Where is God?

What is god? I am not the first person, nor the last one to ask this question. I don’t know any persuasive answer either! Apart from the philosophical jargon, I intend to connect the very concept of higher power to the reality.

My point of view is strictly Hindu philosophical based. I don’t think Son of God needs to descent on earth to tell humans ‘thou shall not steal’ nor do I believe that messenger of god can ever marry and have a child from a nine year old girl. The best definition – succinctly postulated by Shri Dr. Radhakrishnan - is there is no exact definition because it’s a supreme energy that pervades everywhere and has ability to manifest through everything. We humans –bound by the three dimensional physical world and time bound mindset – can just try to comprehend the concept in idol form. But sticking to the philosophical definition raises one important question. With supreme Shakti encompassing whole universe, is it possible for that Shakti to take care of human affairs?

To read about Islamic conquest of India was one of the most depressing experience in 24 years of my existence on the earth. The sheer inhumanness of the conquest, the extreme barbarous nature of the Islamic invaders and Islam as a religion and mindless violence it unleashed is something beyond my belief. It is also sick to see Muslim people constantly mentioning their religion as a religion of peace. It is something beyond my comprehension.

But, the more I think of genocide carried by these Muslim invaders, it raises more question in my mind about the Hindu philosophy. If there is indeed justice in this world and if there is certain higher power that looks after us then why on earth it allowed such a primitive and hideous cult lto take over half of the known world and massacre and subjugate half of its population? Where was God at that time? Too busy ? Millions of people were slaughtered mercilessly, millions of people were dehumanized and sold in the market like commodities. Thousands of temples were leveled off and host of eminent academic institution were burnt. And it was not about imposing superior structure but it was pure hunger to destroy everything that is superior and replace it with extremely primordial belief system. How did it happen? Is it just part of the cycle that society work hard to build a civilization, which then destroyed by Huns ?

If we are to question the very existence of God, then such a bloody history is more than enough to answer it in negativity.

I tried to find answers in Gita but I couldn’t find solace. It seems that in larger scheme of time such incidences are blips. In one form or another they have occurred before and will continue to occur in the future. It’s basically like building house of cards. No matter how elaborate you build the house, it falls quickly and the game begins a new.

For me it seems more of lame excuse than answering the reality. The kind of religious ferocity that emitted from Arabia doesn’t even fit our standard defintion of ‘Asura’ or 'Rakshasa. The destruction they unleashed is on such a high scale that the Hindus seems to have cocooned themselves from discussing such massacres. The wounds are too deep to heal even after thousand years. But we have to face the reality. I know 'let bygons be bygons'. But the history is repeating, albeit in smaller scale and the actors are nations states like Pakistan and Bangladesh. And in order face them we have to comprehend the loss of heritage, loss of culture and massacre of our history.We have to refurbish our definition of God, we have to rediscover them.