Why Can't the Pope Learn to Live with Irreverence?

The Pope’s intervention in the Charlie Hebdo attack marks him out as anything but a liberal. He may well learn tolerance from Hindus who can live with the irreverence of others and their own kind towards idols. But wait, does the difference not crop from the very scriptures of the different faiths?

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Pope Francis while speaking to reporters mentioned that freedom of speech cannot be absolute.  It does not include the right to insult or make fun of the faith of others.  After criticism from various quarters, Vatican issued a clarification on the same.

After the murder of the cartoonists, there have been a section of well-meaning people who have voiced similar opinions that insulting religious objects and figures were not only in bad taste but somehow it also played a part in provoking the tragedy. While that may be true practically speaking, the conclusions derived from this are not necessarily correct. The office of Charlie… had been subjected to firebomb attacks on a previous occasion and life-threats were issued to the cartoonists and the editor. Intimidation clearly had not worked.  Will massacre and murder work? It won’t.

On insulting other faiths

The Pope may have been speaking out of commonsense — humanistic understanding of being respectful of other’s religious imagery when issuing that statement — but do the holy books of various religions adhere to this noble advice? I am afraid not.  Let us look at some verses from the Old Testament:

No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. – Corinthians 10:20-21

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. – Psalm 115:4-8

I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the Lord. – Psalm 31:6

No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. – 1 Corinthians 10:20

Easily these verses above and many more on similar lines are a strong condemnation of the practice of worship through images and idols. For long various non-Abrahamic religions have used and valued and revered idols, imagery and various religious paraphernalia to connect to their conception of the Divine. To a Hindu or a Buddhist, these verses are clearly insulting and derogatory. So, does the Pope agree that the Old Testament severely violates his very noble advice on the matter of respect for other religions? It won’t be a farfetched conclusion if a practicing Sanatana Dharmi like me were to state that the New Testament’s assertion in John 14.6 — “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” — is wholly unacceptable and at complete dissonance with the eclectic and laissez faire traditions of others, and therefore a potential insult and threat. Will dear Francis be ready to live up to his words and purge his religious scriptures of all things hurtful and disparaging to other religions?

What about those verses from the Qur’an which, following the direction set by the Old Testament, condemns to eternal “hellfire (Jahannam)” in no uncertain terms all those who refuse to believe in divinity of the said text and the authority of the Prophet? Does the Pope, and for that matter all who have provided justification of religious insult for the Paris murders, agree that non-Christians and non-Muslims have every right to take umbrage at the Abrahamic holy scriptures, and yet have never displayed such fanatic and fatal barbarism?

Before preaching to the world, had the Pontiff taken an unbiased look at the history of his own and similar religious traditions, he would have understood that his advice was hollow and superficial, which led to a very convenient ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation.

In other words, some religions have the right to insult everyone outside their fold, but others must treat them with reverence and respect or expect to get killed! Hypocrisy just died a thousand deaths.

A lesson from Ramayana

Sanatana Dharma has been — and is — a collection of various paths, often at broad divergence with each other, which have grown and flowered indigenously in this subcontinent. The divergence of the various paths has been both on matters of theology and practical application and rituals.

There have been powerful monotheistic currents like the celebrated Bhagawat Gita, which does not ban anything but strongly discourages worship with forms (Gita 7:24) while the Uddhava Gita or the Tantra Shastras — considered a latter-day incorporation by some — had a more favourable opinion about pantheism and idol worship. And yet people have learnt to co-exist.  Let us consider an incident from one of the most well respected epics, the Rāmāyaṇā. The well loved and immensely popular protagonist of the epic, Rāma, is about to embark on a forest exile for 14 years when he meets the atheistic Jābāli, who is described as a brāhmaṇa-uttama (high ranking Brahmin). An interesting conversation follows between the two where Jābāli — probably a follower of the Cārvāka school of thought — using his materialistic logic to dissuade Rāma from leaving the kingdom, questions why the heir to the Ayodhya throne should feel any allegiance to his father, King Dasharatha. Jābāli refers sarcastically to those who follow Dharma, ridicules traditions and customs of offering food to pitris (dead ancestors). And how does Rāma, the great dharmik warrior and prince, respond to these statements?

jaabaaleH tu vacaH shrutvaa raamaH satya aatmanaam varaH |
uvaaca parayaa yuktyaa sva buddhyaa ca avipannayaa || 2-109-1

bhavān me priyakāmārthaṃ vacanaṃ yad ihoktavān |
akāryaṃ kāryasaṃkāśam apathyaṃ pathyasaṃmitam || 2-109-2

As a powerful prince, as is often the way of the high and mighty, Rāma could have easily had Jābāli killed for his indiscretion in ridiculing the avatara’s religious principles. Instead, with a calm disposition, he provides counter-points.

A world of irreverence

True irreverence, as Mark Twain noted, is disrespect for another man’s god.  We have reached the age where the world, or parts of it, will keep growing more and more irreverential towards things both holy and unholy. I am not sure what the Paris mujahideen were planning to achieve, but if it was an attempt to use brute force to make the world abstain from ridiculing the Prophet, rightly or wrongly, they have failed miserably. Those offensive cartoons of the Prophet were shared widely in social media as an act of defiance and solidarity. With the Internet around and its relative anonymity and physical distance that it ensures, the world is simply not going to stop making fun of something or somebody merely because it/he is an object of veneration by a group, sect or cult.

There are only three practical ways to deal with it: counter offensive through words as Rāma did with Jābāli, other accepted civil means of protest, or a thick skin to ignore all that is difficult to digest. Suggesting that everybody must fall in line and learn to respect others’ holy cows, as Pope Francis did, is impractical, unreal and impossible to ensure in a connected globe. Not to mention that this also raises uncomfortable questions regarding various assertions in the core texts of some religions.

The followers of Sanatana Dharma have learned to live with irreverence, be it from the Lokāyatas or Cārvākas, or in the form of mutual disagreements between various sub-sects within the larger ambit without any great fatal consequence. Maybe it is time for the Pope to learn a lesson or two from India. All religions, cults, isms and such must quickly learn to digest and ignore all that is unpalatable to them, as long as it does not obstruct their physical freedom to practise whatever they are inclined to practise.

And the world eagerly looks forward to an age where holy cows can be freely questioned and analysed without fear of fatal consequences.