WHEN THE CULTURE HAD A MELTDOWN OVER SILENCE AND VOICE

Culture is changing

Place of worship has become noisy & louder and the place for ideas, innovative and critical thinking is becoming silent. Spirituality needs silence and the campuses needs voices. Religious places should maintain silence for what they expect to attain and the campuses should be noisy with all its beauty, warts, democratic culture and set up.

“There should be a rush of peace and serenity when one enters a place of worship” – noted by the Madras High Court. How many of our religious places can claim this status today?

Places of worship – a noise nuisance

The ringing of bells and the call to prayer over loudspeakers from a religious place can be lovely reminders of reverence and joy to its listeners. But what about others? Let’s excuse them for the time being for this. But what about prayers and sometimes hate speeches are aired on blasting loudspeakers?

Since we live in a land of multiple religion, faith and diversity and yet united in ways we celebrate or worship, blasting loudspeakers cannot be tolerated and it’s potentially irritating others. This can create hatred among the people. Most places of worship have blaring sound over loudspeakers till late night, sometimes all through the night or early in the morning.

It is understandable if any religion needs to stay up till late and practice whatever ways of reaching God that they want to, but don’t make it uncomfortable for other people in the locality. There could be sick and elderly in the area and they are not going to get any better if you plan on playing religious songs all through the night on loudspeakers.

Religion can be preached without loudspeakers and without creating traffic jamming processions. Christ, Prophet Mohammed, Hindu Saints, Guru Nanak, Christian Priests and all other religious saints and preachers did not use loudspeakers and never created traffic jam to preach religion. You can do the same too, hopefully. Religion is a person’s connection with the divine power and not something that he or she should need to spread over the area and have everyone hear it.

We have seen many instances, if one of them uses loudspeakers for their religious purpose, the others will do it out of vengeance as if it’s a war of whose verses are heard more often by the other.

The reality is that when they run a loud volume during the service, it gives the impression of the room being fuller. Further they are trying to reaching those who aren’t in the community, and trying to create the kind of faith that the people who won’t love to attend.

A significant reason for keeping the prayers and speech loud is that most of them are trying to project a celebratory tone rather than somber one. This celebratory tone communicates that God is alive and making a difference in people’s lives today. What a tamasha? Sorry.... it’s pure politics.

It will be sensible to restrict the sound within the compound wall and to turn off speakers during the wee hours for peaceful rejuvenation and sleep. A little bit of sensibility will not kill us.

Success should be when you aren’t disappointed when you awake each morning by the prayer bells and prayer calls or by the silence.

Here, silence should be the option, but instigating volume of noise is a hidden agenda of the priesthood. That triggers hatred.

Real spirituality germinates in the campuses

The College and University (C&U) campus community is a unique, close-knit family that inspires each other to explore new opportunities, challenge the system and discover untapped potential within. C&U campus is its own world, and students have the chance to experience a wide range of activities by encountering new ideas and challenges.

C&U campuses act as a power house for innovative ideas, creative thinking and tangible effects of social and cultural vitality, by connecting the most intelligent, active researchers with a wide source of new knowledge.

The students have the chance to experience a wide range of activities. Campuses should have a festival mood of atmosphere to engage students apart from classroom lectures, teaching and learning across disciplines. Campus is a world for unexpected and unregulated discussions, talks, arguments, debates, clarifications, elaboration, conversations.

• C&U campus is a place to try and unravel the mysteries of the social and political universe.

• It’s a place of transformation

• It’s a place of books, journals and letters

• It’s a place for engagement with ideas to move beyond the classroom into small groups to learn to throw away more words than one eventually keeps.

• It’s a place of tolerance and intellectual minds

• It’s a place of creative space of informality and friendship

• It’s a place for productive and adventurous minds

• It’s a place for real spirituality to sprout

For all the above mentioned activities and growth, we need different voices across campuses. Unfortunately these voices, apart from JNU, BHU, Aligarh etc. Are now becoming silent. C&U campuses has become more classroom centric and mostly acts as a teaching centre or a coaching centre. Nobody cares about humanities, cultural spaces and activities that takes the students to newer heights. The alarming part is – the parents who studied and enjoyed the campus culture, is denying or restricting the same creative freedom to their children in the name of percentage of marks and only marks and nothing beyond. Now most of the C&U have become ‘only curriculum campus’.

Furthermore, Covid19 has created uncertainty in the colleges and universities that the students cannot have access to campus togetherness. It is going to rewrite the atmosphere in the campuses in the near future. In this period, virtual online meeting is a blessing for the teachers and students. But now, the vague nature of the guidelines from Ministry of Education, imposing a blanket requirement for obtaining prior permission to organise virtual meetings or training programmes is lightening strike on the heads of the campus community.

Virtual meetings, have provided the opportunity for students and teachers in India to discuss ideas with professionals around the world in a way that may not have been possible earlier. The requirements imposed by the Ministry will impede the growth of educational opportunities and interest for the younger generation in India.

Further, the UGC has flashed a letter to university VCs under them, to encourage ‘Cow Science’ in the curriculum by force, along with their hidden agenda to cast a new history test books with Sangh Parivar ideology. I strongly believe that the creative freedom for the students and teachers will be restricted by cloaking it in religion in the future.

So, I don’t think any space will be left for the teachers and students to think critically and independently when NEP 2020 is implemented. Naturally, the campuses will be silent in future in the name of ‘Bharatiyata’.

Here, silence is not an option, but silencing young minds is a hidden agenda for others who are outside the campuses.

Culture is changing.