Right to Vote

The aim of fundamental rights, directive principles and fundamental duties, as drafted in the Indian constitution, is to set an itinerary for the citizens. It reminds us of what we can do, what we could do and what we must not. It tells us of the freedom we can exercise and how we are morally beholden to the nation. These rights can be exercised irrespective of cast, creed, sex, status etc.

However India has a parliamentary form of government based on Universal Adult Franchise which implies that only adults have the right to vote. The lower age limit established currently to accouter an Indian citizen with this right is 18. The rule is believed to have its own implications, advantages and disadvantages.

To be empowered with this right is to be indirectly told that someone is obligated to make a wise and judicious decision. Elections can change the course of nation’s progress. Casting a vote, therefore involves very mature decisions and to give someone such a right is the result of an equally important decision.

As a person grows, he becomes more aware of the environs around him. As an infant one might think individually but one gradually learns to live one’s life as a social being. One learns that he has a bearing on others’ lives and vice versa. Being groomed well by education, not necessarily academic, one understands how important it is to choose who governs us, who represents us. It is the leaders who influence and represent the nation and this particular individual we are talking about becomes perfectly aware of the fact.

By the age of 18, I believe a person has enough social interaction and awareness to take this vital decision. Therefore, it is not wrong to allow eighteen-year-olds to vote.

Religion without Faith

Ford Vox, founder of ‘Universist movement’, attempts to address the shortcomings in the world’s current religions by promulgating a whole new canon which paradoxically claims that no one can be bound by a set of rules - otherwise termed as ‘Faith’ by Vox. This religion finds its inception in a context where it dismisses the ‘Faith’ entrenched in all other archaic religions.

Almost every religion today is old, older than most of us could even imagine. Every such religion professes its own beliefs to which it believes its followers will adhere. The same beliefs have been propagated through generations and today the religious have a concept of Truth which they abide by. Per contra Universism believes that there is nothing like an objective truth.

“The idea is that there is no external truth, that there is no objective truth that we should all strive to adhere to. There is rather an ongoing, continuous search for truth.” quotes Vox. Only three years old, the new religion has attracted as much as 10000 members, a salmagundi of various sorts of people.

Lindsey Tillery, a devout follower of this new religion, wonders whether it is appropriate to believe what should be done in order to get closer to someone called God from people who neither have an inkling of what he’s like or nor have known these things directly from him. Not many universists differ from Lindsey has to offer, and all refuse to believe in the age old traditional conceptions of a hell or a heaven.

While many outsiders still opine that Universism is only nihilism or college given a different name, it is yet to be seen whether this religion is only a fad or will stand firm on the cornerstone of its selling point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYw29mkXQ8s&search=scythe