Religion Anyone?

Times of India, top 3 headlines on the net right now...

120 killed in Naina Devi stampede

37 hurt during Amarnath protests in Jammu

Class 9 student killed fellow inmates in Asaram Ashram

And of course, bombs in Surat and Ahmedabad, terror strikes in Afghanistan, SIMI activists rounded up.. it goes on and on...

We just concluded our year long Arjuna program in Persistent - the three qualities Arjuna had were knowledge, action (a doer), and principles. He knew why he had to what he had to do based on his knowledge and his principles, and he was a man of action. The program was aimed at inculcating these habits in us. But all my life, for me, Arjuna was a fighter in that war called Mahabharat who shared his wife with his brothers! No one told me why. No one told me why I should be like him.

The Mahabharat and the Ramayan are the corner stones of our religion, just as the Bible and the Koran serve their purpose in Christianity and Islam. They all have stories, each with a specific message and meaning put across in a way that can be taught from generation to generation, the smart learnings of wise men who knew the illeterate population would not understand any other way. In fact, the stories were not meant to be analyzed and probed for meaning, they were the guidelines you blindly followed, because you were deemed incapable of understanding why.

Clater, the meaning and the essence have been lost. Literate populations and educated masses have forgotten why religions were created in the first place. We kill in the name of Ram and Allah, we destroy lives and societies, and we do it in the name of religion and god.

Is this what education has made of us?