Masters, Followers and Truths

A seeker of truth discovers that representatives of religion have the power to use and abuse its divinity to fulfill their individually distorted needs,  a short story by RANI JHALA. 

Five years ago Niki began her research on cults, religious organizations and spiritual heads, and their relevance to our present century. It took her over three years to travel the globe and interview hundreds and hundreds of people. She inked thousands of pages and punched millions of keys before she handed in her end product. By then her document had changed in subject matter and direction. She titled it Masters, Followers and Truths.

The day she handed in her project papers, Niki also said goodbye to blind faith or devotion to any man or woman who represented her God. As she had conducted case study after case study, she realised her truth lay in a different direction. It had not mattered which religion she looked at, there it was – abuse!

Caning was common, beatings even more so. Heartbroken, Niki learnt that even today, children are shackled until they learn their religious doctrines. Food was a reward for learning, instead of being the natural right of a child to nourishment. Infants were terrorised to enforce obedience.  And most of all, sexual abuse of minors by religious heads was rampant in all faiths. Silence was either enforced by fear or bought with compensation.

Niki remembered the first person she spoke to, and gave her the pseudo name of ‘Alpha’. Alpha was childless and desperate for a family. Seeking a spiritual solution she landed in a spiritualist centre reputed to be a haven for the unfulfilled. It beckoned the hopeful with promise of miracles and lured the seeker with serenity and peace.  Only Alpha knew how the miracle was achieved. Drugged and raped she returned to fulfill her family’s expectations, and months later handed over her first born into the arms of her husband. Each day she lived in fear and her trauma was misunderstood for ‘post natal depression’. When a year later a car accident took her husband and baby from her she wept in sorrow, but she also sighed with relief. It took her years to overcome the horror and now, as a release from that pain, she now runs a refuge for women in similar situations.

At that refuge Niki met two sisters. The elder had been raped by another ‘representative’. She had borne the abuse in silence until her younger sister was targetted by the man. In their case they had reported the matter to the police, but the case was thrown out of court on grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’. The price they paid for their courage was the shame they were made to suffer.

Beta was seven when the police rescued him from a farm. Twenty children were found shackled together in what was a regular form of punishment. If even one child made an error in reciting the verses of ‘the book’, all of them received the cane and then they were shackled together in a darkened room until they became phrase-perfect. Their parents had been refused temporary access to the children in the name of spiritual growth. It was lucky that one parent sensed something wrong and contacted the authorities.

Gamma was a child molested by a priest. He confirmed from his conversations with other children, that abuse of boys and girls both physically and sexually was still prevalent. Compensation mounted to heavy costs, and was paid for from donations collected. Gamma too received his monetary compensation, but still wonders how it will erase the horror of his suffering. Now an adult, he has given up on institutionalised religions.

In between Gamma and Niki’s last case, she met literally hundreds who had also suffered in the name of religion – pinched ears for whispering prayers instead of proclaiming them loudly; scraped knees from hours of crawling in an attempt to compel obedience; shaved heads as an act of penance; scarred backs from the lash of ropes. Children with blackened eyes from the back hand of an angry priest; hundreds of pages repeating the words ‘I have sinned’ written in the hand of a five year old, and millions accepted in the form of donations. The one common factor was that every religion punished with ostracism, those that dared to question.

Niki’s last case study was Omega. Born into a spiritual family, he had been promised to the institution by his devout parents. From birth he attended prayers and was kept from associating with local children. By the age of nine he had mastered a quarter of the family’s holy book. Then as a teenager, he was drawn to music and excelled in it. But when the music commitments clashed with his religious obligations, he was told to give up music. For a while he continued to teach himself through books and tapes, until he was caught with them. That day he was asked to choose between his religion and his music. He left his little town and moved to the city where he lived with his aunt. He took with him his God, along with his talent in music.

As a child Niki had read books like Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist, and put them away as works of fiction. But here, amidst her notes and taped recordings, she was disheartened to admit that every form of abuse still existed and no country in the world was immune to its grip.

Niki ended her report with the following recommendation: ‘There should be no need for any ‘spiritual leader’ to be alone with their followers. Confessions can be heard in glassed cubicles; prayers can be taught in open rooms; healing can be done with people present; miracles can be performed in public view.’

At the end of her personal journey, Niki found that her own beliefs had remained unchanged. Her ‘God’ still resided in His exalted position; it is only the power of His representatives that had now come into question. Between Alpha (the beginning) and Omega (the end), Niki also found her truth – that her conscience was her only true guide. It is the friend who could show her right from wrong. It is an angel who would lead her on the true path. It is the contact between her and the divine. All any religion should ever ask of her, is to surrender to its silence and listen.