Child Abuse

Child Abuse

People are tuned to reading the heading in the context of sexual predation. Indeed, the previous Pope, Pope Francis, was raked over coal (before and even after his death) for his silence on sexual abuses of children that he merely chose to almost turn a blind eye to. But, the child abuse this post addresses is far removed from it. In the process, it may open up the vista of the readers to look actively for child abuse elsewhere too, and bring it to the notice of society. This is a task taken up by before now by Richard Dawkins. This post could be considered a follow-up effort, in a different place.

I have mentioned the following once earlier: A family I was close to had a three or four year old, who like any toddler of his age, refused to eat his vegetables. Then, I told him that eating okra would help him in his math. His father pounced on me for such nonsense. I would have needed less than a nanosecond (nanosecond was a new scale of time then) to respond angrily to his brainwashing his son on religion. But, I kept my peace for the situation warranted inaction on my part. Silence won that time.

Now, it is time to open up, and as loudly as I can.

“Catch them young,” is the buzzword in every discourse on religion. I know because I was caught thus; I escaped many years later. The competition to catch pre-teenagers is unimaginably intense. Take the Jews, Christians of all denominations, Muslims, Sunni or Shia, Hindus of any stripe, even perhaps Buddhists (extreme irony) ...

Watch in person or on TV, you would never fail to spot a significant number of youngsters in the congregations. I watch, under duress, at least three hours of spiritual singing (bhajans), chanting, cleansing, discourses, expositions on religious/spiritual messages passed on down to us by sages and others (from before 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM, at which time I transfer control of the TV remote control to myself!). It is hardly ever a two-way street, even a faux one; it is enacted by a faux student and a faux teacher. The Buddha was the real teacher, because he asked the students to teach themselves. But, even the Dalai Lama supposedly teaches his core group of disciples. God knows; the Buddhist in me winced.

And, the catchment people comprise children, exclusively, only because there is no danger of older fish escaping the torrent. No effort is to be wasted. 

To take a short detour, my father’s youngest sister’s husband was handed down the responsibility of “catching as many fish as he can,” in the days of forced sterilization in India under Sanjay Gandhi’s rule. No such despotic measures were needed on account of religion; fish jump into the net voluntarily! When my uncle, working for the Tamil Nadu state government, visited us, my father used to tease him, “How many fish in the net today?” and not, “How many fish did you catch today?”

Coming back to the main narrative, in one particular spiritual program, even the faux teachers are young, not to mention the students or the accompanying chorus. How young? At least the girl bhajan participants appear not to have reached puberty−that young. And, the leader of this gang may−the critical modifier−have reached that age, and hence perhaps the leadership role (?), not earlier than the previous year, unless, of course, the program was taped last year!

I am not being specific about the religion because, and only because, I am convinced this would be the same across all. In the evening I do get glimpses of such child abuses in one other major religion too.

I concluded that religions survive only because their catchment mechanism is flawless and is the definitive paradigm of efficiency. How I wish it were not so.

Raghuram Ekambaram