slaves of religion

What is religion?
According to the World Wide Web, it is a cultural system of behaviours and practices, world views etc etc etc….but that’s not how we treat religion as. If I was to define religion, I would define it as the shackle of a prison which binds us to that particular prison and separates us from our prison inmates who are tied to other shackles either in the same prison or of a different prison.
Clarifying my definition, a prison is a religion and different shackles within a prison are the different castes, tribes and so, different prison means different religions.
Yes, it’s a bit extreme to define a religion – the thing which gives us identity as a prison. But that wouldn’t have been the case had it just been an identity.
We humans are mostly born equal – with a pair of legs, hands, eyes, a nose….but once we are born, the first identity card that is issued to our name isn’t our birth certificate. It is our religion. So far, so good. The problem arises when there are objections raised when we want to attend a festival or a celebration of a person belonging to another religion. Why should there be an objection??
I will be honest.
I have people in my circle belonging to almost all the religions and some of the people happen to be my very good friends. Does them belonging to a different religion stop me from attending any function I am invited to by them???
Absolutely not. I enjoy all the diversities and have a great fun learning different cultures. Well, my case could be a bit different because I belong to a state which doesn’t have the religion I follow as the base religion. Naturally, I grew up in an environment learning to mix with people belonging to different diversities. Lucky for me, I had my peer support and I was never questioned whenever I wanted to attend a celebration which wasn’t belonging to my “religion”. Yes, I am lucky that way but it pains me to see that there are some people who fear attending a celebration which is different from theirs. The common excuses are : “ kuch aur khila diya toh??” – translation – “what if they serve something inappropriate??” …….
Yes, people are naïve. But this isn’t being naïve. This is being stupid and ridiculous.
Now I will point something out which I personally dislike the most and would term the people who act this way as sadists to the penultimate level -
This world is filled with miscreants. There are tragedies which are caused by humans and cost a lot of human lives.
I am not lying about this. A tragedy struck one day and a few days later, a guy walked up to a friend of mine and said, “ye kya kiya tumhare logo ne??? kitni jaane gayi hai!!” – translation –“what have your people done???So many lives have been lost!!”.
I was dumbstruck – YOUR PEOPLE!!!!
Seriously!!!!
It sounded like my friend was the leader who commanded the assassination.
But that day, I heard the best reply which shut the guy up instantly…
My friend calmly replied, “mere logo ki jaan bhi gayi hai, iske bare mein apne kuch pucha nhi?”-translation-“my people have died too, why didn’t you ask about that?”.
Life is unpredictable. Judging a person based on a religion which some miscreant may belong to is the utmost shameful and disgraceful thing anyone could do.
Someone else's actions cannot possibly define me in any sensible way...
I thought of penning down why in today’s world, we are slaves of religion. We are separated from the true meaning of friendship and love and affection because of this barrier.
Religion isn’t a bad thing. It gives us an identity and a direction to follow but when it separates us from people, it doesn’t server the purpose of being.

Ciao…..