By Saswat Pattanayak

I am taken aback by the growing number of religious organizations functioning smoothly in various campuses across the United States.

Working at an office for diversity, I should be the first one to applaud such an environment where different and often competing religions are represented in such democratic fashion. After all, student organizations can be composed from different bases.

That’s precisely what’s bothering me. This argument for multifaceted multiculturalism is also encouraging such an unhealthy trend, that it seems folks just don’t learn from history.

I have nothing much against religions. Except that they are the worst manifestations that can be. Each religion is backward by its very nature in that, instead of leading believers forward towards social progress by encouraging critical discussions on roots of existing injustices, it takes them back to the all pervading irrefutable canons all the while; that religions of the world are the only core factors behind all major wars and almost all the minor battles; that religions help in creating an illusory sphere to the extent that human beings start becoming impractical dreamers in alliance with fates instead of progressive activists in union with organizational potential; that at the crux, religions compete with each other and downgrade each others’ Gods; even within the texts religions are based on extremely disposable prepositions and yet are adhered so much that it fails one to understand why human beings need to be so uncritical of such mass con acts.

After having said this, I must again admit that I have not much to say against religions, as much as I have against those who practice them in various forms. This is because, texts (in this case, religious texts), are not so powerful all on their own. It takes the practitioners of the texts to do the damage, or the good, as the case may be.

And this is when I bring myself back to the campus scenarios and ask the question: Are the state education and church indeed separated as being claimed.

With the Bush administration, came the “Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools" which went into effect in March 2003 as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. The rules instruct schools to show "neither favoritism nor hostility against religious expression," including at graduation ceremonies and assemblies. Of course in such a free-for-all expressionist platform, as is characteristic in any other Spencerian institution, the stronghold beliefs prevail.

Consequently, at the universities, even if they are state-run, most student organizations are religion-based, indeed, Christian-based (the justification, needless to say, is because most students profess this religion). So there is a clear absence of balance of power even within the student community religion expressions. And the educational places are mere bystanders to the minority struggles of claiming My God Is Bigger Than Yours. And forget the Atheists of course. They are godless bas***ds.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Capitalism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Atheism