Humanity Needs No Religion

The day had been a tough one. Officially I was burdened with travel, reports and the never ending stream of mails. Personally I was tired of having travelled half a thousand kilometers the previous night, and having to travel back the same distance in another hour’s time. Tired and drained, I entered the restaurant in front of the railway station, for a little bite before boarding the train.
 

As my food arrived and I started munching it with no interest whatsoever, a voice caught my attention. The voice came from behind, the voice of an old man enquiring the price of two idlis (rice cakes of South India) with the server. The server told him that they cost Rs.25. The old man came in front of me and sat at the vacant chair in my table. He pointed to my plate and asked me something. I could only make out the word ‘idlis’ from his question whereas the rest of it was drowned due to my not comprehending his language. I couldn’t place his question, partly because I couldn’t understand his language and partly because I was still ruminating through the day’s events.
 

As I was unable to make sense of his question, I signaled to the server and asked him to help me out with the old man’s question. The server came and spoke to the old man. It seemed that the old man wanted to have two idlis but had no money. Hence he was pointing to my plate and was asking me as to whether I could get two idlis for him. Before I could decide and respond to the server, the server asked me to wait and went to the manager at the cash counter. He pointed to our table and conveyed the old man’s request to the manager.
 

The manager gave a nod and the server brought two idlis in a moment. As the old man started emptying the contents of his plate, without leaving even a little sign of food in the plate, I sat there, watching him eat and thinking. What makes a man forego his dignity and raise his hands for alms in front of another? Think of it, it was no roadside eatery where anybody can straightaway walk in. And, our old gentleman was not looking any bit shabby either. Clad in a neatly washed dhoti, tied up as a ‘panchakascham’ and a white kurtha, with a towel to go by, you wouldn’t think of him as someone who would beg another person for food. I sat there contemplating the thin line that a person has to cross, before losing one’s personal dignity and deciding to beg another person for alms.
 

I decided to pay for the old man’s food nevertheless. Morally, I felt it to be my duty to pay for his food, since it was me that he approached for food. I told the server to bring my bill and add the old gentleman’s food bill on mine. But it seemed the manager had declined to do so. I paid for my food alone and went to the cash counter. I told the manager that I would pay for the other person’s food as well. But he politely declined my request and said that he gets to see so many people like that every day and they don’t have any qualms in offering food to such people. With my conscience pricking, I thanked him for that nice gesture of offering food to an unknown hungry human being, and put a twenty-rupee note in the charity box at the cash counter to appease my nibbling conscience.
 

And, as I entered the station and moved towards my platform to board the train, I happened to see another nice little gesture of humanity. It was a subway through which the people need to move and climb some steep stairs to reach their platforms. Climbing the stairway, some twenty steps ahead of me, I noticed a burly old woman, clad in a dark burkha, slowly moving up the stairs with a big bag in her hand. The bag must have been really heavy, since she kept placing the bag on the step above, stood for a brief while before climbing each step. Just as I wanted to move up quick and help her, I noticed another lady close to her grab that heavy bag, climb the remaining flight of stairs quickly, place the heavy baggage in the landing and wait for that woman to climb. The woman in burkha didn’t even realize what was happening, but she was assured to see the other woman leave the bag in the landing and stand there waiting for her to complete climbing the stairs. By now, I had also climbed the stairs and was able to see them both face to face.
 

The expression and the gentle smile on the face of that woman in burkha conveyed her sincere and genuine gratitude. And, the happy smile in the face of the other woman who helped the lady thus, did convey a genuine sense of acceptance and amiability.
 

Just as my train chugged in at the platform, I felt a sense of gratitude for having been a witness to these two gentle acts of humanity and philanthropy, no matter how small or big you, the reader, may perceive them to be. On one side, there was this person, who willingly fed a stranger, without looking into the caste, clan and religion the hungry soul belonged to. And, on the other, there was this woman, a Hindu if it would please you to know, showing an act of care towards another woman, a Muslim as it happened to be, and both of them going apart with a sense of genuine affection and gratitude for one another.
 

Where exactly do we humans need senseless classifications like caste and religion?! Did the hotel manager confirm the person’s ethnicity before feeding him? Or, did the ‘Hindu’ woman feel any sense of superiority to not touch the ‘Muslim’ woman’s luggage? Or did the ‘Muslim’ woman feel offended to have her bags touched by a ‘kafir’?! No, sire.
 

When a child riding a bicycle falls down on a busy road, everyone rushes to lift up the little kid and check whether s/he was hurt anywhere, without pausing to confirm the religion of the kid. When someone suffering from hunger raises his hands and asks for alms, any human with a sense of conscience will share whatever little morsel is left with him/her without worrying about the religion. 

And, no doctor ever treats his patients after confirming their religion/caste. You can identify many such instances in life where caste and religion play no role at all. If we observe with a keen sense of wisdom, we will realize that religion and caste play little or no role in our interactions with our fellow human beings on a day-to-day basis.
 

Classifications like religion and caste are said to have been founded for the purpose of controlling people’s lives and making them live ethically and morally. If the same religions and castes suck away the love, joy and peace from the lives of humans, if the same religions and castes don’t help us see our fellow human beings with the sense of amiability, if the same religions and castes are being manipulated by political persons and priests to sow dissension amongst us and be reaped as personal benefits in the form of power and money, then, do we humans need such religions and caste classifications?!
 

Does humanity really need religions and caste classifications?