A world without religion

I was having a casual chat over the phone with my friend one day and somehow that discussion got into the relevance of caste and religion. Do we require religion? I know that non-believers in God will definitely answer in the negative. However, I wonder why believers in God should answer in the affirmative. If God is a creator and if he does not have a beginning or an end then, why do we require religion to keep Him alive?

Do I need to be a Hindu to believe in Lord Krishna and to read the Bhagwad Gita? Does someone else have to be a Christian in order to worship Jesus Christ and to read the bible? I am not against temples and churches. They may exist but do we need to have a tag associated with us to differentiate us. Even our governments want us to have a religion associated with our identity. Especially in India we let the caste factor to play a big role in our identity too. I do not understand how we can eradicate the caste system when even our governments want to distinguish us based on our caste.

I would like to see a world without religion and caste. I am a believer in God but do not think that to believe in Him we need to be identified with a religion. I do visit temples but then my point is not about worshipping God in a particular way. I am only saying that we need not get identified as a Hindu, Muslim or Christian. On paper when we write that we belong to a particular religion we start to divide ourselves. Any human being who belongs to any religion comes into this world in the same manner and he exits the world like everyone else does. We all get hurt when someone does anything bad to us and we all feel good when someone does anything good to us. The natural calamities that affect us do not segregate people based on religion. It causes loss to all of us irrespective of our religion. Then why we as humans are hell bent on creating that distinction.

I would like to see a new option to enter in the field for religion and that would be “Believer – but no religion”. Again I would like to stress upon the fact that I only wish to see a world where we atleast have an option to exclude ourselves from being identified with a particular religion. Especially, when it comes to marriages where the guy and the girl are from different religion. The pressure to opt for a particular religion is one of the prime reasons that issues crop up in such marriages. Also, when a baby is born in such families the religion that he/she should follow becomes a major issue.

I am sure what I am suggesting here is a debatable point. It may not go down well with many. However, I think if we look back and reflect, all major issues we are facing today have their roots in our obsession with religion. In our efforts to identify ourselves with a particular religion we have ceased to be human.