Tulsi Prajna 2001 01

SR No.: 524606
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Shanta Jain, Jagatram Bhattacharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 2001
Total Pages: 146
Language: Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India
File Size: 7 MB

Page 137

of antiquated beliefs and crass superstitions, occultism, obscurantism and dogmatism. They destroy cognitive dynamism and breed bigotry and fanaticism. They divide mankind into warring camps and spawn communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism. They contain unsavoury historic memories, which tend to extinguish all hopes of harmony and peace in the present. Organised religions foster a culture of intolerance and hostility and preach expansionism by taking recourse to proselytisation through force, deceit, fraud, coercion and inducement. Traditional religions had no scruples in traducing and pillorving the science and are still the greatest anti-theses of scientific temper and scientific worldview. They work as inhibiting factors in the development endeavour by adulterating the mind with other-worldly picturisations. They debilitate and impoverish the human spirit by alienating all human powers and projecting them on to chimerical entities. They exhibit greater concern and commitment to the improvement of the next world than this world, to the betterment of an imaginary future than the concrete present. Religions dehumanise man by subordinating him to idols, ideas and symbols in the name of the supernatural and castrate him of his human essence. They have always aligned themselves with the ruling elite, have been its ideological mouthpiece and articulator of its class interest. Thus, religion, if allowed to permeate the educational ethos in these crude forms, the cause of education would suffer an irreversible damage. Modern education has emancipated man from the octopus-like hold of superstitions, antediluvian practices, cobwebs of false hopes and promises, inhuman indignities, injustices and all sorts of cruelties. Any religionisation of education would only buttress the cause of the ecclesiastical class that has mercilessly exploited the weaker and vulnerable sections of society, throughout history. However, this portrayal of religion, which is often the forte of the leftists and materialists, is not absolutely correct. Religion is a grandiose creation of man answering to many a dilemma intrinsic to his existential situation which we shall profile later. B. Religion/Theology as a Discipline
It has taken umpteen centuries, even milleniums to build the edifice of religion and theology. Theology is the intellectual wing of religion, which is concerned with the articulation and justification of religious beliefs. Religion, both in its scriptural - normative form and anthropo-empirical form constitutes the warp and woof of social life. It contains a vast reservoir of knowledge and wisdom, which has served as a beacon light for mankind since the beginning of its history. This precious heritage cannot be relegated to the limbo of oblivion. Religion penetrates every pore of human existence, hence it cannot be dispensed with. Religion reigns and rules man's life from beginning to end and has become an integral part of it. It is responsible
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