Yuva Bharati - April 2016

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Whenever there is a terrorist attack, the most comfortable thing to say is “Terrorism has no religion”. And in most discussions about Islam the stereotype is that “Islam is a religion of peace”. But it is no secret that more than half the violence on the planet has been inflicted for religious reasons. The irony is that, it is the perpetrators of terror who claim that what they have done are religious duties while it is mostly the people from the victim communities that insist that the act has no religiosity in it. This attitude to absolve religion as the cause of violence is very much understandable in India. Indians are not attuned to think that religion can motivate its followers to indulge in violence. This thought is alien to Indian religions. After all, those religions that incite violent actions have an altogether different theology than the Vedic religions of India. The fundamental goal of a Vedic religionist is freedom from the sense of limitation that comes along with body-mindintellect complex. While this goal of human life for a Vedic religionist is accomplished with or without allegiance to any of the millions of Gods available; for the religionists of the other kind, there is no such possibility of either opting for a personal God or not developing affinity to any of them.