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Given the needs and challenges
of today, the dialogue between religions cannot be limited to
words and concepts. Religions must discover a shared agenda to
promote the good of all people and to safeguard the health of
society. This will effect a paradigm shift from conflict to
cooperation, from communalism to spiritual humanism through
which religions will become a constructive, rather than
destructive, influence on societies and nations. To this
glorious goal he commits himself.
The author
pleads for "a dynamic social order". He demands
doing away with social underdevelopment. He wants us to heal
the wounds of our society and makes a case for launching a new
liberation movement for, he thinks, and rightly so, that for
vast segments in our country, the attainment of political
freedom has not meant much, and millions want to be liberated
from bonded labour, child labour, illiteracy, poverty, ill
health, exploitation and conspiratorial neglect at the hands
of the state. Millions more need to be liberated from
superstition, religious obscurantism and fundamentalism. Still
a large number of our people need to be liberated from the
prison house of communal hatred and hostilities and the
resultant dissipation of energy and resources.
How to bring
about this revolution? By reforming the very concept of
religion, says the author. It was against Christianity without
a commitment to social justice that Karl Marx issued his
informed indictment. Human history, including the church, has
been the richer for that. It is time that a similar spiritual
ferment took place in our context too.
The author
wants to change our social order in all its aspects. He wants
to do away with social exploitation in all its forms. That is
true social justice, he says. He wants economic prosperity. No
man, woman or child should suffer from poverty as they are
doing today. He wants consumerist materialism to go for that,
according to him, fosters a culture of self-indulgence which
can turn every human being into a passive and isolated
consumer of pleasure, unmindful of the suffering and
oppression around him.
The author
makes a strong case for a protest movement against this
culture. He exhorts the people, the poor people in the first
place, to wage a relentless spiritual struggle to put an end
to the multiple maladies of our time - poverty, hunger,
deprivation, oppression, exploitation, disease and so forth.
Will economic
liberalisation that we have taken to in a big way solve the
problem? Precisely not, asserts Swami Agnivesh. He is in
favour of a reduction in government control and thus supports
policies that seek to remove unnecessary regulations which end
up as impediments to development and as a means for
self-aggrandizement. But we must also understand that economic
growth by itself cannot solve a country's problems. In fact,
it may give rise to a newer and more virulent problems. If
inequality keeps increasing as it is in India, the poor and
forgotten will have to struggle to make the powers that be to
heed their pleas. He advocates a Gandhian struggle for this
purpose.
Human rights
find an equally, if not more, important space in the author's
discourse. He is an untiring and uncompromising champion of
these. For, he thinks these are the instruments for human
development to the level that the men of religion wish every
human being to reach. He sees human rights as decrees of God,
as inviolate spiritual dictates of religion as the essence of
human existence. Those who trample over the human rights of
others are Satans, they are enemies of the human race. They
should be fought heroically, says Swami Agnivesh, till they
are vanquished.
In one of his
essays, the Swami goes a step further. He holds that as human
beings have their rights so have animals and plants theirs
too. For the well-being of all let us care for the rights of
animals and plants as much as we care for the human rights.
This disciple
of Dayanand has a lofty agenda for humanity. Earth is our
mother, he says. The whole world, he says, is a kutambha
(family). All religions should emphasise the welfare and
well-being of human beings. Development of social spirituality
should be their main concern. There should be no place for
superstition, obscurantism and fundamentalism in this age.
There should be no place of social segregation, economic
inequality, intellectual exploitation and spiritual
deprivation. All should strive to achieve social justice, to
achieve human excellence, to achieve peace in our lives.
The author
ends his discourse on an angry note: he regrets that those who
are responsible for the well-being of millions of people rake
up non-issues at a time when we are beset with many burning
issues. Perhaps the best way to sideline real issues is to
fabricate spurious ones, he declares. He identifies the issues
that hurt the body of this nation as poverty, illiteracy,
preventable diseases, deteriorating quality of life and the
rise of religious fundamentalism and obscurantism which
perpetuate mental and material backwardness.
Indeed, this
is a powerful work. Swami Agnivesh speaks from the very depth
of his heart. His words carry the power of his conviction in
the causes he espouses. His exhortations carry refreshing
energy and vigour. What he says, I agree, is so impressive
that "one is bound to sit up and ask after going through
the book: "how should I make use of the agenda for the
humanity that Swamiji has presented here"?
The printing and set-up of
the book are excellent. I have all praise for the publishers.
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"THE
two hundred odd pages of pen power reveals the planetary
patriotism of a great human wonder," Swami Agnivash, an
ascetic, reformer, social activist, global firebrand "for
whom humanism is the burning creed, compassion the consuming
passion and injustice a raging allergy, a red rag anathema and
a perennial bete noire," says Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer
in the foreward to this book.
