Religion
Nehru rejected religion. He observed the effects of superstition on the lives of the Indian people and wrote of religion that “…it shuts its eyes to reality.” Nehru thought that religion was at the root of the stagnation and lack of progress in India. The basis of Indian society at that time was unthinking obedience to the authority of sacred books, old customs, and outdated habits. Nehru observed that these attitudes and religious taboos were preventing India from going forward and adapting to modern conditions: “No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded.” Therefore, he concurred, that religions and all that went with them must be severely limited before they ruined the country and its people. He was deeply concerned that so many Indian people could not read or write and wanted mass education to release Indian society from the limitations that ignorance and religious traditions imposed.
| “ | The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests. | ” |
Nehru considered that his afterlife was not in some mystical heaven or reincarnation but in the practical achievements of a life lived fully with and for his fellow human beings: “…Nor am I greatly interested in life after death. I find the problems of this life sufficiently absorbing to fill my mind,” he wrote. In his Last Will and Testament he wrote:
| “ | I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Jawaharlal Nehru
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“A chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving the host of the God of War—Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The only human beings I have thoroughly admired and respected in the world have been those who carried the load of the world with a smile, and who, in the face of anxieties that would have knocked me clean out, never showed a tremor. Such men and women end by owning us, soul and body, and our allegiance can never be shaken. We are only too glad to be owned. Religion is nothing but this.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“You sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)