Evolution of religions.. the reason why we need to be more tolerant .

My theory is, all religions are like bunch of siblings. In general, the eldest one is more understanding and more matured. The younger ones, since there are already existing competitors tend to be more aggressive nature.

Similarly for religions, Hinduism did not have to fight for existence or for acceptance. We evolved, matured, struggled, learnt from our mistakes; but we had all the time to play with the toys (philosophically). If you observe, the religions which were ‘born’ later, had to fight against already existing philosophies for reasons which made sense to their originator. This also can be portrayed clearly in the idea of conversion. Hinduism did not have conversion as part of the religion. (The 1^st noted case was sometime in later 1600, that of Netaji Palkar.). The way of conversion is very good example of increasing aggressiveness in younger, immature religions. If somebody does not know what is 2+2 it is easy to tell him that it is 3 or 4. But if somebody knows or believes that 2+2 is 4(3) and you want to convince them that it is 3 (4), then it is hard and naturally one would end up being aggressive about it. Thus aggressiveness if virtue of age of religion and my theory is as one ages, it tends to become more tolerant.

If anybody would argue about Buddish, Jainism, Sikhism, please.. I consider them as factions of Hinduism. If nothing else, they shared the evolutionary development with Hinduism and hence are less aggressive.

Also, if one tries to suppress or oppress youth, they rebel and become more aggressive. The clash between Christianity and Islamism has led to Islamism being more aggressive as well. The Muslims in countries where external interference is more are seen to be more extremist.

Hinduism existed as a tolerant culture and recently is gaining aggressiveness (this is no justification of violence but I think I am stating it merely as a factual argument) as a reaction to biased and oppressive political scenario in India. It is for the health and peace of everybody that politicians should try to understand this dynamics of evolution of religious mindsets and stop making use of religion for selfish reasons. I believe that would help all the religions to take their own course for evolution and development for the good of all humanity.

The argument mostly I hear against this theory of mine is, the basic philosophies of the new born religions itself are so violent (for whatever reason.. I believe for the reasons I have given above) that no matter what they are not going to be tolerant. I always refute sighting examples of changing of systems like crusades, burkha, and we eradicating system of Sati etc.. But that discussion itself would be a different topic.

In short, I would say that we need to exercise tolerance, provide guidance and give some breathing space to the younger religions to evolve, mature, and become tolerant like us.

Peace,
Saatwik.