The Gods Of Meluha !!!!!!

Disclaimer:
The below post are my personal views and are not meant to hurt anyone's sentiments. After reading this if anyone is offended , I apologize for the same in advance.Majority of my blog posts are non controversial, but I dont think the same applies to this :).

Yet another disclaimer is that this blog post is no way a review of the "Immortals of Meluha" trilogy written by Amish Tripaty, even though this post agrees to a great extent with which the whole background premise of the book is based upon. The basic premise in those 3 books is that it considers the religious figures of the Hindu religion to be ordinary people who do some extraordinary stuff and get immortalized as gods. But since these 3 books are written in the present age we know that much of the stuff is made up and are fictitious in nature. But what about those religious books (not specific to Hinduism in here) which have been written eons back ???? Do we consider them to be fictitious or the actual account of things which have happened ???

Does it make sense that a fictitious book which exaggerates things done by a person in order to glorify him be considered as a religious book, 2-3 millennium down the line. It is kinda similiar to a Superman comics which might be discovered in year 4040 AD and whatever intelligent organisms present at that time might assume that such a person actually existed.

But still I was not convinced as to why they wrote such intricate details , rituals etc related to a particular religion. hence MBA gyaan to the rescue :) . Ladies and gentlemen, let me present theory X and theory Y of employee motivation. Theory X says that employees are like little kids who need to be constantly monitored, guided in the proper direction. By default employees tend to avoid work and need external motivation to do it. This theory is basically based on the carrot and stick approach, wherein it is preached that if you do good you will get some incentives and on the other hand if you do bad you will get punishment. On the other hand Theory Y assumes that the employees are mature adults and believes in empowering them to do their work and not in micromanagement.It believes that employees want to do work and make their life meaningful with lots of achievements. They are self motivated to achieve things in their life.

So my assumption is that in the ancient times very few people were educated to know what is right and what is wrong. Hence those few educated ones came up with these easy sort of guidelines which later on became religious texts wherein its clearly mentioned that if you do good you will go to heaven, else the demons of hell will be waiting to fry you in boiling oil :P. This was like theory X I have mentioned above.  Further these texts might have been written based on the scientific knowledge of those days. Since science is constantly evolving, chances are that the scientific data of the ancient times might just be a superstition of today. But in today's modern times, the majority of the people are educated enough to reason and one would assume that those people know what is right and what is wrong. But that is the truth only to some extent. One would assume that Theory Y in religion would be great in today times. But again that is not entirely true. Consider my example, even though I was educated long back,  I started reasoning and challenging the status quo only from the past 4-5 years. And if I assume myself belonging to the cream of Indian society , what about those who dont belong to that , but still "educated" in the Indian education systerm, wherein a person is expected to remember things rather than reason ???...For them it would be an outright blasphemy to not believe in religion, especially from their family and society.

So what is the need of the hour ????? The need of the hour is that the religious texts should be updated to the modern times and not just being stuck in the ancient era. For example many texts say that doing good should be a selfless act and which will ultimately lead to moksha. But I have some contrasting views, I do good things to others because I feel good after that. I am infact greedy for that feeling and not doing it so that I might go to heaven or attain moksha.

Hence in a traditional sense I am an atheist and thankfully my parents are cool about it, even though they are staunch believers. I dont believe in any religion or the gods from those religions. I still go to temples, but I am more enchanted with the temple architecture(older the better !!!!!) rather than visiting to get blessed.  But that doesnt mean I dont believe in the concept of God. For me God is something which enables our existence in this world. So Gravity is God, a river is God, mountains are God, sun is God. Ofcourse in Hinduism some of these things are also considered as Gods , but that is where the similarity ends. My concept of considering a thing as God is to bestow the respect it deserves and preserving it for the future generations and not in the concept of praying to get blessed. So that is one of the primary reason why I get a spiritual connect whenever I am up in the mountains, up close and personal with my creator. In one of my earlier blogs I had come up with a slogan that "Nature is my God and trekking is my pilgrimage !!!!" and I believe in that wholeheartedly.

But again I dont criticize those people who religiously follow a traditional God. Because religion gives peace of mind to a lot of people and I respect that up till the point where it doesnt affect others in a negative way (read the extremists). Religion is a personal thing and shouldn't be forced on anyone. A person especially the educated lot should reason with themselves and follow the thing which they truly believe in. With that it is easy to get moksha in the present life itself and not wait till eternity!!!!!