R.
R. DIWAKAR
There
was a time in the history of political institutions when religion had the power
to control political decisions. There was also a time when kings and emperors,
at least in
Even
if one argues that religion and morality have only to do with the individual
soul and personal conduct, one cannot be blind to the fact that man’s life and
his integral being and his total approach cannot be split up so mechanically.
Whatever a man believes and does has its own impact on society, man being
essentially a social being. We cannot isolate man’s religious and moral beliefs
from his beliefs in economic and social theories. Nor can man be moral and
immoral in parts unless he is a split personality. And a split personality is a
sick personality, and not a moral progressive human being. If we once concede
that it is normal for human beings to be partly moral and partly immoral, we
open the floodgates of double thinking and hypocrisy and all kinds of
deterioration in human values and human conduct.
It
was in this context that Gandhi emphasised the
integrated outlook on life. He refused to recognise
compartments in his approach to problems and said, whether it is religion or
politics or economics, all of them must be based on the truth of human values
and search for that truth. He saw that politics of his time and of earlier days
was polluted and full of hypocricy, double thinking
and double acting and therefore wholly weak and corrupt. He
thought of spiritualising
politics and raising it to the level of truthfulness and honesty which could be
tested by moral considerations. His religion, as he put it, was not merely doctrinal
and ritualistic as religion is usually understood; but it was the religion
underlying all religions, namely truth, the law of human evolution. To him
religion meant truth and the essence of moral life as dictated by the inner
conscience. Even God can be denied and is denied and decried but truth cannot
be denied and is not decried, because one can test it by his own experience.
Search for truth which can be testified by one’s own conscience is the essence
of the religious spirit.
What
do we see today all round, especially in the matter of world peace and peace
between nation and nation? And what are religions and religious heads, and
religious people doing about it? Can real religion be lived and practised when the mind is full of fear, insecurity,
uncertainty? Is not peace, the sense of security, the feeling that there is an
atmosphere of friendliness and harmony, essential for a truly religious life.
But precisely it is religions, religious heads, and religious people who do not
seem to be vitally or very much concerned with peace, with a world without war,
a world where human beings and nations would live in an atmosphere of
friendliness and mutual co-operation. At any rate, even though some religious
heads and men of religion express their casual concern, there does not seem to
be a universal religious attempt, a concerted, coordinated massive effort to
establish peace, peace without a ceaseless preparation of war, peace which is
not charged with the fear of war at any moment–and a war, a nuclear war which
would wipe humanity itself out of existence with all vaunted civilization.
It
must be realised, now or never, that peace and war
are not something which can be left to politicians or military authorities. No
activity of man and none of the affairs of men in fact, could be left to
themselves without religion and morality. The tragedy of our times is that
while we seem to have progressed immensely in our control of matter, we are
lacking miserably in controlling the elemental brutal urges in ourselves which
make demons of us, ruthless, mechanical robots who have no count for human
values, values which alone can elevate man to a higher level of happy,
peaceful, harmonious existence.
While
there have been attempts by politicians and statesmen to create a League of
Nations and then a United Nations UNESCO, religions, religious heads and
religious men of the world have never made any organised attempt to consider
the problem of peace among nations.
It
was in this area that the Kyoto Conference (1970) took a definitely advanced
step so far as religions, religious heads, men of religion are concerned. More
than two hundred delegates from more than forty countries representing not only
the main religions but several denominational religions were assembled. Not one
of them spoke of his own religion or its tenets, etc., but was concerned with
the human condition obtaining today on this globe of ours. The name was “World
Conference of Religions for Peace.” But peace did not merely mean absence of
war. It was much more than that. The search for peace and the establishment of
peace has to be linked up with (a) the protection and preservation of Human
Rights as defined and enumerated by the United Nations Organisation in 1948;
(b) the development of peoples and countries which have remained behind in
securing the common amenities necessary for human living; and (c) disarmament,
without which all talk of peace is moonshine.
Today
it happens that religion and religious concern and area of interest has shrunk
and religion has shut itself into a shell of its own, instead of comprehending
the whole of human life and human affairs. The word Dharma, the law of being,
is the one which appropriately means and includes the totality of human life,
its proper unfolding and evolution towards happier and more harmonious
existence. One would wonder how and why a United Religious Organisation did not
come into existence far earlier than a United Nations Organisation. Politicians
are concerned only with the political life of the people, economists with the
economic life, and social workers with the social life of the people. It is
religion which concerns itself with the totality of the human being, his
emancipation, his freedom, his dignity, his total progress and unfoldment of all the potentialities with which man is
endowed. If men continue to be poor, to be harrassed,
to be condemned to slavery, exposed to exploitation, deprived of the means of
development on account socio-economic and political systems and structures, who
else but men inspired by religion and with highly altruistic motives can
concern themselves with the human condition, without any personal or selfish
aims? It is time therefore that in addition to “Unitive
Understanding”, steps are envisaged which would usher into existence a United
Religious Organisation, which will concern itself with the totality of the
human condition and its great future.