Sunday, March 7, 2010

Holy Noise

I live in a country which is very ‘religious’ to the core. People are pretty confused about the difference between religion and culture/customs. There is always a lot of comparison between religions; naturally this has led to competition too. The people who assume that that they are practicing different religions have drawn up some funny competition parameters. These people have assumed that placing statues at all the corners and increasing the volume of the loud speakers from the places of worship to be a way of showing the power of religion.

Loud speaker volume game gets even more ‘interesting’ when you have two rival religious places next to each other. You can observe the noise being increased to unbearable levels from both ends at the same time. Best part of it is when some of this actually continues throughout the day. Funnily as a kid I used to think that the preaching’s being done live and the clergy doing it should be very tired. Later I got to know that I was wrong, even those who have put up the noise find some cotton wool and stick it into their ears and happily asleep, while the people in the neighborhood suffer.

This is one of the logics very hard for me to understand, has any of these religions in their scriptures asked people to use loudspeakers and boom this noise? Why cannot the followers just tell others that this is nuisance? Is it a religious treachery if you talk about this in public?

I for one being a Hindu, with whatever little knowledge that I have about Hinduism is sure that getting into this trap of competition with other religions is actually causing more harm than any good. I see it as a deep disrespect that we can do to the religion of ours. For god sake, if you have a personal score to settle with the others use something else and leave out the name of the religion!