You and Your Religion

Yes, Religion has a social dimension too. It serves a common cause. This very common cause becomes a social religion. It is like something people living together accept it to live together. After all man is known as a social animal and his behaviour and its pattern conforms to it. When did man learn to live in groups can be traced back to his pre-history days when he developed a skill of living together for food and it was during hunting of big game animals that he must have learnt to seek other’s help.

Thus man developed a helpful behaviour where he sought and offered help to other and this is how he must have developed a way of living together in groups and milieus. This gave birth to formation of family and tribes and then community where man learnt to work in groups and developed a social sense. Over the time this formed part of his instinctive behaviour and gradually this became a skill of survival against climatic and environmental odds. Every society is built around the principle of give and take, some rights along with the duties and sometimes the duties are all the above that man enjoys as his rights. Consider Sanskrit word Dharma which means Kartvya where you are bound by your duties.

A society survives only if it learns to live together. It has a mechanism within itself to sustain and survive. All its civic system is divided and subdivided into various duties and obligation and all its members have to fulfil unquestionably. There are rules to obey and set system to follow. Anybody not keeping with the system is considered violators. Within a system they are termed as rebels and every society sooner of later gets rid of its violators. This is called the socialisation; for every socialisation the society has its language and speech and perhaps that is why it is always said that in Rome, do just as the Romans would do. In other words society has a cultural bearing and one’s behaviour should conform to the cultural bearings.

Social religion has its roots deep within the culture of society. One should respect the culture of the society. Your culture is a tool of your survival. It has its roots deep into the demography of a place and its beliefs and legacies are strongly and deeply associated with the environment of a place. It can neither be transferred nor be imported.

Social religion is more or less like a social and cultural way of life. It is social art of living. It is social skill in other words. All the components of the society are dependent on one another for one thing or the other; it is social skill that allows its members to retain their personal religion. Your personal religion is a religion within religion. So every citizen should strongly embrace it and has every right to keep his religion within his embrace.

Social religion has both written and unwritten form and invariably it consists of social morality and social justice to the acceptable norms within the community. In the past often a tribal head would make final decisions on unprecedented and intricate social problems. This comes as a code and is well known and acceptable as customs and traditions. It was the same that keeps the society or community closely binding.

Unlike organised form or religion, social religion is irregular and flexible in both pattern and performance as it evolves regularly and continuously making adjustments with the environment. The locus of control is within and not outside the members of the society as in the case of Organised Religion.

Social religion has a marked effect on the socio and economic activities of the society as it predominantly and actively engages the society as a whole and where the dependence on one another for social and economic activities leads to a well knit social fabric. Our agrarian form of society is remarkable example and the rural system of Indian civilisation is a glaring instance.

 Thus a social religion too which means to me collaboration, social adjustment where working together, toiling together leads to life and survival. It is more of community than that of society. My first preference to conform to the rules and principles defined and fixed by the community I am living in. But at the same time, I work as an active member of the community where my opinion matters most in deciding for the society.

It is like growing and letting others grow as well; it is live and let others live type so long as they do not hinder your growth. My being a part of the social fabric is based on the principle of the greater common good where majority allows the minority in respect of their personal life. Mutual respect and mutual allowance is the binding thread that runs through the social fabric that holds things together and it is here I find  living and dying together even for a greater common cause and defending the very social fabric against all those who invade our social scenario. This is my religion towards my society, my people and my country.

The true concept of a country is what is known as habitat in the ecology. The social fabric is our ecology and what sustains it is the ecological system. Any thing that challenges this very social fabric is intolerable for me and I would try my best to weave

Such a social religion does not last longer than the society. As soon as the defragmentation of the society takes place, the social fabric is turned to rags and the social religion is confined to the culture of communities living in remnants. It becomes first victim of evolution of the society under the impact of industrialisation.