Jainas tend to live in a neighborhood, a close-knit neighborhood. Minorities are afraid of the majority so they remain close to each other; it is more protective. So all the children of the neighborhood go and their temple is in the middle of the neighborhood. That too is for protection, otherwise it will be burned any day if it is in a Hindu neighborhood or in a Mohammedan neighborhood.

And it will become difficult: if there is a riot you cannot go to your own temple. And there are people who will not eat without going to the temple. First they have to go to the temple and worship, then only can they eat. So Jainas live in small sections of the town, city, village, with their temple in the middle, and surrounding it is their whole community.

“Everybody is going,” my father said.

I said, “They may have questions, or they are idiots. I am not an idiot, and I don’t have those questions, so I simply refuse to go. And I know what the teacher goes on teaching the children is absolute rubbish.”

My father said, “How can you prove that? You always ask me to prove things; now I ask you, how can you prove what he says is rubbish?”

I said, “Come with me.”

He had to go many times to many places; it was just that the arguments had to be concluded. And when we reached the school, the teacher was teaching that Mahavira had these three qualities: omnipotence, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing; omnipresent, everywhere-present. I said, “You have listened, now come with me to the temple.” The class was just by the side of the temple, a room attached to the temple. I said, “Now come into the temple.”

He said, “But what for?”

I said, “Come, I will give you the proof.”

What I had done was on Mahavira’s statue I had just put a laddu – that is an Indian sweet, a round sweet, just like a ball – I had put a laddu on Mahavira’s head, so naturally two rats were sitting on Mahavira’s head eating the laddu. I said, This is your omnipotent Mahavira. And I have seen these rats pissing on his head.”

My father said, “You are just impossible. Just to prove this you did all that!”

I said, “What else to do? How else to prove it? Because I cannot find where Mahavira is. This is a statue. This is the only Mahavira I know and you know and the teacher knows. And he is omnipresent so he must be present here seeing the rats and what they are doing to him. He could have driven those rats away and thrown away my laddu. I was not here. I had gone to pick you up – I had all the arrangements to make. Now prove to me that this man is omnipresent. And I’m not bothered at all – he may be. Why do I care?”

But before a child even asks a question, you stuff his head with an answer.

That is a basic and major crime of all the religions.

This is what programming is, conditioning is.

These religions condemn me, that I am conditioning people; I am simply deconditioning people.