I grew up surrounded by religion. Morning prayers filled school halls, temple loudspeakers boomed devotional songs during exam week, and family chanting marked every meal. I didn’t need to seek it out; religion was woven into my daily life. Festivals, rituals, anxieties, and even everyday language were infused with God. And yet the thing that should have been most obvious, if God was truly everywhere, was kindness.

In India, faith is marketed as peace. In practice, faith often functions like a border. It defines who is pure and who is polluted. It determines whose touch is acceptable and whose existence is inconvenient. I remember listening to people talk about compassion and divinity while they refused a man water because of the caste he was born into. Religion became the language of cruelty, and when cruelty was framed as sacred, responsibility disappeared.

James Baldwin wrote: “If the concept of God has any validity, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving.” But growing up, I witnessed the opposite. I watched religion make people smaller. I watched it diminish empathy and restrict curiosity. I watched it limit a person’s ability to see another human being without first checking if they passed the test of moral purity.

Hinduism, the faith I was born into, teaches truth and liberation. Yet I saw it enforce hierarchy more efficiently than any law. I saw mothers warn their children not to play with certain kids because of their last names. I saw people wipe down objects that had been touched by someone considered “impure”. When I asked why, the answer was always the same: “That is just how it is”, as though prejudice were cultural heritage. Arundhati Roy wrote: “Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.” Once I saw how religion justified inequality, I could not return to ignorance.

Eventually, I realized something uncomfortable. The issue was never just Hinduism. Every religion claims liberation. Every society learns how to twist it into obedience. Christianity teaches forgiveness; yet in North America, churches fund agendas that restrict abortion and queer rights. Islam means peace; yet in Iran, women are arrested for revealing their hair. Judaism speaks of community; yet in Israel, scripture is used to justify occupation and bombardment. Buddhism teaches non-violence; yet in Myanmar, Buddhist nationalists participated in ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. Every religion contains teachings on compassion. The violence comes from those who believe they own the truth.

When Faith and Power Merge, Thinking Becomes Dangerous

The most disturbing thing is how quickly faith becomes politics. In India today, religion is a campaign strategy. Politicians do not need policy; they simply need a deity and a microphone. According to Reuters, anti-minority hate speech increased by 74 percent in 2024, with more than 1,165 documented incidents, many from elected officials. Adults speak about Muslims as if they are an invasive species, repeating claims like “They have too many children; they are trying to take over” despite never having met a Muslim themselves. These statements are not lived experience. They are propaganda.

Frantz Fanon wrote: “When we revolt, it is not for a particular culture. We revolt because we can no longer breathe.” That sentence stayed with me. It describes what it feels like when religion and nationalism merge into one suffocating identity. When belief becomes identity, questioning faith becomes betrayal. And when questions end, violence becomes easy.

Religion Teaches Fear Before It Teaches Love

In July of 2024, a video from Ghaziabad showed a Bajrang Dal worker stopping a Blinkit delivery driver because he was transporting meat during the Hindu month of Shravan. He demanded to inspect the delivery bag, questioned the driver’s religion, and insisted on calling the customer to ask why she was ordering meat “as a Hindu”. When the customer revealed she was a Christian, he told her Christians were “worse than Muslims” and accused her community of converting Hindus. Days later, he posted a video claiming that Blinkit and other delivery apps had agreed to stop meat deliveries during the month.

The activist, Manoj Verma, told journalists he was “saving Sanatan Dharma” and that his actions aligned with the ideals of the ruling party. He was detained briefly for intimidation and released within forty-eight hours, without any charges related to hate speech.

This is how religious devotion transforms into moral policing. A personal fasting practice becomes an enforcement mechanism. One individual’s belief becomes justification to control the private choices of strangers. When faith turns into authority, autonomy disappears.

I cannot recall the first time someone told me God loved me, but I remember the first time I was taught to fear Him. Before I learned love, I learned obedience. Before I learned morality, I learned consequence. Children are taught to fear hell long before they know what the world looks like. Girls learn shame before they learn science. Boys learn that crying is weakness before they have the language to describe pain. Faith shifts from a doorway to a threat: believe or suffer, obey or lose everything.

Between 2014 and 2018, India recorded 87 mob lynchings, nearly half involving Muslim victims accused of slaughtering cows. Some killings were recorded on video. Crowds chanted religious slogans while a man begged for water. Fear did not create kindness. Fear created obedience.

Religion Has Had Thousands of Years to Make Humans Kinder. It Has Not.

If prayer alone could create peace, humanity would not have centuries of violence carried out in the name of God. The Crusades wiped out entire cities under the belief that killing was an act of holy duty. The Spanish Inquisition tortured and executed people for thinking differently. The caste system in India dictated whose touch was considered “pollution”, determining access to dignity and basic human interaction. In Europe, women accused of witchcraft were burned alive not because they posed a threat, but because religion permitted men to eliminate what they feared.

This pattern has not disappeared. In modern India, men are beaten to death over rumours of beef consumption. In Nigeria, nearly 5,000 Christians were killed in 2023 by extremist militias. In Pakistan, accusations of blasphemy often lead to public lynchings without trial. In the United States, Christian nationalism is used to justify anti-LBGTQ laws, abortion bans, and rising hate crimes. Across countries and across faith traditions, one truth is constant: people do not commit violence because God asked them to. Violence becomes possible when religion shields perpetrators from accountability. Once someone claims that “God wants this”, responsibility disappears. Once someone claims that “God commands this”, cruelty becomes moral.

I am not afraid of religion. I am afraid of people who believe they possess an unquestionable truth. Certainty is the death of curiosity. The moment a person insists that only their God is real, thinking stops. The moment a person insists that only their scripture is correct, empathy disappears. Certainty closes the mind, and doubt becomes rebellion, even when doubt is the beginning of understanding.

Every major reform, every movement for human rights, every expansion of freedom throughout history was led by people who refused to accept certainty. Progress is not the product of obedience. Progress is the product of questioning. Arun Gandhi once wrote that anger is like electricity, because it has the potential to destroy or illuminate. Religion holds the same power. It can illuminate a life, or it can electrify a nation into destruction.

Faith Should Elevate Humanity, Not Police It

Belief should never demand silence. Yet around the world, religion is used to punish those who step outside approved boundaries. In Iran, women are detained and beaten for showing their hair. In Pakistan, a rumour of blasphemy can lead to a lynching without trial. In India, men are dragged out of buses and beaten to death simply because someone suspected they ate beef. In the United States, politicians cite scripture while restricting reproductive and queer rights.

None of these actions are about God. They are about power.

Faith should be a refuge, not a courtroom. A belief system that demands silence in the face of injustice does not reflect faith; it reflects complicity. When protecting religious image matters more than protecting human life, religion stops being sacred and becomes authoritarian. Belief should evolve as society evolves. Faith should not freeze us into old hierarchies simply because those hierarchies once had divine approval.

Compassion should be the highest doctrine. A belief rooted in humanity protects the hungry before protecting institutions. It protects bodies before rules. It stands with the vulnerable rather than the powerful. Religion that cannot coexist with dignity is not divine. It is insecurity dressed in holiness.

Arundhati Roy said, “There is no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced”. A faith that demands silence while cruelty unfolds does not lead you to goodness. It trains you to disappear.

If faith is truly powerful, it will survive open questions. If truth is truly sacred, it does not need violence to defend itself. We do not need faith that tells people what to fear; we need faith that teaches people how to care. We do not need a belief that draws borders; we need a belief that dissolves them. We do not need more defenders of God; we need more defenders of each other. A faith that shrinks your world, weakens your empathy, and limits your capacity to love does not elevate humanity; it confines it.

Belief should never punish curiosity. It should flourish because of it. Faith is not meant to be a cage. A God worth worshipping would never prefer obedience over compassion. In the end, the holiest act a human can commit is not prayer: it is kindness.