Growing up in a devout Hindu immigrant family, I attended a Pilleyar (Ganesha) temple with my family frequently. We also prayed each evening before dinner, in our curtained prayer space, to the deities of relevance to us.
I was taught that the deities we prayed to were manifestations of the one and only God of mankind, who is unknowable, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent; and who (hopefully) may intervene in our lives at crucial times. Hence the prayers and (as I see it) the appeasements through rituals. We lived our faith, while we reached out to our Creator. I do not remember being taught to blame God for any mishap in our lives.
As we survived in a territory away from our homeland, we were surrounded by significant numbers of diverse mainly-immigrant ethno-cultural populations. Both host people (Muslim Malays) and immigrants from a variety of Asian lands co-existed harmoniously, accepting that we were on different paths, but with the same objective, to the same end. Only white Christian missionaries, collecting souls for Christ, introduced some dissonance.
Yet, the diverse Christian sects within our tribal community were integrated with the rest of us. That is, both within and beyond our people, there was mutual respect, while the families socialised. Faith in God, expressed through a range of religious beliefs, sustained us.
The reality of Earthly existence is that, in most parts of the world (including the UA), life is hard, if not precarious, for the bulk of us. Most of us need a belief in available cosmic succour. We need to pray in hope that hardship can be minimised, if not avoided. We need to pray when things go wrong in our lives. We will pray while we are being submerged by forces beyond control or amelioration. What else can we do?
Disasters are a fact of life, and a test of faith. Can mankind survive without faith? The well-fed may feel so. Church attendances in Australia so suggest.
On this rocky orb spinning through space, accompanied by fellow space objects small and horrendously huge, and flooded and flushed by cosmic radiation, … … …
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 