An Inconvenient Truth

Saw this trailer today. Seems like a must watch movie. Can't wait to get hands on its DVD.

धर्म, भगवान, धर्मांतरण, मैं और आप

पिछले कई सालों से और कई रूपों में मैने इन शब्दों का सामना किया है, मगर इनका मीमांसा करने से बचता ही रहा हूँ। न खुद को समझाने की कोशिश की, ना किसी दूसरे को (कहीं उसकी "धार्मिक" भावना को ठेस ना लग जाए)।

ये विचार मेरे मन में लेकिन कई तरह से आते ही रहे हैं, तो अब अपनी समझ के अनुसार मैने इनकी विवेचना करने का निर्णय ले ही लिया। आगे बढ़ने से पहले मैं ये साफ कर दूँ कि भगवान पर मेरा पूर्ण विश्वास है और मेरा ये मानना है (जानना नहीं) कि कोई शक्ति है जो कई रूपों और गुणों में सर्वत्र विद्यमान है और हमको चला रही है। इस शक्ति का नाम हम फिलहाल "भगवान" ही मान लेते हैं।

ये भगवान जितना सब जगह है उतना ही हमारे और आपके अंदर है। जब किसी रोते को देखककर आपमें दयाभाव जगता है तो आपके अंदर का भगवान प्रकट हो जाता है। मात्र यही है मेरी और मेरे भगवान की परिभाषा। अहम् ब्रह्मास्मि।

अब आती है भगवान की परिभाषाओं की बात। जहाँ तक मेरा मानना है भगवान (या उसकी परिभाषाएँ) इंसान का आविष्कार हैं, ताकि वह अपनी सीमित दिमाग की समझ से बाहर की चीज़ों को परिभाषित कर सके। ये दुनिया, ब्रह्मांड, जीवन, मृत्यु, प्रकृति आदमी की समझ के बहुत बाहर है, और इंसान हमेशा से इन चीज़ों को समझने की कोशिश करता रहा है। इन्हें समझने के लिए इंसान ने ना सिर्फ भगवान का आविष्कार किया बल्कि उसे शक्ल देने की कोशिश भी कि।

राम, कृष्ण, जीसस ये सब असाधारण व्यक्तित्व और प्रतिभाओं वाले साधारण मनुष्य थे। मगर उनका वर्णन और विवरण करने वाले लेखकों ने, भक्तों ने, अनुयायियों ने इनको महापुरुष और फिर भगवान का रूप दे दिया। यहाँ तक तो फिर भी ठीक था, लेकिन फिर इन महापुरुषों की बातों का अनुपालन करने वालों का एक धर्म का अनुयायी मान लिया गया। संस्कृतियों को धर्म के नाम से बाँट दिया गया और ये तय कर दिया गया कि एक आदमी दूसरे से अलग कैसे है।

धर्म के नाम पर रोटी सेकने वालों की मौज हो गई। इतिहास गवाह है कि बड़े बड़े धार्मिक संस्थान भ्रष्टाचार के गढ़ रहे हैं। धर्म डर दिखाने का एक अच्छा माध्यम भी है, भेंड़चाल से चलने वालों लोगों को चलाने का एक बढ़िया माध्यम भी मिल गया। धर्म को नैतिक आचरण परिभाषित करने का भी जरिआ बना दिआ गया। जो हो गया, सो हो गया, लेकिन सैकड़ों, हजारों साल पहले स्थापित, परिभाषित किए गए नियमों से आज भी समाज को हाँकने का प्रयास किया जाता है। समय के साथ समाज का नियम और आचरण भी बदलते हैं, लेकिन धर्म के तथाकथित ठेकेदार आज भी चाहते हैं कि दुनिया पुराने नियमों के अनुसार आचरण करे और धर्माधिकारियों और भगवान से डरे। जो अपने नियम बनाए और आधुनिक विचारों से चले वो नास्तिक, भ्रष्टाचारी और ना जाने क्या क्या।

कई धर्माधिकारी अपने अनुयायियों पर जोर देते हैं कि वो ज्यादा बच्चे पैदा करें, फिर चाहे पृथ्वी की अतिशय संसाधन दोहन से कमर टूटती है तो टूटती रहे, लेकिन "मेरे जैसा धर्म" मानने वाले की संख्या बढ़ती रहे। कई धर्माधिकारी कपड़े पहनने के नियम भी परिभाषित करते हैं, फिर चाहे पहनने वाले की मर्ज़ी हो या ना हो। कुछ जगह तो संसर्ग करने के नियम भी तय किए जाते हैं। हर इंसान अपनेआप में अलग है, उसे कम से कम अपना निजी जीवन खुद निर्धारण करने का अधिकार तो होना ही चाहिए।

जिस तरह धर्म एक गोरख़धंधा है, और भ्रष्टाचार करने वालों के लिए एक अच्छा माध्यम है, और उसी तरह से धर्मांतरण भी एक गोरख़धंधा है। आपकी वफादारी "एक तरह के भगवान" से "दूसरे तरह के भगवान" में बदलने की कोशिश की जाती है। काफी पैसा भी इसमें बनता है, बड़े बड़े दान मिलते हैं, और समाजसुधार का ढोंग भी होता है। खैर...

सबसे मजेदार बात ये है कि धर्म का ये गोरखधंधा अरबों लोगो को चला रहा है और धर्म करोड़ों लोगो की असमय मौत का कारण रहा है। दुनिया आज भी धर्म के नाम पर बँटी हुई है और आज भी कई लोगों की मौत का कारण धर्म ही है।

कभी कभी सोचता हूँ कि अगर दुनिया में धर्म ही नहीं होता तो कैसा होता...

अनुराग

Couple of ideas on Conservation

I mentioned in my previous blog about recycling and consequently conservation and how we should do it. I have been regularly recycling most of whatever waste generated at my home. However, recently I did somethings to reduce waste which I receive regularly at home. The biggest of them is the mails from credit card companies. Interestingly, the companies from which I already have card, they also keep sending offers for new cards with lots of offer. As a first step, I called all the companies with which I have cards to stop sending me any new offers in mail. It took me half an hour to call American Express, Bank of America, CitiCards and couple of other companies. I canceled all mail subscriptions for me and my wife. They canceled all of this without any question. This half an hour will pay off as I will have to deal with less mails everytime and will not have to shred them.

Then I get offers from DiscoverCard at the rate of one offer per week. So I called them at the number they gave in offer letter and instead of opting for a new card I requested to remove me and my wife's name from their mailing list and they delightfully agreed. Then I visited Val-Pak site and removed my address from their mailing list as well. Just less than an hour of work and I reduced lot of junk mail to my house and helped the environment by less production of these junk mails.

I bought CFLamps which are of low wattage and replaced couple of bulbs I use most in my house. This will be a "little" (just a couple of bucks) costlier option, but I am now using lots of less energy than before and helping environment as well.

In few conferences I attended I got cloth bags (which I considered useless mostly). Now I keep few of these bags in my car always and whenever I go for grocery shopping I try to keep most of the stuff in those bags as well and reduce the usage of polythene bags.

I hope I gave you some very simple ideas in conservation and I hope you will definitely do your part in helping the environment as well. I know these ideas are not new but its always inspiring to see others doing that :), so may be I inspired few of you. Please leave the comments if you did get inspired or if you follow the things I mentioned.

Anurag

Comment on Mr. Deewan's blog

Just Read Mr. Neeraj Deewan's blog. There were a lot of comments and some people said we identify these problems but do not know the solution. I started commenting on the possible solutions. My comment grew a little long and I am now posting that as post.

Great Article Mr. Deewan. As far as my support goes. We at Virginia Tech (http://www.vt.edu/) are very soon planning to bring a proposal under US-India AKI (Agriculture Knowledge Initiative). The main thrust of proposal from my department would be on water quantity and water quality. I was not involved in this project earlier, but I am trying to go head and get involved and start some root work in this field. I hope this work might improve some things.

I am not sure if this project will be approved or not but I guess this must be a start. On the other hand, I visited the website of Ministry of Water Resources in India, and I will go ahead and make some sense out of whatever is out there. I will try and make some of my inputs available to the government as well, provided they care for it (but I 'll still try).

I hope something will improve.

We can do lots of things at our individual level, and the most important are to teach us and our kids importance of water and observe it as well. Writing and commenting on such thought provoking artical while drinking bottled water and throwing the plastic bottle in trash wouldn't make much of a sense. Some of us are pretty passionate and knowledgeable in our field and feel the sense of conservation. Lets collect some worthwhile stuff on somebody's blog, may be next issue on Nirantar, and talk to a nearby school and give a talk on conservation (water, plastic, energy, anything). We can prepare the strict format of workshop in that blog itself.

We do not want to feel uncool doing these things (consevsation, energy) in our community. But you can disseminate these feelings in your society. Organize a meeting, a small meeting of interested people in your community (5, 10 or 15 or whatever), give the organization some cool name, just meet twice a month to talk about these issues, and you may come up with some localized solutions of lots of problems. This organization can further disseminate these knowledge in local schools or communities.

We organize Durga Pooja, Saraswati Pooja and lots of things. Organize a debate competition, a poster competition, or poem competition on these topics during these occasions. Let people see these events and you can take these opportunities to proliferate these ideas. I can bet one thing, there are loads of people in your community having the same feeling but they are afraid to start something because they always look for some leader (our inherent trait of waiting for Ram and Krishna to kill demons) to start.

We have a lot of power and we can do lots of things. Just think about it.

Anurag

Comments:

Anonymous said...

Anurag,

I genuinely appreciate your view point.

While I was in India, I tried organizing free “Disaster Management Courses” for primary school kids. To make the whole boring thing little interesting; we prepared animated Power Point presentations with colourful cartoons, caricatures, interactive quiz on disasters and give away prizes…..we managed to rope in a Multi National Bank to sponsor event.

It was an absolutely FREE course and we also planned to give away a small printed booklet on "What to do when disaster strikes", a free gift from sponsoring bank and a ‘certificate of attendance’ – just to make the kids feel special.

It was so depressing and frustrating that none of the schools allowed us to conduct these courses within their premises, on the reasons that we were not qualified enough to conduct such courses. Government run schools wanted us to take approval from “Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA)” – we could never meet him simply because ... its a long story!!!

"We have a lot of power and we can do lots of things. Just think about it." Sometimes it pains me so much!!

You wrote a beautiful post in a beautiful language, you are also gifted with another beautiful language "Hindi". Why don’t you write in Hindi, its not difficult at all.

11/15/2006 11:55 PM

Pratik said...

I do agree with what Mr. Anurag Srivastava said. But I think we should take steps on individual levels and your suggestions can prove to be a starting point.

11/16/2006 9:51 AM

hemanshow said...

You are correct Anurag. Each one of able educated person will have to do his part and let our work do the talk.
I am trying similar things with my friends in my home-town in Rajasthan. Check out http://www.kalakari.com/kyari

AID Luncheon

Working with AID Virginia Tech Chapter has always been fun, however somehow my timings never allowed me to. AID stands for Association of India's Development, and to fund many of its philanthropic activities they conduct several fund raisers. AID Luncheon is generally a popular way to raise fund, and somehow I managed toget time to support this event. We cooked so many dishes and I cooked Saag-Aloo.

All the dishes were really delicious. I am posting couple of those pics below are rest are here.

Anurag