"What is ‘Religion’ for you?"
It is believed that art and religion are opposite to each other. But I find both similar. When I was in
college, one of my former teacher spoke one sentence while teaching us, “either
a person follows religion or an art.” It means every person can follow one of
them, not both. I have nothing new to say accept expanding, describing this
idea.
People, who have not eye of beauty or an art they follow religion. To believe and follow religion is easier because right from the birth it is taught to us. It is not needed to say that, religion is way of living. Through the rituals, way of worshiping, Pooja, Archana, we expresses our different emotions. A person always needs a stand to live a life; he needs support, when he is in happiness or in misery. In every situation religion becomes that support for a person. We cannot imagine the life without this support.
But some people have a vision of beauty, they engaged with art. As art is also way of living, expression of emotions and it also can be support to person’s every situation. If a person follows art, there is no need to follow religion. The elements in art are similar to religious elements. Surrendering, worshiping, expressing our emotions while engaging with art. As T. S. Eliot says,
“…A continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
As religious person surrenders and worships God or his devotee,
artist also does the same. Even artist also suffers bodily pain as religious
man does ‘Upvas’ while engaging with creative activity.
These things are similar in both; we can easily find beauty also in both as religion is also artistic and art is religious. Like in some rituals, we sing song or make Rangoli etc. (For more reading....read this...)
So, religion and art for a man are similar. The question raises then, who made them opposite? We cannot blame religion because it is only abstract idea but we can say that majority of human kind following religion. So, it may be corrupted. It is this corruption that forces others to follow religion. But artists are very free, aesthetic persons, they believe in freedom not boundaries. And as they follow art, they can never follow religion. We can find most of artist atheists, not strong believer of religion.
As others have not artistic eye, for an artist they become anti-art and because of some follies, religion becomes bounded instead of open and considering art –artist bad, immoral, impure activity. Because they cannot see that art is part of life. Thus, it becomes anti-art and art becomes anti-religion as it does not allow to be bounded, to be forced. Otherwise, never a mankind can separate them as they are two sides of coin.
