem that we are faced with in the present time is the confusion created by the votaries of different religions. Our maid Saroja, who has been working with us for about four years, is a part time Christian though she is a Hindu. On Sundays she removes her Tilak from her forehead and wears white sari to go to the Church. On asking her, she said that the Church gives her a lot of help. She gets from the Church substantial quantities of rice and provisions, cooking oil and clothes for the children. The Church representative also visits her house from time to time to check on her and her family. She has been renamed Regina Mary! But outside Church circles she prefers to be called by her real name Saroja. She definitely benefits from her association with the Church and I thought it is a good thing happening to her. Why not? If the Church is so thoughtful and kind why should the poor not avail of the benefits? The only problem here is that, the experience of changing ones religious beliefs causes great confusion in the mind. The experience is that, the material benefits do not translate into spiritual gains. In fact for many, the experience is terrible guilt. But Saroja is happy! She is very practical and says that she has no qualms about going to Church and enjoying all the goodies the Church gives her! On all other days she is praying in the Hanuman and Ganapathy temple nearby!
But that is not the case with Narasimha who is the Mali in our Apartment building. His Daughter-in-law committed suicide some time ago and ever since he was a disturbed man. Rukmini (a maid servant in the building) who has changed her name to Elsa (like Saroja) gave Narasimha a Bible to read, which he read religiously for several months and feels that his mind is at peace now. Rukmani has taken him to the Church few times and the rumour is that he has changed his name to Alexander. He is now waiting for the Goodies!!
This is what I like most about the Western thought. They are precise in everything. They know that there is a need in these poor peoples lives and there they are to give them exactly what the poor fellows need. Only problem is that, these part-time Christians go back to their old religion, which gave them solace! That is, after enjoying all the Goodies!!
Through out the British Raj this is what was happening. It is well documented that the Church was part of the East India Company for all practical purposes. Both the Company and the Church were helping each other in their respective endeavours. And by the time the British was about to leave India, both the Church and the British administration knew that their efforts were a failure or else at least a good proportion of the Indian population should have been converted to Christianity.

Similarly there are many who have embraced Islam. There is at least one prominent person who has chosen to be a Muslim for reasons other than monetary benefits. She is well known and rich and past her prime. She is now dressed in black “Burka” and says that she feels safe inside the “Burka” because the roving eyes of men do not bother her any more!! What a pity she did not discover this truth some sixty years ago!!
:D