A Bowl of Elusive

A while ago, I made a video questioning whether the Indian epics Ramayan and Mahabharat were historical events or mythology. It drew a lot of anger from a lot of people. The thing is – I was not always aware that I was an atheist. There was a time when I prayed to God as well – Lord Shiva actually. But I never believed the stories to be true or historical. I viewed them as mythology – which even if it ever happened, happened in some other realm or alternate reality. Because with what we know about science and our own development, we can safely assume that the magical elements in the holy books of all religions are just not possible. I thought everyone knew this – I thought everyone knew that these were stories – metaphorical mostly and meant to impart a moral lesson to the people. So, it was astonishing when a very close friend of mine became seriously offended because I questioned the authenticity of Mahabharat and hence, Shri Krishna in association.  I tried to reason with him, sayin

I am an atheist from a Hindu Brahmin family. I do not like the BJP and their Hindutva agenda. I do not like Islam. I do not like Christianity. I do not like any religion. But I grew up learning about Hinduism – I thought the spiritual lessons of karma and doing good deeds were good lessons and worth following. I was not raised in a household that pushed any religion onto me – I was taught that all religions essentially teach the same thing – be good, do good. My earliest understanding of religion was that it was a practice in moral science aimed at keeping people kind and honest. “Who is the main God?” I once asked my folks, since my grandma’s pooja place had pictures of several gods. My grandfather explained it to me like this: “They are all the same. It is the human imagination that is unable to comprehend the concept of a creator and hence we choose to visualize them as Brahma, Vishnu & Maheshwar – with each entity handling a different task in the Universe. We have assigned name

I had a long conversation today with a close friend of mine, who pointed out to me that my political opinions felt somewhat biased against Hinduism. He was referring to one of my posts where I speculated if the Nuh violence could have been instigated by Bajrang Dal for political reasons. He pointed out to me that even if the origin of the violence was political, it doesn't change the fact that the Muslim population in Nuh threw stones and are not free of blame. My friend pointed out to me that I had nowhere condemned that. I revisited my post and found out he was somewhat right.  Recently I have been writing against fanatic Hindu ideology. My reason for this  is simple: It is not the Hinduism (Santan Dharm or whatever you want to call it) that was taught to me growing up.  I was taught that we were the most inclusive of religions. I was taught to respect others' faith. I was taught that regardless of whatever name you call your God by (Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwar - or Allah, Budd