The topic is not going to be exactly the mouth-watering type for a typical Manipallite or his tribe. With people from all over the world with varied and sundry creeds and colors, however, it would not be very out of place to bring up such topics. By the way it is a good idea to break the monotony of exciting ideas and blithe going with occasional boring ideas, right? Anyway, the learned have never been far from the humanities. And who says Manipal has any dearth of such intellectuals? Having survived the recent past with the likes of the 11th September, the 13th December and the Modi phenomenon, I don't think it is a bad timing either.

The 'true sons' of Allah set out to wage a war against the false sons --I mean the empire of kaafirs. And they became martyrs in the name of Allah--quite assured that they would be going to heaven. I wonder if they ever gave it a thought what the innocent victims and their close ones would become. But the perpetrators said they were guilty of helping the American bullies. That gave America yet another excuse to flex its military muscles and to test its deadly technologies on the Afghan guinea pigs. And all Muslims had to bear the brunt of stepped up victimization by America and the West.

The Jews, who were once Hitler's favorite game birds, are now doing justice to his ideology in West Asia, though in a fashion limited by international politics. And the Islamic jehadis are sacrificing their own lives and risking the future of their community if only to kill the Jews. I would like to remind the bored reader that Islam. Judaism and Christianity have the same origin. It is their different interpretations that have done them apart. It goes without saying that each claims its exclusive authenticity. Hinduism has an altogether different origin.

When religions with the same origin have never been in harmony, it almost stands to reason why India has had to be a witness for the centuries to historic misfortunes from the temple demolition era to the Partition to Indo-Pak wars to Babri Masjid demolition to Mumbai blasts to Grahm Staines' murder to 13th December to Modi's ghastly orchestra… And what about the daily massacres in Jammu and Kashmir?

Religions are there because the great thinkers and visionaries who founded them realized that man was no different from animals. And that if the human race were to survive the clashes among the humans themselves, with the most dangerous destructive intelligence, there had to be some curbs and brakes. So they tried to change the beastly being in man into a human being through religion, that basically strived to strike home the fact, in people's conscience, that we were the beings with whom the Maker had entrusted the responsibility of taking care not only of ourselves but of the world as a whole. Different religions came to exist, because, not surprisingly, no two visionaries thought alike. Although the approaches were different, the ultimate goal was the same. However the meaning and purpose of religion started getting increasingly mired in the conflict between our animal instincts and humane conscience. People got themselves pitted against each other in an effort to 'validate' their supremacy of their own creed over those of others. So much so the same religious community became further divided into sects and castes because of various differences in opinion and interest. These subgroups got involved in internecine conflicts, too. And we have Ranvir sena-MCC and other inter-caste wars in India, Catholic-Protestant divide, Shia-Sunni clash, and suchlike elsewher, and in fact everywhere.

The very essence of religion has lost its pitched battle against the vices of human psyche. It is quite normal that a community would value its specific ethos. But when one sticks to a particular religion just for its sake without understanding the well-intentioned fundamental message, one comes to believe that his is the only real religion and that it is the most supreme, above every other else. Unfortunately it is the case with most, if not all, people, who as a rule get too emotionally attached to the particular religion as such. And to start the flames to which we all have fallen victims, it is the lunatic fringe who number only a handful in the community but provide the sparks by fanning the emotion of the vulnerable majority through twisted interpretations of benign clauses in the religious constitutions. They are the ones who have managed, over the years, to incorporate more and more exclusivistic ideas and, opportunistic as they are, partisan clauses in their own interests. Many people are of the opinion that the East Timorese, who were predominantly Christians, garnered American support for their cause of independence (rather secession!) from Muslim Indonesia through the Christian Missionaries.

There is widespread grassroots level sympathy for Osama Bin Laden in the whole Muslim world whatever the claims of their political leaders, who have to be 'politically correct' anyway. Modi applied the same logic to full use in Gujarat, where he romped home to a landslide victory in the state assembly election for a second stint as the Chief Minister. No affront meant to any party-political or otherwise, please.

Western and American arrogance and neocolonialistic policies have only compounded the already existing fear psychosis among people in other parts of the world that Christian America and the West have been carrying out a clandestine war against their cultures and religions.

So if everyone were to share my jaded opinion about all these religion and stuffs, I believe, the world would be a much nicer and safer place for all to live. I have a strong belief in the existence of a Supreme Power who is the cause for all we are in the imaginable universe. However I don't have any inalienable belief in any of the religions, that have ceased to serve the very purpose for which they were founded. I was born to Hindu parents. But I want to be liberal enough to choose the good ideas from any religion and free enough to discard the bad ones. I want to belong to humanity as a whole.