shootings because the gun lobby would not let it happen.
The rise of nationalistic and communal movements is not always in favour of the market because if these movements continue the business may suffer due to continuous turmoil. Actually, it often happens that the interests of different industries mutually clash. The rivalry between these opposing interests has a significant bearing on the political scenario at the national or international level. While the majority of consumer industries would prefer minimisation of armed conflicts at all levels, the arms industry thrives on international disputes and recurrent wars and civil wars. The manufacturers of arms have therefore vested interests in supporting ultra-nationalist movements all over the world. They find cordial partners in political fundamentalists for the preservation of their activities. The arms industries are mostly owned by the governments. The sale of costly weapons, open or clandestine, brings huge earnings, and the governments often succeed in averting domestic financial crises. Battles here and there, and tensions over border issues, which often escalate to burst into wars, keep the arms flowing without affecting for too long the fortune of other industries.
3.
Good Bye Religion!
Throughout the history, religion has played a significant role in the individual and social affairs of human beings. For most of the people that flourished in different regions of the planet earth and in different eras, faith has been a sine qua non for their existence. In spite of the fact that religion has more often than not been defiled or contaminated by the self seeking clerics, it has earnestly and relentlessly endeavoured to discipline life by erecting the ethical fence around it. It has almost been a periodical phenomenon that the prophets and sages arrived with sublime messages of highest virtues, and no sooner did they depart than their followers successively adulterated them with immoralities and indecencies. Still, it is an irrefutable truth that it is mainly owing to the strong influences on human minds and hearts wielded by religion that truth, honesty, sacrifice for others, justice and mercy have always been regarded as commendable virtues in society even if the constituent members of society have not generally put them into any remarkable degree of practice. What is indisputably commendable is that religion assisted mankind in overcoming dilemma of routine life at a time when it was not advanced enough to objectively discriminate between the right and wrong. In the midst of all-pervading gloom, the solitary torch of religion shone; whoever had the eyes to observe it, darkness made exit from his life.
The faiths which have been dominant in the world during last few millennia - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism. Christianity, Islam and Sikhism -- all, without exception, have magnified moral values. No religion preaches falsehood, dishonesty, cheating, bribery, hatred, violence, adultery and fornication. Each of them eschews, albeit in varying degrees, this-worldliness. Jainism and Buddhism condemn this life altogether; Christianity promotes celibacy; and Islam, while permitting necessities and enjoyment of life within the prescribed limits, promotes love for other-worldliness. Religion aims at achieving mental peace and gives less importance to material gains. This principle applies to all religions, and this is what annoys the economic fundamentalists most because the promotion of materialism reigns supreme in their scheme of things. Their plan cannot succeed unless people became least entangled in moral dilemma and the love of this worldliness ravishes that of the other-worldliness. If honesty rules the roost in their life, sex outside the ambit of marriage is considered immoral and illegal, self-sacrifice lords over their hearts and minds and deceit and falsehood haunt their conscience, how would they be persuaded to “enjoy” the “comforts of life” the merchants seek to market with great fanfare.
It first happened in Europe where the business monarchs involved in rapid industrialization realised the compelling need to marginalise religion, Christianity was their obvious target. They sought to minimise its influence in the affairs of the state. It had played a vital role in the Crusades. The bishops enjoyed an unchallenged authority and respect in society, which helped them in exerting pressures on the rulers. The kings too needed a moral boost for themselves and many of them feared God. They were therefore usually reluctant to earn displeasure of the religious patriarchs. Any disturbance in their equation with them could loosen the rulers’ grip on the masses. The danger of sedition, constantly, hovered over them. But with the growing fortunes of the industrialists, the monarchs were now better placed to back a campaign for the separation of Church and Establishment, a demand that had been voiced even in the past but without much of a success. The time was now ripe to push ahead as the rulers and the industrialists could now act in tandem. The rift between this-worldliness and otherworldliness led to the emergence of the concept of secularism. Secularism as a movement began at the time of Renaissance and was aimed at directing society from other-worldliness to this-worldliness. It was presented as an ideology that exhibited the development of humanism and the growth of man’s interest in human cultural achievements. It has been in progress during the entire course of modern history and the critics have rightly viewed it as primarily anti-Christian and anti-religion. The clerics resisted the move but their efforts to stall the march of economic fundamentalism in the garb of secularism proved futile. A number of theologians in the second half of the twentieth century made a vain attempt to reconcile Christianity with the demands of the modern life by proposing Secular Christianity meaning that man should find in the secular world the opportunity to promote Christian values. Little they realised that the secular movement was in fact directed against these very values and not against the rituals of that religion. Secularism showed tremendous progress in Christian countries because Christianity did not have an elaborate code of human actions. It had to face greater resistance in Islamic states because Muslims strongly believed that Islam was not just a set of rituals but had an elaborate system for all the affairs of the world. In the process, secularism achieved the remarkable feat of “emancipating” the state from the “clutches” of religion. One European country after the other started adopting secularism. The economic fundamentalists had won a major battle.
The estrangement of Church and Establishment was only one step though extremely crucial towards the goal the economic fundamentalist had set for themselves. They envisaged complete marginalisation of religion and the morality it stood for in the social lives of men and women. They knew it well that even if the state was persuaded to adopt an irreligious approach in socioeconomic matters, the ultimate success lay in the generation of demands for the industrial products. To multiply demands materialism was required to be glorified; and for the rise of materialism religion was the greatest obstacle. This realization was responsible for the sustained tirade against the clergy, and against whatever religion championed for. The problem however was that the faith lorded over the hearts and minds of the people. An outright condemnation of the oracles of religion was attended with dangerous possibilities. It could prove counterproductive as the masses might have reacted in outrage. The clergy might have issued edicts declaring these activities blasphemous and hardly any member of society had the audacity to face the charges of blasphemy or apostasy. His faith in God and scriptures was not weak enough to permit this; he could also face ostracisation. It was therefore considered strategically more expedient and less risky to campaign for privatisation of religion rather than exhibiting open contempt for it. It was argued that faith was an absolutely personal matter and men and women might engage in as many rituals as they liked; but in other arenas, particularly the social, economic and political, the involvement of religion must be shunned and those mixing the two must be condemned, and if needed, adequately punished.
As already stated, campaigns against religion were more successful in Christian countries. In Islamic countries, such movements spearheaded by the westernised elements had to face stiffer resistance, for unlike Christianity, Islam had laid down instructions even for social, econ
omic and political spheres of life. Furthermore, Muslims have shown greater faith in their religion than the followers of other contemporary faiths. Slightest deviation from Shariah usually invited trouble. The rulers in Islamic countries, even if they might be having little piety in themselves, applied Islamic principles in the matters related to law and economics. These difficulties however would not deter the antagonists of religion. A virulent propaganda began against the family and social doctrines of the religion of Muhammed. These started producing results, at least temporarily. The masses in some Muslim countries, especially the elites, were dazed by the pompousness of the Western life. The indifference towards religion grew relatively more in those Muslim countries, which had spells of French or British rule, or where communism had enraptured the imaginations of some segments of society. The outstanding advancement of science and the secular apparel the scientific education was provided with promoted an atheistic temperament. A tiny section of the Muslim intelligentsia