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DAWN OF THE 21ST CENTURY AND RETURN TO RELIGION
KALYAN MAL LODHA
Moments have come when our century is drawing to a close and another is about to dawn to splash its colours on mankind. We now stand between a collapsing past and an indeterminate future. The technology and the scientific culture have gone deep into our entrails. It is said that for every fifteen years our knowledge doubles whereas in the last century, it took fifty years to expand its horizons. The ever explosive population is likely to inflame our sustainable existence. With this unbridled growth, at one stage, the mass of mankind will be greater than the mass of earth causing complete collapse. We are caught in the death trap-total extinction. -the silent holocaust is there. We have explored the distant stars and outer space causing pollution there also by throwing enormous debries. The Cassine probe to saturn launched in Ocotober 1997 poses an unprecedented threat to humanity by dispersing plutonium all over the earth-contaminating two billion people by causing dreadful diseases. As Bruce Mazlish puts it-'there is a disparity between the greatness of these deeds and meanness of the results'. Return to earth is a way of expressing distrust in technological advancement. Let us look at this from another angle. 14000 children die of hunger everyday in Africa. One day's saving in military spending will enable it to survive for one year-More than two billion dollars drain out every minute. 40% of the worlds' minerals are utilised by 6% of the population. It is horrifying to note that thousands of children in the west trot their guns and indulge in violence, rape young girls, commit decoities and are becoming socio-paths with paranoid character. Thus, psychic crisis, cultural crisis, identity crisis, intellectual crisis and credibility crisis are there (reference: Oxford Survey). In India, suicides are done every 8 minutes. It is due to a sense of despair and desperateness. I am reminded of M.S. Well's 'Mind at the End of its Tether' in which he scoffed at the frolics by children rejoicing, dancing on the victory of the Allied Nations in the Second world War. H.G. Wells boldly asserted that human mind was at the end of its tether and until and unless, life's pattern is moulded in a new matrix, our existence will face disasters. The prophecy has come true.
On the other hand, biogenetic system is collapsing. In Florida, there are no birds and in Siberia no ants. Several species are already
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