Religious Propaganda Demystified

Christianity, with all its flavours and different sects/branches is the most widely practised religion on the planet. They have a reasonable growth rate of followers too, courtesy of some interesting phenomenon that I shall highlight in the following lines.

On a very intriguing note, the high growth rates of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism has been ascribed to the high population growth rate in the Indian subcontinent. The high growth rate of Scientology, similarly has been attributed to watching too many Tom Cruise movies. Atheism can be thankful to the IT industry and some other minor religious practises to watching TV shows like CSI and Poor Man's Bikini Beach.

Coming back to how Christianity has spread far and wide, I think I finally have been able to solve the puzzle as to why it has spread so far and wide in all of Bangalore city. Its a simple divide and conquer policy, the likes of which has been seen before, but not experienced on such a magnitude.

If one pays close attention to the road signs in most places in Bangalore, there is something new that shall come to notice immediately. Right next to the names of areas/major roads on those characteristic blue signboards erected by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), one can see a lot of 'Jesus' stickers plastered all over the place.

Closer scrutiny goes to show that the way ahead leads to a lot of Jesii (plural for Jesus), depending on which direction you're headed. There's the 'Koramangala Jesus', 'Madiwala Jesus', 'JP Nagar Jesus' , 'MG Road Jesus' and 'Cox Town Jesus' to name a few. I wish Bangalore had an area named Nazareth, so we could have had a Nazareth Jesus or rather, Jesus of Nazareth, who would be the true and authentic one!

Now, these various 'Jesii' take up initiatives in their respective areas to spread the word of the Lord, and the one that gets the most followers gets a promotion. Its sort of based on the Amway model, or maybe the Amway model is based on this. Doesn't really matter any which way!

Go forth, spread the word, recruit more and then go back to square one and recommence the process again is the modus operandi of such a model. Quite efficient, one might reckon!

I was watching 'The Life of Brian' the other day, and there was this parody of a stoning that was to take place in Jerusalem, because some old guy had said the name of the lord - 'Jehovah'. Uttering the name of the Lord is probably a very sacred thing to do, and its sort of ironic that someone could get punished for doing it. That probably explains why the name is simply called 'the name' or is referred to as YHWH to remove the vowels and make it very esoteric and representative, in the same breath.

The hue and cry raised over the pictoral representation of Prophet Muhammed is past, but once again, it raises questions on WHY it is that some rules have been put into place which make the representation of someone held in such high regard a blasphemy. For those that can't have an imagination vivid enough to use their mind's eye, some solace has to be provided.

Ours not to reason why, ours merely to question.

My religion, Hinduism, is totally liberal in comparision with others, so far as certain parameters are concerned. Restrictions on food for people of different pedigrees does not count among one of them. However, we can worship idols of all the deities we choose to, utter their names, have their pictures adorning any surface we desire and do a lot of other things that other religions might find blasphemous.

No specific prayer days or times, no strict observances. The best part is the fact that things are so optional and one can imbibe whatever aspects of respect/worship that one finds convenient and leave the rest, literally and figuratively to God.

Religion is very close to one's heart, and this post is meant to be taken with a pinch of salt for those it might possibly offend. Vandalism is another thing in a long list of things to be poked fun at. I am sure you'd understand, O potential fanatic!

God bless.