Reconciliation: Making Peace with Agnosticism and Religion

Written by: Avanti Savur

 

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​All my life, as far back as I can remember, I’ve never believed in the existence of God. I have vivid memories from when I was as young as two years old, sitting sullenly at every pooja. I’d squirm in my seat with an uncomfortable knot in my stomach, sneaking glances at the clock when my parents weren’t looking, waiting impatiently for it to be over. Somehow back then, I had a hunch that it wasn’t just childhood restlessness that was the cause of my discomfort.

Being agnostic in a traditional, religious Indian household proved to be a particularly trying experience and left me with a complicated relationship with spirituality and religion. My family raised me as Hindu, and my parents place all their faith in our many gods and goddesses. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grappled with the idea that I wasn’t being the daughter they wanted me to be because I didn’t share their faith. I’ve cycled through all the emotions: shame for not being able to see what they see, guilt for keeping it from them, envy for not having a divine entity to turn to when times get tough, anger for all pictures and idols and calendars (yes, you read that right, calendars) of our gods and goddesses and holy men covering every surface of our house- even my room! It took years for me to tell my mother that it constantly chafed me to have them up in a room that was supposed to be my own personal space for me to decorate as I pleased, and even more to convince her to take them off. Sometimes I’d feel suffocated to see them in there on the walls, and for a split second I see red and I want nothing more than to rip them off and tear them up with my bare hands. I felt like my individuality was being snuffed out, and I always had to censor myself in my own home.

My mother always says that she’s resigned herself over to her chosen goddess, and it’s provided her with a sense of serenity that emanates from her in waves, one I can only hope to emulate. She prays every day at 7 pm by the prayer wall meticulously arranged in my grandparents’ room, and when she’s too busy to do that, she’ll hum them under her breath as she completes whatever it is she has to do. She truly believes that praying can provide me with the same comfort she feels, and I never have the heart to tell her that it doesn’t, that it never has and probably never will. When I left for college, she gave me a small idol and a laminated picture to keep under my pillow to rid me of any oncoming homesickness. I appreciate it though, the years have taught me that this is the highest form of comfort she can offer, and I kept the picture under my pillow, for her if not for me.

The flip side though, is that it can often be the only form of comfort she can give me. I remember, nearly three years ago, opening up to her about my increasingly hard to deal with mental health issues and struggles in school, and cautiously broached the suggestion of seeing a therapist. She responded by telling me to pray with her every day, a gesture that came from the heart, but irrespective of sincerity, it resulted in months of repression and building anxiety and depression, amounting to the worst time for my mental health in my life, with repercussions I am still working through. They never explicitly said, but I always got the feeling that my parents didn’t think paying for external therapy from a stranger was necessary when I could turn to religion with my family instead.

Perhaps part of the reason why I’m averse to Hinduism and religion and a whole is the hypocrisy in its followers. Ancient Hindus created a caste system, a social hierarchy that thousands of years later, systemically discriminates against the lower castes. Being born in an upper caste family, I knew nothing of the true nature of the caste system, due to the heavy censorship of history textbooks and curriculum. Those who claimed to be religious would pick and choose the parts they agreed with and applied it to their lives. I’ve observed people around me claim to be followers of Hinduism and in the same breath, disrespect women, spew offensive remarks about other religions and ethnicities, and essentially practise the opposite to what they preach. Some of my own relatives have passed sexist, casteist Islamophobic, homophobic and racist comments, and immediately act defensive when called out.  It’s been said that Hinduism is more of a way of life than a religion, but religion-based crimes have always been the bloodiest in our history, especially in the past year, the government openly and unapologetically implemented a draconian Citizenship Act, in an effort to exclude the Muslim population from the national register of Indian citizens, using what the called “Hindutva”, a warped version of Hinduism, to purge the country of anyone they deemed lesser. Despite my own beliefs, I can’t ever imagine the rock solid faith of my parents, their light in the dark, or the low hum of my mother’s continuous chanting, to be comparable to the hate and violence their faith has become.

Being bisexual didn’t help matters. I spent long nights and quiet moments in my early teenage years wondering if every facet of my identity betrayed my country and, more devastatingly, my family. I spent several months afraid of coming out to my parents, I was convinced that they wouldn’t accept me, that they’d choose their religion over their daughter. Ironically though, there’s no scripture in Hinduism condemning homosexuality. On the contrary, Hinduism and its associated stories, epics and myths are peppered with queer characters and questions notions of existing ideas of masculinity and femininity. It accommodates for queer identies via an extensive vocabulary in almost every vernacular language. Ancient India was tolerant and supportive towards its LGBTQ+ community, but somewhere along the line, after conquests and colonialism and regressive laws, the archaic Western concept of homophobia took root and stuck fast. Queerphobia integrated itself in Hinduism and today, queerness is widely considered to be against the cultural ethos.   

As I’ve gotten older though, I’m slowly beginning to understand that I couldn’t shake off my Indianness even if I tried. I’m not any less of an Indian just because I don’t fit an archaic stereotype. I’ve realised that there’s no one specific way to be a good Indian citizen or a good daughter. As I said before, like it or not, being Indian is a fundamental part of me, and I can’t really escape religion because I’ve grown up with it, and it’s still a part of me. Sometimes at night when sleep evades me, I’ll run through all the mantras my mother taught me when I was young, possibly one of the first things she ever taught me, not because I believe in them, but it’s what she would do if she was there.
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As I write this article, I know that there’s no way I can show it to my parents when it goes up without causing an argument that’ll probably end up in tears on both our parts. My agnosticism is something that took years for me to make peace with, and it’ll take my parents just as long for them to do the same. There will be many difficult conversations to have before we get there, about sexuality, about gender, about how the government destroyed Hinduism to further its cruel goals.  I hope someday, I can show them this and we can start to understand each other a little better.