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IT and religion: Progress or regress?

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CIOL Bureau
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I was in Lumbini Garden on 25th August when the Hyderabad blasts happen. I am a spectator to the gruesome happenings. I thank my lucky stars that I am alive. I do not ponder on what could have happened and leave it for another day.

About 15 days later, I sit down to reflect on the episode, on the progress India has made over the past few years and whether all this is an acute result of that?

IT, the driver to our much-vaunted progress, has lent teeth to many activities of the civil society. I believe it has allowed religious sentiments – right or wrong, to proliferate at a tremendous speed that has surprised all of us. Let me illustrate this by a few examples:

HUJI, the terrorist group supposedly bases in Bangladesh, is much like a corporate using IT perfectly. It has sleeper cells in many towns in India who connect over the Internet in different chat rooms and take their instructions. Their bosses sitting in mosques and houses spread all over Southern Bangladesh relay the instructions. These Instructions are relayed to these kingpins from London or Rawalpindi. This is again done through – yes, the Internet!

We all know that the religious frenzy in Ahmedabad during the Gujarat riots was fed by SMSes and net chats. It was a dastardly act and they were perfectly sane people feeding on others’ misery.

Banaras priests have hit upon a nice way of doing business. They do the Satyanarayana Puja over the net! People from distant Houston are clients.

Traditionally, religion has got a limited reach. As people get more educated, the reach is tempered and rationalized. So, religion peddlers of various forms needed to reach out to the sections of people who were ignorant about their ways. A preacher in a London mosque had to get through to the semi-literate in Old Hyderabad to continue being a success at what he does. The only possible way was IT.

Here, religion itself is not to be blamed. It has no part in this skullduggery. It is the simple norm of “Demand and Supply”. If religion is sought after by a section of our people due to a lack of faith in fellow people or the powers that be, then it is a distinct failure on the part of the civic society.

Religion is personal. The spread of religion is generally commercial. Earlier we saw the forced conversions by Jesuit priests and now we see the proliferation of Madrassas in border areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. If you thought the entire work in the terrorist network is disconnected, think again! They are far more uplinked than you and I are. Otherwise, the handiwork of a terrorist in Glasgow would not have been stored in a Bangalore hard disc!

There are many eyes looking at India now. We should know who are the right ones and encourage them. We also should know about the wrong ones and weed them out at the earliest. This is easier said than done. Religion is an unknown quantity. It is a friend but can turn into a foe at any given time. The power of IT gives it added teeth to create havoc on our roads and public places. We shall have to be prepared.

The Net has been a convenient device of communication and document storage away from the eyes of the law. The law had not been iron clad about such usage before and the opportunists had a nice time. But now, we have good Cyber laws coming in and an aware media that is able to highlight all kinds of malice on the net. But, there is a lot more to do. All of us will do well to be very vigilant on the net and encourage cleanliness. We will only do ourselves a lot of good. We should also use the strength of IT to break through with new technology and management processes in police, intelligence and investigations.

There should not be a repeat of a Lumbini Garden episode anymore!

(Majumdar is Vice President of Wonder Leisure Entertainment Pvt. Ltd)

(Views are personal. CyberMedia News or the CyberMedia Group need not necessarily subscribe to the views -- in full or in part – expressed above)

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