THE DOUBLE EDGED RELIGIOUS / POLITICAL LEADERS

മനുഷ്യൻ മതങ്ങളെ സൃഷ്ടിച്ചു 

മതങ്ങൾ ദൈവങ്ങളെ സൃഷ്ടിച്ചു 

മനുഷ്യനും മതങ്ങളും ദൈവങ്ങളും കൂടി 

മണ്ണു പങ്കു വച്ചു, മനസ്സു പങ്കു വച്ചു.

These lines are written by Vayalar Rama Varma, for the Malayalam movie ‘Achchanum Bappayum’, way back in the year 1972 and it won the best song in the national movie awards for the year. 

Loosely translated, the lines go as under:

Men created religions

Religions created Gods 

Men, Religions and Gods combined 

To divide the earth, and the minds.

When parochial polity joined the fray, it became a potent explosive proposition. Election after elections in the country, the combined trio (politics, religions and the Gods) began impacting society/state/nation so much that today we hear the salvos fired by it, far and wide. Too bad, too bad for the country and its people…..

They make statements, they put the blame squarely on each other, they use words such as ‘jihad’ to combine with any other word (love jihad, narcotics jihad), to demean the others. 

And after the words penetrate into social fabric and after the rhetoric shakes the very foundations of humanity, to appease the idiotic masses who simply follow these trio with utter emotional confusion, the trio convene മത സൗഹാർദ മീറ്റിങ്ങുകൾ (religious amity meets) and embrace each other, give joint press statements blaming those forces (????) who are behind destabilising the nation! Ha ha ha! 

പൊട്ടന്മാരായ നാഗരികർ, നമ്മൾ (we, the stupid citizens) applaud them and take a sigh, thinking that all ends well. 

BUT, IS IT? 

Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”