The right not to pray

Recently I read in a Sri Lankan newspaper (The Island) that a fourteen-year-old Tamil boy in a school at Jaffna in Sri Lanka refused to pray. His rationale behind this unusual defiance was: School has no right to force a student to pray as prayer is a sign of submission to a god who did not exist.

Hats off to the courage of conviction of a 14-year-old boy, who has realized at such an early age that this practice of prayers is nothing but an attempt to make one submissive to non-existent 'divine' forces. This is indeed a kind of systematic indoctrination of impressionable minds to go through the rigmarole of boring prayers.

Why can't children skip prayers, if they're indisposed to pray? "Society is always scared of non-believers. So, there're constant endeavours to arrest the young minds and yoke them to a rigid format of prayers and worship right from their childhood days. This is blatant 'religious baptism.' Schools all over the world must provide a completely non-spiritual platform to their students and leave religiosity for them to explore on their own if at all they ( students) don't lose interest in god and religion when they grow up," opined the radical ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq of Pakistan.

A school is a centre of learning. It's not a seminary, madrasa, or a gurukul, where one goes to drink a dose of subtle religious venom. Moreover, the efficacy of prayers is being fiercely debated. Does it really work and contribute to the betterment and evolution of an individual? Prayer, like meditation, is a humbug. Philosophy department of Calcutta University and Tuft University in the States jointly conducted a survey in the late seventies to find the effectiveness of prayers. It was found that the cased of 'miraculous recovery' through prayers needed scrutiny as many were hyped.

They found many cases in which prayers failed to make any impact whatsoever. Man's an insecure being and a hopelessly irrational creature. He prays because he thinks that it'll help mitigate his sufferings. He never realizes suffering subside on its own. It's not, but then if some myths and illusions help rudderless people survive, I don't think I should cast aspersions on them.