Delhi’s affair with religion

Conflict (noun) ~ Fight, battle, war; especially a prolonged struggle;

Religion (noun) ~ The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods;

Delhi (Union Territory) ~ A city of north-central India, on the Yamuna River.

Delhi has been home to and the capital of a large number of kingdoms and empires, giving birth to some of the longest-lasting dynasties. It is ancient in the sense that old relics have often assumed the city to be the site of Indraprastha, the fabled capital of Pandavas in the classic Mahabharata. The oldest relics recollect stories of Delhi having been seized, plundered, and rebuilt a thousand times over by the likes of the Mauryans, the Chauhans, the Turkics, the Khilji dynasty, the Timurid empire, the Mughals, and the British.

And so Delhi has also been the cradle for more number of faiths than what any other worldly city has ever seen.

Being the city of traversing cultures, then, Delhi has also borne witness to the conflicts that have more than often accompanied multiple religions.

What follows is a rendition of what I’ve always felt about the idea of religion and conflict, about why man can stand no opposition to his ideals, about how man’s downfall will always be in the hands of competing faiths,

That was not to be

Cruelty, they say, was never taught.

Knives were honed, flesh torn;

But no broken spirits were fought;

‘A callous spectacle’, was of routine,

The universe is intense, another extreme;

A howl, a grasp, on the veal tenders,

But there’s never, an evil ambition.

Wit was born, and so did prayer;

The crossed moon, chanting hymns;

Leaves were engraved and there was one,

A sleeping room of naked austere.

The regal wrote about horses and towers,

Of noble men and the fallen cons;

About accession, the proper, and saviours,

Of sins, of denial, and of untrue cowards;

There came too, then, battle of truths,

Was the cross, the higher, or the moon?

Faith, they say, was badgered this day,

And cruelty was borne of nowhere.

Soon was borne the allegory disorder,

The fall of the wits and the sensibilities of men;

Invisibility was binding, the true absolution;

And all men led into it, horrid, but blindly.

Wonder at the marvel, that existence had been;

The theory of convinced uncertainties;

A mere order or the hand of one of the lords,

A question, a massacre of human peace.