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 The basis of Indian society at that time was unthinking obedience to the authority of sacred books, old customs, and outdated habits.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:
“To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“It is visible then that it was not any Heathen Religion or other Idolatrous Superstition, that first put Man upon crossing his Appetites and subduing his dearest Inclinations, but the skilful Management of wary Politicians; and the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.”
—Bernard De Mandeville (1670–1733)