Religion for All by 2010

When I first heard of this tasteless pun of the WHO’s goal, "Health for All by 2010", I burst into laughter. Who would think of such a ridiculous idea? Little did I realize that these five words would come back and cause such havoc in my peaceful life.

Every animal in this planet fights for three things: food, territory and mate. Humans are the only animals who fight for a fourth cause, what they believe in. I read about people fighting for the sake of their religion and I wonder, what makes a rational human being turn into a moron when it comes to religion.

To corroborate some of the theories I had about such behavior, I watched the movie "The Hamburg Cell" about the Al Qaeda ‘jihadis’ who perpetrated the 911 massacre of innocent human beings in the United States of America. The movie was based on one of the pilots, a very innocent masters student from Lebanon and how be was slowly inducted into the world of ‘jihad’. I asked myself these questions, Why would a promising young student who had the whole world ahead to conquer and was lucky enough to have a beautiful girlfriend, give up everything to participate in such a dastardly act? And what effect does this have on his immediate friends / family?

Was it a problem with the religion Islam? Or was such behavior common in other religions as well? Before we bite more than we can chew, let us analyze this with an example.

JIPMER is one of the premiere medical schools in India and the odds of securing an admission there is almost impossible. The country’s crème de la crème are chosen through a nationwide entrance examination and Raj & I were two of the lucky ones who secured an admission. The students were generally overachievers and have a type A personality and Raj was no exception. Pretty soon Raj was competing against the best in the class and was consistently doing well academically.

It was the social arena that Raj had problems with. He hailed from a small town and fitting into JIPMER’s cosmopolitan atmosphere became a challenge to him. He believed that he could not be part of the "in-crowd" as he was not ‘suave’ enough and considered himself a geek with glasses who had issues breaking the English language barrier. But pretty soon, he formed circle of like-minded friends and they called themselves the "CON Gang" or the conservative gang.

David, Raj and I became close friends and pretty soon we would spend most of our free time together. Interestingly neither David nor I were part of the CON Gang but what held us together was that we all hailed from the same state and spoke the same language. We would spend our Sundays playing caroms or eating watermelons. We would discuss about everything under the sun and frequently our discussions would wander into the realm of spirituality and religion.

Raj’s Family being devout orthodox Hindu Brahmins, he always had the upper hand when quoting the Bhagavat Gita. David though he was a Christian, didn’t have much to add coz he wasn’t too devout. When they asked me what I thought about religion, I said, "Man invented God so that God can help Man walk the righteous path". They both classified me as an atheist and from then on I was seldom included in such discussions. Raj started ordering book on the Vedas and the Upanishads and soon earned the nickname ‘Yogi’ or ‘Saint’. Raj had a crush on one of our juniors and we would tease him that he would have to relinquish his nickname. On Valentines Day, he proposed to her and was unfortunately rejected. He soon fell into a depression.

Life became busier and I saw less and less of Raj and David coz I was away posted as a doctor in a village. Our medical school was almost over and we had to decide on what we wanted to do next. The choice was either a residency or work as a general practitioner. Each of us was contemplating a different route. I was interested in informatics and wanted to go to the US; David wanted to work as a general practitioner while Raj wanted to do his general surgery residency. Unfortunately for Raj, his attempts to secure a residency position were futile and he was on the brink of another depressive episode.

I took a break and went home so that I could apply for informatics programs in the US. When I returned a few months later, David told me that Raj has moved to Madras and was working as an assistant to a Surgeon there. He said that the pay wasn’t great but the best part was that he was learning a lot. I asked David what Raj’s parents thought about it and he said that they were thrilled. I was very happy for Raj and I asked David to ask Raj to come down to Pondicherry sometime in the next couple of months before I left to the US.

I got busy gathering the letters of recommendation from my professors and about a month later, Raj’s father came down to Pondicherry and met me in the library. I was shocked to see him (especially coz Raj wasn’t in Pondicherry) and I asked him if everything was ok. He looked disheveled and a worried man. I couldn’t help but notice that he had lost weight and his eyes were sunken.

"What have you done to my son?" Raj’s father asked me.

"What do you mean uncle? I thought Raj was doing great at Madras, working with a surgeon", I said.

"Don’t you know that Raj has converted to Christianity? It seems he is going to Kashmir to treat terrorism victims there and to convert those militants", He said.

I was shocked. "That’s not possible, this has got to be a mistake", I said in denial.

"His mom hasn’t eaten since the last seven days. She is severely depressed. I couldn’t sleep too. His brother and sister haven’t stopped crying. How could you let him do this, you are his best friend!"

That’s when I realized the gravity of what had happened. My friend Raj had taken such a major decision and had not informed his parents; a decision that had shattered his family. Raj parents believed that I had failed as a friend as I had let him take a wrong decision. Moreover David had made sure that he was the only one who had Raj’s address at Madras.

We needed some answers but I realized that Raj’s dad desperately needed a pillar to hang onto. I assured him that we would find the answers and in spite of his protests, I dragged him to Le Café for lunch. I told him that we needed all the strength and that the next couple of days were going to be very taxing. I found a junior and asked him to tell David to meet me in my room in an hour.

After lunch, we realized that David had disappeared. When I enquired with a few of his other friends, they said that he might be at the pastor’s house. When I enquired as to where the pastor’s house was, all I received was some vague sketchy directions.

We set out on my Kinetic Honda in search of this church and its pastor, to find David who knew where Raj was. After searching for about an hour we finally found the pastor’s house and got the door slammed on us as soon I introduced that it was Raj’s father.

Our next lead was one of David’s friends, a bank manager. We set off in search of the bank and found him in his office. As soon as we mentioned that he was Raj’s father, we could see invisible walls going up. He tried to explain to Raj’s dad that Raj had made a decision and it was really up to him to do what he wants with his life. Raj’s dad got furious and told him that, if he doesn’t disclose where Raj was, he would go to the cops right now and file a FIR that he had kidnapped his son. I told him that I knew the DIG of the police and it shouldn’t be very difficult to press charges.

The threat worked and we got our next clue: the name of the doctor at Madras and the area where he was. It was late in the night and we decided to take the last bus to Madras and reached there early in the morning. We located the doctor’s address in the local telephone directory and reached his clinic at 8 AM. Not risking the door being slammed in our face again, we waited along with the other patients for the doctor to arrive. When our turn came, we confronted the doctor and told him that we wanted to meet Raj. He said that Raj would come to the clinic in sometime and asked us to wait. Lots of patients went in and out of the clinic as we waited but there was no sign of Raj. After waiting for 7 hours at 3 PM, we again confronted the doctor and then he says, "I am sorry, I thought you had gone. Raj isn’t working for us anymore. He has gone someplace else".

"What do you mean someplace else? How do we find him?"

"I can only give you the number of our National Coordinating Center. They keep track of all our people". He took a piece of paper and noted down the number and gave it to us. "Please don’t come back and trouble us anymore, I hear you caused enough trouble in Pondicherry at the pastor’s residence and the bank". That remark shocked us.

We walked to the nearest phone booth and called the National Coordinating Center. His suspicion was right; the doctor had given him the wrong phone number. With some social engineering, we found out the correct phone number and the address. Our next clue would land us in New Delhi. I told Raj’s dad that I would like to come to New Delhi with him to find Raj at which he said that I had helped him enough. He asked me to go back to Pondicherry.

On my way back to Pondicherry, I started thinking about how these religious hawks would identify potential targets. The targets were those who had recently had a personal tragedy like loss of a family member or not flunking an examination or rejection in the matters of the heart. These potential targets were usually those who were always searching for an identity and striving to belong to a group. They were the ones looking for the answer to the question.

The next day at the dinner table, I was recounting the whole tale to a couple of friends and I commented that the whole ordeal was so depressing. Promptly that evening I had a visitor in my room who tried to strike up a conversation about religion. Curious to know where this would lead to, I appeared interested and asked him more questions about what the big picture is.

He told me about their "Religion for All by 2010" plan and how each person was given a target to identify x number of ‘brothers-in-need’. The plan was to ‘help’ these brothers, especially when they are seeking for answers by showing that that religion was the answer to all their problems.