Rituals

I had been to the sports day function at my daughter’s school two days back. I was amazed at the amount rituals involved in a sports day function. There was march past, flag hoisting, drills, student leaders walking in a peculiar manner whenever they had to go to the dias, etc, etc.

I was wondering, when people are ready to accept these rituals without asking for any reasons or utility behind them, why do they complain about rituals in religion, marriage, birth, death, etc? There is a lot of dissent from the “modern” generation about the various religious and social rituals. I do not mean that I accept all the rituals and I discourage questioning. I do question several rituals and practices, and have decided not to follow several rituals based on one simple condition: I do not follow or advocate any ritual or practice that seperates man from man or man from God. In the current case, I just want to note that rituals are not restricted to religion alone.