On Religion.

I remember when I was twelve years old, there was a history class going on at school and we were studying religion. The first thing the teacher asked us was, "What is religion?"
A lot of the kids said, "Praying to God."
The teacher smiled and she said," That was close, but not exactly accurate."
So, all the kids looked really puzzled. Then she said, "To go to the library from the class, how many routes can you take?"
The entire class shouted out numerous answers, and once she could get the class back to decorum, she said, "You can take many routes but the destination remains the same. Religion is similar to that. Religion is a path to God. There are numerous paths, yet the destination is the same."
The reason I recount this particular lesson is because of the rampant religious discrimination that's been going on recently. More specifically the religious discrimination that has been going on in front of me. I've got two friends. Let's call them Ali and Akash. Akash has this filthy habit of using the religious slur, 'k****a', as a way to call Ali. Akash's reason for using that word (despite my several protests) is because Ali makes fun of Akash's father's business. So recently Akash and Ali got into this really ugly fight and at the end of the fight, Ali stormed out of the classroom after saying, "This entire community is like this."
A wave of sudden patriotism towards my community washed over me and I stood up and shouted, "You can't talk about a community like that!"
Ali stormed back into the class and shouted back at me, "Really? Is it your father who calls me a 'k****a'?"
I simply looked at him and said, "Have you ever heard me use that term?"
Ali looked ashamed and said, "That was uncalled for. I am sorry. I am really sorry."
I shook my head and said," It's fine."
He kept apologizing and ended by saying, "I thought I was speaking to a guy." I laughed, and left it at that. But somehow, I couldn't stop thinking about the whole thing. My heart was filled with a strange amount of sympathy for the guy. I tried to imagine the amount of insults and slurs he had to face every single day. And why? Because he is a Muslim. But isn't he a human being? How does following Islam give you any less dignity as a person? And most importantly, how is a Hindu any different from a Muslim? If you prick either, they will bleed. If you tickle either, they will laugh (unless they're not ticklish). And if you poison either, they will die (unless they're Rasputin). I don't claim to be a great scholar on Islam but from what little I have read, I think Islam is beautiful. Islam talks about being compassionate, helping your neighbours, giving alms to the poor and taking pilgrimage. The saddest part about this is that a lot of people are ignorant of the beauty of this religion. All because of a few fanatics who preach distorted versions of this faith. These people have profaned the faith and have missed it's true essence. It also doesn't help when people with political influence (namely someone who's name rhymes with Gonald Frump) say things that are religiously discriminatory and excite separatist and racial sentiments. But let's talk about India for now. All this separatism and religious hate goes back to the time when India used to be a colony. In the Revolt of 1857 (which we all have read and forgotten), leaders like the Rani of Jhansi and Tantia Tope who were Hindus put Bahadur Shah Zafar (who was a Muslim, mind you) on the throne as the Emperor and the Hindus and Muslims were united. Look, I'm not saying that the British specifically ingrained religious hatred and systematically destroyed the unity of the people and corroded any progress society had made but they did have that thing called "The Policy of Divide And Rule".
So what I'm trying to say here is, hate is taught. If you ask two children to play together, their only question to each other will be, "What do we play?" and not "Are you a Muslim/Hindu/Jew/etc.?" like it would affect their opinion about the other child, (although any kid who does ask the second question that way instead of the first one, needs to be taken to a psychiatrist, immediately.)
I'm not trying to be Anti-Hinduism or disrespectful towards any religion, community or person, I'm trying to be Pro-Humanism and what I've been trying to say for the last God-knows-how-many lines is that maybe we need to stop looking at superficial things like race, creed, gender, religion, colour as things which define a person and focus instead on their sense of humor, compassion, hopes, dreams, intellect, ideas because these are the things that actually do define a person and at the end of the day, these are the things that actually matter.
Thank you for reading the whole thing.
Peace out. :)