CHILD ABUSE BY RELIGIONS Innaiah Narisetti Ph.D. Children too are human beings “The children are ours; we thrash them or kill them; who are you to poke your nose?”, flare up some parents in righteous indignation. some assert that they have to catch them (children) young and fashion them the way they want. “After all, you can train a plant but not a tree”. some others swear by the dictum, “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. Most parents regard their children as their property. They believe that the more the number of children, the better off they are. A child has not only a mouth but also two earning hands. There are parents who honestly feel that children should follow them in thought, word and deed, subscribe to and live according to their religious beliefs and customs. For children, parents constitute their universe. Parent-speech is, therefore, sacrosanct and inviolable. against this backdrop, religions go out of their way to lure children. Over the ages, a religious dimension has been added to every aspect of life, beginning with the naming of the baby soon after birth. Parents feel it is their duty to abide by religious customs, traditions and rituals. This, in turn, assures livelihood to the priestly class. Priests encourage parents to bring along their children to places of worship. Parents fall in line as they think temple visits help children develop faith in God and follow ethical conduct. Children are thus controlled right from their birth in all countries and in all religions. Children are neither born into religion nor aware of what religion is. Yet, the religion of their parents is attributed to them. By the time they start talking and writing, they name their religion. Thus steeped in religion from childhood, most find it difficult to climb out of it later on in life. Parents indoctrinate their children not merely on the virtues of their own religion. They warn them against embracing other religions or following their customs and beliefs. The seeds of hatred against other religions are sown directly or indirectly in children’s impressionable minds. Children brought up in such an environment cannot shed the ingrained religious influence even when they blossom into scientists or technologists. Education helps them carve out their careers even as they practice religion. They do not apply the scientific temperament acquired in education to religion. Before you believe in anything, science demands that it be subjected to an inquiry, analysis and proof. If something cannot be proved, it should not be blindly believed. But the educated exclude religion from such scientific scrutiny. One thus gets mired in religious beliefs. When there is a conflict between religion and science, people follow religion, giving the go-by to science. Religion has thus become an eternal and insurmountable barrier to humankind’s progress and development. Parents have remained mute spectators to religions’ abuse of children. Although the civilized world occasionally is amazed, it has by and large kept quiet, afraid of taking religion head on. There are individuals here and there who have criticized children’s abuse. But society in general has turned a deaf ear or ostracized some as atheists. The silver lining in the dark horizon is that at long last, the United Nations has taken cognizance of religious perversities. It convened a global conference and facilitated the adoption of a Children’s Charter. Continues.... Dr Narisetti has written a book on the subject of the religous abuse of children, "Forced Into Faith"' .