Doctors heal with scalpel. They also heal with their words. At a time when the world is becoming divided between those who believe religion unites and others who hold it responsible for a lot of tension and killings these days, a doctor has taken to writing to send a sensible message across. Dr. Ajay Yadav has penned his first novel “From Where I See”.
“No religion teaches violence. Islam came to serve humanity at large. But in present times we are witnessing religions being hijacked and politicised by people with fundamentalist ideologies. The problem is that the common man cannot differentiate between politics and religion. That is why the world is suffering from pan Islamism versus pan Christianity and other religions. One of the important aims of my book is to prevent this deadly conflict by giving an insight into this malaise,” says Yadav.
Optimistic that readers will be able to understand the politicisation of religions by religio-political propagators, Yadav says, “I have presented an unbiased, mythology-free, practical and humanly possible history of five major religions – Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and Judaism. This will clear the majority of the common misconceptions prevalent about each religion.”
Crediting his father for developing his analytical thinking, he says that he taught him that historical facts are often manipulated by winners. “So I have been looking from both sides and not with a prejudiced mindset. Injustice, human exploitation, dishonesty and lawlessness have been intolerable to me since childhood. Nothing has aggrieved me more than hatred towards each other.”
Yadav started thinking as to why at every level, whether it is intrapersonal, interpersonal, inter-social, inter-religious or inter-country, people are at loggerheads with each other. “I started to dream of a society free of these conflicts, an honest utopian society.”
Apart from penning turbulent events of the freedom struggle and the Partition, the author has summarised the two World Wars, two wars between India and Pakistan, Cold War between the U.S. and the erstwhile USSR, its ugly ramifications like the Iraq war, birth of Taliban and Al Qaeda. The book also includes an account of the collapse of WTC towers and polarisation of the world on the basis of religion.
The book was launched at the Constitution Club of India, in the presence of GVG Krishnamurthy, former election commissioner, Harish Narang - Retd. Professor of JNU, Ashok Chakradhar Hindi poet, Gurinder Singh, Press Council of India member and Deepak Singh, Editor of Indian Observer.
Referring to the recent suicide of a farmer during the AAP rally, Harish says that despite the presence of thousands of people, the farmer managed to take his life. “Two weeks ago, two children watched a young person, below 40 years, beaten to death. Nobody raised a finger. This is the picture of contemporary India.”
