A
PARADIGM SHIFT IN PILGRIMAGE
By Swami Agnivesh
India
is a land of pilgrims and pilgrimages. But our pilgrimages have
so far had two major limitations. In the first place, they have
been mostly religious exercises peculiar to particular communities.
They are rarely, if ever, shared inter-religiously. Every religious
tradition has its own exclusive centres of pilgrimage. The idea
of a multi-religious pilgrimage is unprecedented in our context.
Secondly, pilgrimages have been more or less individualistic.
Each pilgrim expects to derive some religious merit for himself,
either in this world or in the world to come, by undertaking pilgrimages.
Pilgrimage, as a collective quest for truth and justice as
integral to true spirituality is an altogether new phenomenon
in the religious context anywhere in the world. In these respects,
the multi-religious pilgrimage to Baripada and Manoharpur - where
Graham Staines and his sons were burnt alive - signals a paradigm
- shift in pilgrimages. On the 10th of March 1999 a group of
51 pilgrims drawn from diverse religious traditions that reflect
our heritage of religious and cultural plurality, set out from
Delhi on their pilgrimage. There were Muslim Maulanas,
Hindu Maha Mandaleswars, Christian priests and nuns, Jain Munis
and Sadhvis, Sikh Gyanis and scholars, Arya Sanyasins and Dalit
leaders – all travelling in one compartment, eating together and
singing bhajans together. They were moved by the inspiring
demonstration of true spirituality in the life and witness of
the Staines family, especially that of Mrs. Gladys Staines.
The
pilgrims were all deeply devoted to their own religious traditions,
without being rendered narrow-minded thereby. They shared a profound
appreciation for the spiritual glow in the way Gladys responded
to her personal tragedy as well as committed herself to the service
of the victims of leprosy in continuation of her slain husband's
work. This pilgrimage, therefore, points to a paradigm shift from
the divisive potential of religion to the uniting and integrating
role of true spirituality. This has profound significance today
when religion is being abused for political gains and turned into
an instrument of alienation and atrocities.
Everyone was deeply touched by Gladys Staines. She is a
simple housewife, unused to the subtleties of theology and political
strategies. Though modest and shy of publicity, she exudes the
peace and serenity that result from simple faith and total devotion.
She leaves an enduring impression on all people, prompting everyone
to ask as to what comprises the secret of her spiritual strength.
We are not unused to murders and widows in this country. But rarely
have we seen a lady responding with such fortitude and magnanimity
to the kind of ultimate personal pain that Gladys has suffered.
In our entire interactions with Gladys, there was no trace of
complaint or grievance. Instead she was full of gratitude to people
all over India, especially in Baripada, who stood by her in the
darkest hour of her life. The extent to which she has identified
herself emotionally and culturally with India, and her keeness
to continue her husband's work rather than return to the affluence
and security of Australia, cannot but strike everyone as refreshingly
different from the familiar.
Gladys
left us wondering on the spiritual foundations of human strength.
Her willingness to spontaneously forgive the killers, and her
prayer that God may touch and liberate their hearts through love,
has proved to be incomparably stronger than the forces of hate
that consumed her husband and sons. Through her spiritually enlightened
reaction Gladys had arrested the forces of irreligion and challenged
us to respond constructively to the hurts as well as the opportunities
of life. It is this spirit, rather than the cheap thrill of killing
and vandalizing, that India needs at present.
In
her simple and sparse remarks to the pilgrims Gladys was emphatic
that both in their life of service and in her spirit of forgiveness,
the Staines family is empowered by biblical spirituality.
For them religion involves a dynamic engagement with the given
human context, addressing the needs especially of the neglected
and the discarded. The role of religion is not to make us shun
the world of realities. Religion, on the contrary, is the foremost
resource we have for transforming human nature and society. But
when religions decay and degenerate, this aspect is superceded
by religious obscurantism and fanaticism turning religion into
a liability rather than a source of light.
The
pilgrims to Baripada and Manoharpur returned with the firm conviction
that sound religiosity inspired by social spirituality is the
foremost need of our country. The contrasting faces of the Staines
tragedy - the shameful and the glorious - enable us to make an
informed choice in this context. The politicization of religion,
that expresses itself through the cynical abuse and exploitation
of religious loyalties to subserve vested interests, has attained
epidemic proportions in our midst. This is highly injurious to
our social and national health. As a people we need to condemn
and reject this spurious phenomenon. But that is not enough. The
positive task is to nurture the people in the practice of true
spirituality, aimed social transformation and people's empowerment,
so as to build a nation that is vibrant and forward-looking.
It is in this context that Gladys, despite her apparent 'foreign'
identity, can be a role-model that cuts across religious differences.
The
outbreak of criminality and violence in the name of religion and
the awakening of the fundamentalist spirit in all religions at
the present time together point to the inadequacy of the secular
paradigm. The rise of religious fundamentalism in the Indian
context owes a great deal to negative secularism as an anti-religious
ideology. This liberated politics from the confines of ethical
guidelines. Cynically understood as the art of the possible, politics
gradually lost sight of people's welfare as its true goal. Massive
corruption resulted. The national cause has been pawned to fatten
the elite. Politics became a sphere of shameless self-seeking.
Since all political parties are unmindful of the welfare of the
people, the only way they can secure continued support is by manipulating
religious sentiments. The grotesque face of this national curse
is evident in the recent communal atrocities that include the
murder of Graham Staines and the dalits of Bihar. The greatest
disservice that the people of India can do themselves is to condone
this criminality in the name of religion.
The massacre in Manoharpur as well as Gladys' response to it leaves
us with some basic questions. What is religion? Is it something
that inspires service to people or promotes murder and mayhem?
Who represents true religion? People like Gladys who refuse to
hate, or the agents of hate who kill the servants of the poor
apparently to save their God? What is religion worth if it is
not to nurture us in a sense of compassion and fellow feeling
that denies us peace unless we practice justice and uphold the
truth?
We
have been praying for millennia and we continue to pray to be
led from "darkness to light, falsehood to truth, and death
to immortality". But the forces of darkness, death and deceit
are progressively overwhelming us. The fault is not with the prayer.
The fault is with us that we do not honour the prayer by acting
in its light. No one can say this Vedic prayer honestly without
practicing social spirituality, the like of which is exemplified
in the Staines family. It is time we realized that true religion
involves a fierce commitment to uphold truth, practice justice
and to fight forces of evil not matter where they are found. All
religions must find their common cause or shared responsibility
in this context. When that happens the truth will dawn on us that
religions are not each other's enemies, but fellow pilgrims moving
towards the shrine of human well being and social health. The
tragedy in Manoharpur can be transformed into a national triumph
if this paradigm shift in inter-religious cooperation is brought
about. This was the vision that underlay the multi-religious pilgrimage
to Manoharpur.
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