I WAS stunned to see a television serial recently, which suggested there was something wrong about our way of life. Ours is not just a religion but a way of life, where heaven and earth are in perfect harmony. It’s time that the world woke up to the fact that we require a Hindu parliament, a body on the lines of the church. We need such a body because the people of our nation have already started forgetting the true sanctity and knowledge imparted by our religion over the ages, accepting the fictionalised accounts given by films and television serials as reality. These accounts endanger our age-old traditions and knowledge set for our society by our religion. This is the time for all the learned and respected people of our nation to come together under one body called the Hindu parliament. Though in reality it would be a purely Hindu body, in essence it would be secular as we Hindus have come to accept other religions to be no different from ours.

To demonstrate this, I will share an anecdote. Three soldiers were returning by train from the war front. The captain sahib was an English captain, definitely a Christian, and the two sepoys’ with him were Muslim and Hindu. The journey was long and they were all sitting in the third class cabin. The Indian heat in summers is like our warm hospitality, slightly in excess. It was close to 47 degree Celsius in the day and everything shimmered in the heat wave.

The Hindu folded his hands towards any religious monument which they passed by in the moving train, The captain only made the sign of the cross when passing the church and the Muslim only to the mosque or durgah. The Captain noticed it and smiled at his sepoy. The Muslim remarked jokingly, “Sir, they lack confidence in their religion hence they bow towards all that is ours and yours, but we are satisfied by what is ours and do not need to bow towards theirs”.

The Hindu sepoy replied,"Sir, for us Hindus all religions are sacred and are just ways or paths chosen by god for humanity depending upon the best way suited for a man to reach his abode. He designed the ways for man according to the place of his birth, the nature and circumstances surrounding him. We are nobody to challenge his supreme will, but to cherish and love all his ways. We cannot make god small or limited by confining him to one religion or sect alone. We need to free our minds to accept him as all-pervading. Certainly sahib, god should be seen in everything." Soon the other passengers saw all three bowing to every religious monument that they passed by.

There are many TV serials being aired today with fictitious religious stories. I was aghast to see one of the serials showing a modern man meeting the goddess and other gods. The problem here lies with the fact that this is not a one-off occurrence. Other serials also follow suit after one acquires this formula and reality is distorted with this fiction in no time. Simple people confuse these stories with reality. The stories of these serials are taken as reality despite the mandatory notice at the beginning from the censor board. This gives rise to falsehoods and leads to conflicts of ideas and confrontations with reality hence finishing/endangering the true essence of Hinduism itself in the melee of confusion, chaos and destruction.

All beneficiaries of such fiction end up as a corrupt politician at the end of such trysts.