Child Abuse of the Second Kind

 

Child Abuse of the Second Kind

When someone mentions child abuse, the thoughts of listeners go racing to sexual abuse of a child, as perhaps it should. Child abuse of the first kind. It is so obvious and so evil and visited upon such a defenceless and full member of society.

Yet, there is another kind of child abuse that starts even earlier that is equally vile but is not recognized so; indeed, it is celebrated, horror of horrors. I am thinking of religious indoctrination. Child abuse of the second kind. Some form of this type of indoctrination is physical.

Infant baptism is a right of initiation in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy. Baptisms further down the road, for pre-adults and adults, are sacraments for many other denominations of Christianity. Basically, for a Christian–I am not a Christian, so give me some wiggle room–Christianity is proclaimed for them or they proclaim it for themselves.

I do not know why, but when I think of baptism, I think about the scene in The Godfather (1972) towards the end, which ends up enthroning Michael Corleone as the successor to Vito Corleone! Such violence. I am sure I see similar violence in this Christian sacrament.

Jews have their own stuff and so do both Sunni and Shia Muslims. Do not even ask about Hinduism, with special focus on Tamil Brahmins (Alas, I am one and I can speak with some authority).

In Christianity, one is born in sin. Would you believe something similar in Tamil Brahmin’s mindscape? You better. Till the 10^th day, the new born, its parents and further up the genealogy on the paternal side are, in a supposedly “good” sense, “untouchables”! In my opinion, in whatever “good” sense it maybe, it uncomfortably still resembles the “born in sin” seal of disapproval. Only after the baby is christened with the attendant Vedic rituals, this seal is effaced.

 Richard Dawkins, as much as I appreciate his views on Natural Selection through Random Mutation, religion, education, and other morality based issues, slithered away without answering when asked to comment on whether he thinks parents are committing child abuse when bringing up their child in the religion they follow.

I would go one step further and answer with an unequivocal and loud YES. I would, however, add a qualifier: to quote, partly and most inappropriately, what Jesus said on the cross: “...[F]orgive them ... for they know not what they do.” To say it more bluntly: this is the worst aspect of religion that excuses ignorance when no effort is taken to remedy it.

Yes, this is how I excused my parents for having been so ritual-bound, just going with the flow. It is a sociological pardon and not a religious one; my YES is not de-intensified on this count.

Now, to something on which I am fully with Dawkins: I quote him, “There is no such thing as a Catholic child; there is only a child of Catholic parents...” Ask yourself what religion you follow. The answer would be, “...of my parents.” You were branded at birth!

Again, I am going to take issue with a hero of mine, at a level much deeper than Dawkins, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. With a singular goal of Annihilation of Caste, he converted so many thousands of people to Buddhism which he saw as caste-free. Yet, he was blind to how that religion was susceptible to political pressures to bring about what is termed genocide in Sri Lanka, some two decades after his monumental efforts.

Let me take a few steps back. Dr. Ambedkar was not an atheist and more importantly, he could not have been an atheist. No matter how charismatic a leader is, there can be no mass movement behind them. Had he been an atheist, his temple tank movement could not have been a defining event (Chowder tank).

I give you Shaheed Bhagat Singh, a deeply admired revolutionary who aimed at abolishing British rule. He did not have a mass following and one may attribute that to his atheism (Why I am an Atheist). Every atheist is different than every other atheist!

Religion is distributed geographically. A religionist from South Asia would be hard put to establish kinship with an Anglican religionist in the UK. Buddhists from Tibet may not recognize Sri Lankan or Myanmar Buddhists as their kin. Ashkenazi Jews different than Sephardic Jews, geographic separation.

I can only hope that there be no child abuse of the third kind in the future.

Raghuram Ekambaram