of idols and ideals

What is the difference between faith and freedom? Not much, as many might expect. Let us dig deep.

Faith conditions us influencing what is comfortable and what is not. Faith unlike what is often argued is not just about GOD. God becomes a heading to the articles of definition of what is comfortable. In other words "life style".

Freedom is often explained egocentrically. Concept of freedom probably exists because of existence of inhibition: inhibition within and inhibition from external sources. It is this tendency to oppose inhibition that defines freedom.

Conditioning significantly influences the notion of freedom. It also uses the pretext of morals to impose inhibition. This is "right"; that is "wrong", type of notions redefine freedom. We get "comfortable" in certain set of such inhibitions. It appears that, since long, faiths have formed a frame work that can almost stand for what defines our comfort. When we are not combatable we feel our "freedom" is under attack. This is synonymous with the attack on faith.

We come to stage where attack on faith is directly interpreted as attack on freedom. Thus the faith and the freedom are two different concepts; they stand equated under the circumstances we live today. If this is not convincing some historical examples will help us understand this equation.

It appears that the Indian polity and the economy were independent of each other to a fair degree. Thus changes in polity did not affect the population to an uncomfortable degree. Why? Faith remained the same. People felt free to live their social and religious life, the way they wanted. Indian Rebellion of 1857 started when British interfered with the religion. That was really an attack on freedom.

Now, Hindus in Malaysia are protesting (read the link) against marginalization of the ethnic Indians (read Hindus) in Malaysia, a Muslim country. It is reported that thousands of temples built by their ancestors were being demolished and idols bulldozed. They now feel their religion is under attack. Freedom is under attack, is this a joke? :)

Louisiana State in USA uncharacteristically elected a brown man to the office of the governor.
Piyush Jindal is a man born to Indian parents (read Hindus, also read the link). However Bobby (his nick name) is a Roman Catholic Christian and supposedly he is considered as being to the right of the right conservatives! His life is in line, to make the audience comfortable he has to be that way, although acting otherwise was not a necessity.

I hope I have given enough proof why most think, attack on faith is attack on freedom. (I am guilty of not thinking much about inhibitions caused by economic compulsions. Which I will take up in the next write up). We look for comfort. Faith to some extent defines comfort and comfort defines our more general rules of what is acceptable, which we call ideology!

Integrity is at infinity. Ideologies are afterthoughts. What is more close to what we base our actions on are comfort and discomfort. This also applies to animals. Animals are sensitive to conditions but humans are also sensitive to concepts!

~rAGU