India is the land of culture and religion. Here religion has influenced living style, life as well as mentality.
Though India has a diverse culture also known as 'unity in diversity.’ People of diverse cultures and religions live with a single citizenship under one Constitution.
Majority of the population in India follows Hinduism. It is believed that in ancient times Hindu people used to live here. Later Mughals and other people arrived here and spread their religion.
Though constitutionally, India gives right to every religion, when one observes these things from a bird’s eye view, Indian people and their diversity seems to be so much united and hormonal but at the core every religion wants to be superior. People fight and kill each other in the name of religion.
In every religion whether it is Hinduism, Christianity, Muslim or Jainism, pilgrimage has its own importance. It is said that people travel to various places where their God lived, took birth and spent their life. By doing this they earn virtue and their souls get a place in the so-called heaven.
In India, there are around two million temples, and each year the number increases substantially. This data is just of Hinduism. There are many places of worship for different religions in India.
People here everyday visit a lot of temples to worship God. Some people travel as they have taken a vow in the name of a particular God.
Varanasi, Tirupati, Balaji, Dwarka, Puri, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Amaranth, Ujjain are such cities for Hindus. Mecca and Madina for Muslims. Jerusalem for Christians. Thousands of people visit these cities on a daily basis.
Of course there is nothing bad about visiting places, not even temples. When you visit any place, you explore it, you learn about it and can remember its importance very easily. Travelling makes you know about the world so easily.
But the problem here is with which feeling or by thinking you are travelling, or you are visiting a particular place.
It's worthless to travel to a place of worship with some motive, in the hope that the visit will fulfil your wish. You don't visit it for the love of God. You visit him for your own benefit. Your selfish nature makes you visit there and name it as admiration for God.
How illogical is pilgrimage? Whether God exists in any corner of this universe is uncertain. People don't have faith in God. They have blind faith in their statues. They believe that visiting and worshipping these statues will solve their problems, will make their lives happy. Whatever they want they will get.. Which never happens.
For once let's believe that God exists, and he loves its devotees. Does a loving person ask you to remain hungry? Does he become angry if you don't do what you said? Does he ask you to give him a bath with milk and other stuff? Does he ask to donate money for him? Does he ask to stand in the queue to meet him? Does he ask you to offer coconut? No, of course not.
When one visits a big temple, let's say Badrinath or Kedarnath. Huge number of people have to wait in long queues, where the assistant of a particular God i.e pandit, manages how long he/she can worship, from where to enter, whether to touch the statue or not. The irony is there is a VIP quota for visiting the statue. One who has a VIP pass can visit God soon.
I wonder how the same God can have different status? Kedarnath's Lord shiva is God of bigger status rather than the one in the temple near you. If one can find the same God nearby, what's the point of going to Kedarnath, just because it is said that visiting Kedarnath fulfills your wish.
People give their everything when they visit their God's place. In Mathura people crawl around the Govardhan Parvat. People donate their hair at Tirupati in the name of a vow they have taken.
It's hard to make people understand this is just a business practiced by owners or associations who built temples. A person will not give a penny extra to the one who sells vegetables day and night. They would bargain with him, but whenever they will visit the temple, especially one which is famous, they would give several rupees unnecessarily to the pandit or in the name of adonation.
People here donate money in thousands and lakhs for building temples. Today also in India not every class of people are allowed to enter temples. The time is fixed when God's statue will be visible and when it will not.
Visiting these places is good only when you don't have any expectation of return after visiting there. It's better to give money to one who earns by working hard rather than wasting it here and there. Every year people donate tonnes of gold and lakhs of money to these temples.
Even if one has faith in God he/she should know that giving bribe to God is injustice to their faith. If God exists he would never demand this.
No doubt temples are the shelter for many poors. These temples provide meals to the poor. Giving food to someone is the source of pleasure to so many but offering gold and huge money which goes in the pocket of wrong people is again injustice.
It's not like that only Hindu community has fake faith in pilgrimage. Each and every religion has the same condition in other countries too.
Eduindex News 
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