Spiritual Reorientation of India’s Political Life: Need of
the Time
Anil Baran Ray
What is the
end of politics? A rethinking over this
age-old question has become necessary in view of the kind of bad connotation
that politics has assumed in recent times, particularly in India.
To Aristotle,
the great master of ancient Greek political thought and one of the greatest
geniuses the world has ever produced, politics meant acting in the interest of
the whole people and it is only its perversion, which entailed its use of
narrow or selfish interests. Plato,
Aristotle’s teacher, conceived an even higher end of politics. To the extent he said that only those people
were fit for governing the state who, not having any family or property of
their own, pursued selflessly the larger interests of the people as a whole, he
made politics synonymous with selflessness or spirituality in the sense of
calling out the best in the individual.
When a modern
man, prone to treating politics as a mundane thing, argues that politics has
nothing to do with spirituality, he simply misperceives the meaning and role of
spirituality in life. So long as man
thinks that he is a mere body-mind complex, he is given to seeking physical
comforts as well as wealth and power for self-aggrandizement.
It is his
craving for more and more of these things that inevitably brings in its wake
corruptibility. However, it is only the
limitation of his knowledge that makes a person think that he is a mere
physical being. Being a spirit, man has the spark of the Divine in him and as
such it is the bounden duty of man to rise above the temporal and ephemeral
goals of existence and to strive for the realization of the Eternal in
him. It is the law of man’s being to
move from the lower to the higher, from the lower Self to the higher Self. This
higher purpose of life could be realized only by a harmonization of individual
desires and social obligations, only by a continous upward movement, so to say,
from selfishness to the spirituality of selflessness. Self-realisation, that is to say, and not self-affrandizement, is
the grand purpose of life. Politics, is
an enterprise of life and as such its purpose or, so to say, the purpose of
political life cannot be separate or divorced from the purpose of life
itself. Thus conceived, politics too
has to be viewed, as Michael Oakeshott, the successor of Harold J. Laski to the
chair of Political Science in the London School of Economics and Political
Science, put it, as ‘a calling which beckons man to uphold his eternal and
infinite self on the temporal and finite plane of thought and action’.
‘Now, if that
is so, then it is the obligation of all human-beings – politicians and others-to
always keep in view the two principles of the supreme law of life:
righteousness and renunciation. The
first ordains that all goals of life, political or otherwise, are to be pursued
with righteousness. Why? Because, as the sages of ancient India answered
thousands of years ago, ‘by righteousness a person prospers in the short run,
gains what seems desirable, and defeats enemies, but perishes at the root in
the long run. ‘The modern tendency – to
regard the fastidiousness over the purity of means as useless and to hold that
what matters is success and achievement by any means and at any rate – is
self-defeating in the ultimate analysis.
It amounts to taking a fragmented view of life in contradistinction to
that holistic view which holds that not success at any rate but perfection is
the goal of life. It is in perfection
that the being becomes one with the Supreme Being. A short cut of any means, fair or foul might bring one immediate
success in life but it might also pave the way for one’s ultimate disintegration. When one’s doing takes one far away from
one’s being, the incongruity that results from it is bound to lead one to one’s
eventual disgrace.
As for the
second principle, that is, renunciation, it needs no saying that nothing great
can be accomplished in life without renunciation of some sort or the
other. So far as politics is concerned,
renunciation means not self-serving, not self-aggrandizement, not the clannish
pursuit of group or factional interests, not power for one’s own sake, but the
power, to make sacrifices for the service of the people. Politics pursued with righteousness and
renunciation makes it indistinguishable from spirituality. After all, spirituality means in the last
instance such righteousness and renunciation as lead one to the realization of
one’s true self.
Spirituality
in such a sense provides the foundation as much to life in politics as to life
in other spheres. Working at this
foundation and strengthening it, involving a spiritual reorientation of India’s
political life, is the need of the time.
We must understand that India has now fallen on evil times because her
professional politicians, being ignorant of the relationship of politics and
spirituality, have taken to politics of personal aggrandizement, making the
country ‘poorer’ in the process. And
out of such understanding we must reformulate our concept of politics, making
its purpose indistinguishable from the larger purpose of life. That is the greatest reform on the political
front that calls for our attention today.
Whatever consequential reforms are necessary in order to ‘purify’ our
politics must be equally paid attention to.
If necessary, we must amend the Constitution, prescribing minimum
educational qualifications and training for those who intend to adopt politics
as a profession. More than two thousand
years ago, Plato, in order to elevate the crisis-ridden Greek society and
polity of his time, recommended a stringent scheme of training for politicians
with a view to ensuring their selfless and whole-hearted application to the job
entrusted to them. In the conditions of
today we cannot be as ambitious as Plato.
But we can certainly think of emulating his suggestion on a lesser scale
that is more viable in the conditions of today1.
Note: 1 In
this connexion, it will be appropriate to point out that the Supreme Court’s
May 2, 2002 directive to the Election Commission to the effect that the
Commission should make it mandatory for candidates for Parliament and Assembly
elections to make disclosures in respect of – a criminal conviction,
involvement in a criminal case, personal and family assets, financial
liabilities and educational qualifications – is a step in the right
direction. Let us hope that steps such
as this will set in motion the process of transformation of the Indian polity.
Courtesy: Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission – Institute of
culture (August, 2002)