(Sabahat Kazmi)
Belief system has been with us since the start of civilization and just for as long religion has been a source of incalculable joy and challenges. We all know that human being is a social animal and nobody can deny that human creation includes logic, mathematics, philosophy, science and jurisprudence and these are all the products of rationality. There is no harm to say that this world is very indifferent and our belief systems provide us the stories shared with that can be good or bad, but discriminations on the basis of religions and false faiths can mask the humanity as well, which is not acceptable by the modern evolution of mankind.
Maharani Raj Rajeshwari Devi was one of the most powerful women of history, and married to King Rana Bahadur Shah of Nepal, she served not only Nepal Queen consort but also as regent for her young son. After the death of her husband. On May 5, 1806, Maharani was forced to SATTI on the orders of BhimsenThapa. At a time when women around the world were egregiously undervalued, widows in Nepal and India had it worst. In an ancient ritual called SATTI, a woman was bound to her husband’s funeral pyre and put to rest with him. Over the centuries many women met their death this way, some voluntarily, with the meagre compensation of being subsequently honoured and declared holy martyrs, and many were burned not by choice.
Finally, in 1931, Mahatma Gandhi spoke out after a Satti incident, remarking that perhaps husbands should prove their devotion to their wives in the same way. Due to the lack of reciprocity, he went on to declare that ‘Satti had its origin in superstitions ignorance and blind egotism of man.”
There is one more episode in the prolonged epic of miscarried justice and poisonous anti-Semitism. Alfred Dreyfus was a weaponry captain of the Jewish Descent attached to the French General Staff, had been court martialed and convicted of treason based on manufactured evidence of passing military secrets to Germans. On January 5,1895, he was marched into the center of the Ecole Militaire Courtyard and humiliated before the stands of distinguished guests.
“Soldiers…I am innocent, I swear that I am innocent. Remain worthy of serving in the Army, LONG LIVE FRANCE,” Dreyfus called to his comrades. Ignoring his protests, the guards stripped Dreyfus uniform, braids and epaulets, then broke his saber, the ceremony ended with a parade of shame in which Dreyfus was forced to walk before a howling crowd. After five years imprisoned on Devil’s Island, in1896, evidence was disclosed that French Major Ferdinand Ester, the lazy, was the guilty party. Army tried to suppress this information, but national uproar ensued and military had no choice and put French Major on trial. In 1898, Major Hubert Henry admitted that he had forged so much against Dreyfus and committed suicide, in 1906, while the Supreme Court gave its decision in favour of Dreyfus. The debacle of Dreyfus brought great liberalisation in France and reduction in the power of military and the formal separation of church and the state, many more years struggling to rehabilitate his good name, Dreyfus was officially exonerated.
Francis I was the king of France from 1515 to 1547, and his reign was dominated by the spread of absolute monarchy and Protestantism and he continued the expansion of foreign policies of his predecessors. He was the first king of France to be called “Your Majesty.” Francis attitude towards the growth of Protestantism and foreign policies was great and that made him less anxious to persecute religious reformers and innovators, he favoured some religious innovations and this made him the worst king despite all the bestsschemes, his reign was a mixture of success and failure. Under the influence of his beloved sister Marguerite de Navarre who was the greatest follower of Martin Luther preaching and writing, Francis I used it on political basis and suggested that he convene a church council in which catholic and protestant rulers would have an equal vote to settle down the differences. This offer was rejected by the Pope and Charles v and this caused a movement against Francis I. On January 13,1535, placards appeared all over Paris denouncing the Roman mass, the initial incident happened on October 17,1534 what is known as the AFFAIR OF THE PLACARDS in history. One of the pamphlet was posted on the door of King Francis I’s bedchamber in a breach of security that shook the King. These placards were about the denial of cardinals, bishops, priests and monks and all of them were called hypocrites and servants of antichrist.
Francis offered a large reward for the perpetrators names and several reputed heretics were rounded up in that Affair.
On Jan 21,1535 a massive Catholic Procession was held in Paris, one of the largest the capital had ever seen, at the end was funeral pyre. The king, the rest of the royalty and Catholic hierarchy all sat in attendance before the pyre, the 6 heretics marched barefooted, bareheaded and caught sight over the swinging seats designed by King Francis1, they were chained and dipped over the lambent flames 25 times, it was a spectacle, an atrocious spectacle, well worthy of a King. There were so many subsequent burnings that even the anti-Reformation. Pope Paul 3 ordered Francis 1 to desist from such cruelty, it was highly cruel and ultra-fundamentalist belief of the history.
Let’s have a look on the BONFIRE of the Vanities
On Feb 7,1497, all the fun to be had in Florence went up in the flames known as Bonfire of the Vanities. In a religious effort to rid the city of its sinful preoccupation with luxury, beauty and entertainment, the obsessive Dominican Priest Friar Girolamo Savonarola who effectively ruled the republic after the Medici were temporarily driven out -forced Florentine to submit their most precious objects to a massive pyre erected at the Piazza Della Sighoria as an act of cleansing souls and rejection of the worldly pleasures. And history saw theheaped onto the structures were irreplaceable paintings, books by Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccioluxuriousclothing, tapestries, musicalinstruments and thousands of other beloved possessions. Everything burned as the monk’s followers celebrated the religious cleansing, dancing around the massive fire. A year later, Pope condemned Savonarola as a heretic and entrusted him to the flames at the same public square.
One must understand that our beliefs are the structures of norms that are interrelated and vary mainly in the degree in which they are organized. Corrupt leaders, blind maltreatment because of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or social statuses are as old as our history and affect the people around the world. And yet through the cycle of fear, destruction and imbalance, faith prevails in whatever form it takes.