Thursday, October 24, 2013

What is fanaticism?

     Everyone in the world are fanatics excepts some who had reached to Brahmin (bodhisattva) state. What differs is the degree of fanaticism. Somebody will be fanatics about culture, some will be for their religion and so on. If we try to see the how degree of fanaticism changes, some would be harming self like being fanatic about cigar, wines , money and so on... But it starts taking grave nature when it start harming and hurting the others. The degree can be gauged based on how much is the impact , is it self, family, society, country or nations.

     Fanaticism is there everlasting since ages and will be there in future...  One  can take some of historical fanatic acts from Mahabharata, which destroyed almost all human kind of bharat varsha or the recent one , by Hitler as the superior race to rule the world and pulling all the world to toe in world war...
    There are ongoing  fanatic movements  like talibans, womens independence and so on..  One has to ask does these movements are based on love and compassion and trying to up bring the underprivileged sections to equality , respect or these based on hatred towards other sections?  Whether it’s based on hatred or love , that makes the difference.  Recently I came across an story in the life of Swami Vivekananda. I will put it at narrated by him...  It goes like this ...

      I remembered a women whose husband was a great drunkard and she complained to me of his becoming so. I replied, “ Madam, if there were twenty millions of wives like yourself, all husbands would become drunkards.” . I am convinced that large number of drunkards are manufactured by their wives. My business is to tell the truth and not to flatter anyone. These unruly women from whose minds the words bear and forbear are forever, and whose false idea about independence lead them to think that man should be at their feet, and who begin to howl , as soon as men dare to say anything they do not like – such a women are becoming bane of the world, and it is a wonder that they do not drive half the men in to commit suicide. In this way things should not go on. Life is not so easy as they believe it to be; it is a more serious business! – Swami Vivekananda

I do believe this applies vice a versa in many cases...

Swami Vivekananda narrated one more incident where some writer had shared a book , which said there was no souls, but that there were gods and goddesses in heaven, and a thread of light going from heaven to all these things?  When asked, Swamiji disagreed to believe in these thoughts, then she replied “ You must be a very bad man; there is no hope for you!” This is fanaticism!