Michael Vaz
All free thinkers will never refute that our tryst with religion is primarily through coincidence of birth. It is purely through chance that I am a Christian and I can assert that I could have been born in a Hindu or a Muslim family and would have inherited that religion. It is as simple an occurrence as that! In this context we dread to analyse why people down the annals of time have failed to acknowledge this simple fact and on the contrary spared no occasion to profess the superiority of their faith and tried to target the other community on some pretext or the other.
Just peep into the kabrastan issue that has been afflicting our Muslim brethren since decades. Let me begin by saying that I do not attach importance to issues like life after death, rebirth or resurrection. What matters to me as a human being is that after my death my mortal remains should be disposed off; may be confined to the flames or buried and to do that there is need of an area for the dead to be laid to rest.
Have a look at the countless cemeteries and crematoriums that we see around in the different towns and villages of Goa to facilitate the last rites of the Christian and Hindu communities. I doubt whether there was any opposition for setting up of these areas for resting their dead. Why should there be such endless opposition for allotting space for the kabrasran for burying the dead of the Muslim community?
Whenever any land is identified there is opposition from some group or the other. The land earmarked at Sonsoddo is also withheld with the Christian community opposing the move unceasingly. Recently even the Church had advised these people to be compassionate and withdraw their opposition on humanitarian ground, for after all it is a human necessity to lay the dead to rest.
What is to be done then? Can the government stop acting like a paper tiger and take some stern action to silence the agitators in view of the most sensitive nature of the problem? Why only the said community face the hardships just because they are a minority? That is the saddest derivative of religion – the majority community wielding its dominion over the minority.
