Communal Hatred: It All Begins at Home

Most of us blame the political powers for creating divide between brothers of the same motherland. True, but hardly do we realize that somewhere in this entire scenario, we ourselves are responsible for the hate factor that prevails in the society.

Let's face it. Right from childhood, a Muslim child is told that the Hindus are bad people by many Muslim families. Similarly, many Hindus tell their kids to stay away from themeat eaters'. Likewise, several Christians talk to their children about the Crusades and conclude that Muslims are enemies of Christian faith. When we dump such stereotyped information in our children, we automatically create a prejudice in their minds about our own fellow brothers, which they carry with themselves for the rest of their life. And many a time, it is this prejudice that stems the cause of a communal war, thereby leaving the country battered.

Transmitting cultural and religious information to our children is not just good, but necessary as well, so that they mould themselves according to the values. But the point is, do we give our children the right information about our respective religions? The answer is a big 'NO'.

We often miss out on providing values from our religions that can spread communal harmony and a feeling of brotherhood for people of other religions. How many Muslims teach their children about the humane gesture of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) who would ask the inmates of his house to add water to the little amount of curry prepared at his home, in order to share it with his neighbour? How many Muslims acquaint their children with the routine of Aboobakkar Siddique (r.a), one of the companions of the Prophet (pbuh), who would visit the house of a poor old lady everyday and clean her excreted wastes, even when he became the caliph (ruler)?

Most Hindus tell their children about people from other religions being 'invaders' and hence develop a feeling within the child that indirectly they are not of Indian origin and are anti-national. A good number of Hindu brothers fail to realize that even Hinduism has its fair share of Non-Indian origin. Who were the Aryans? They were people from Central Asia who came to India via Khyber Pass. Are we not misleading our children with such negative and inappropriate details?

Once this stage is through, the schooling stage does its bit to aggravate the already planted bias in children's mind. Quite a few lessons in history are loaded with assumptions and opinions rather than facts. Besides, the ways in which lessons are taught to the students contribute in their own way. In a history class, the teacher while talking about India's freedom struggle, will opine that people from Christian community didn't come forward to fight against the British, therefore they are anti-nationals. This way, prejudice swells in the minds of the students regarding Christians and they really start thinking that even today Christians are anti-nationals. Our education system also has played a major role in creating religious bias, although it doesn't appear in the open.

One way to avoid bias is to study other religions in their right contexts. If that is not possible, at least learn the better part of our own religions. If even that is not possible then the last thing one can do is to shut his/her mouth. Ours is a society that demands coexistence. We might have differences of views and our ideologies might well be poles apart. That in no way means that we cannot live peacefully with each other. After allopposites attract'.

This article is reposted after four years.