AGORA: the dark history of conquering relegions

As I was told in an introduction of the movie, Agora is the story of the struggle between people who wanted to know more, and the ones who wanted to know less. Agora was the old name of Alexandria, and when the story begins, the pagan religion dominated Agora. Pagans worshipped multiple gods. They had gender equality and the right to question their beliefs. Obviously they are the ones who wanted to know more. They promoted science and philosophy and as a result acquired great wisdom and culture.

It was then that Christianity started flourishing in Agora. When they increased their number, they started hammering their beliefs on pagans. They outnumbered the pagans, killed many and forced the rest to baptise. They also burnt the pagan library which had knowledge the Christians could only dream of achieving at that point of time. That is because the Christians didn’t know if the earth was round or flat. They were blinded by their belief. They interpreted the Holy Scriptures and justified their barbaric behaviour. They killed all the ones who stood against them. Even the Jews were no spared. They stoned the women involved in philosophy and branded them as witches. They showed absolutely uncivilised behaviour.

The story revolves around a lady who was the daughter of the leader of pagans. She figures out that earth and other planets moved around the sun in elliptical orbits; disproving the belief that earth was the centre of the cosmos. Science, philosophy, love, violence, and history have been brilliantly linked to the script.

This movie is highly controversial for a reason. Quite a few reasons actually. We equate culture and civilisation to the west, this movie shows otherwise giving us the not so cultured heritage of the western society. This iconoclastic work of art shatters our misconceptions on western culture.

Even though this may just be a story, I found no results on paganism in my encyclopaedia and the dictionary defined pagan as godless. Ironically, the Christians abused pagans for worshipping multiple gods. Even the very MS WORD on which I am typing now wants Christian to start with a capital C but don’t want paganism to start with a capital P. According to what I found on the net, this story has bulk of truth in it.

People killing in the name of religion wounded my emotions and this film invoked deep thoughts in me. I would recommend this movie to all people who wish to have their mindset corrected.

NEED FOR A REVOLUTION

Our current educational system was created by our ex colonial masters to create clerks and civil servants. Little has changed since then, as I among many Indian students as scapegoats of this system prepares to crack the JEE or NEET. The only change that happened after 100 years is that JEE and NEET has replaced bank tests and civil service exams. This system has sunk into inertia. India was ranked 48^th in the 48 countries that participated in a U21 survey analysing the quality of education. Allowing more colleges to mushroom will not do the trick as we have enough colleges already.

All Indian students are part of “the great Indian educational rat race”, an unrealistic, mindless and ruthless crusade for a pointless cause. Indians spend their life`s savings on education because they believe education is they way to climb up the social and economic ladder. Yet, many students struggle to find a career of their choice. Many bright young minds are even driven into suicide due to peer pressure.

This system crushes creativity and imagination of our youth. Here, the best crammers are rewarded. No one can remember the crammed knowledge after the semester. Risk taking is mocked. Creativity and talent is rarely considered. We have to correct this fundamental flaw in our system and understand that memorising is not learning. We have to focus on skill based education. If you give a man a fish, you give him food for a day. But If you teach him how to fish, you give him food for his life. Skill, unlike knowledge is less likely to be forgotten. That ironically is what was followed exactly in our gurukulas. The students were driven by their interest in curiosity and the teachers were saints, the enlightened ones. It would be unrealistic if I said that we have to go back to those ways. So I won’t. But we can use their ideas as a source of inspiration.

“Guru” literally means enemy of light. A teacher is supposed to lead his pupil from darkness to the light of wisdom. “Gurur brahma gurur vishnum guru devo maheswara, gurur sakshaal parabhrahma  thasmayi sree guruve nama”. That is a story of a really distant past. Now, teaching is considered as a safe, well paying and risk free job. Stupid teachers waste the precious time of students all over India. Get smarter people to teach! End of story.

We don’t need Babus and pen pushers. Nor do we need engineers. We have the most number of engineering graduates. But where is the technological revolution? Where are the innovations? Oops! They are busy running call centres. We need great entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, artists, thinkers and writers. They can make us a knowledge based economy than a low quality service providing nation. The Indian youth demands a REVOLUTION......