Jain Journal 2004 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 18

R.P. PODDAR: RELIGION (DHARMA)
51A: Fundamental duties:-It shall be the duty of every citizen of India-(g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures; Environment can be kept unpolluted if human interference with nature is kept within sustainable level. The vow of abstention from killing, called ahimsa in common parlance, prescribes minimal exploitation of earth, water, air, fire and plant-life, just enough for the fulfilment of needs and not for the gratification of greed. If greed is not contained, need will go on expanding.
Instead of containing greed, the present consumerist culture is whetting it. Religion prescribes a curb on consumerism (paribhogaupabhoga-parimāṇa). But getting a boost from the policy of liberalization and globalization, the consumerist culture is on a high tide. Religion favours localization of commercial and industrial activities (under digvrata and deśavrta) and this is what Gandhi propagated and practised as the first step towards building the national economy. This ensures participation of a larger number spread over a larger area and is, therefore, more congenial to our country where too many hands are without work. In short, religion is lack of its proper application.
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The prevailing misconception about religion is that it is more for the next world than this one and more for personal consumption than social. It is under this misconception that our politicians proclaim that religion should not be mixed with politics and that secularism and religion are mutually exclusive. The fact is that religion is entirely this-worldly and also next worldly to remain firmly set as this-worldly. It is both personal and social, because compartmentalization of individual and society is non-est. Politics without religion will be unethical, and religion, in the true sense of the term, does not hamper secularism.
The householders constitute the community of which the order of the monks and the nuns is only an offshoot. So the ethics for the householders is the ethics for the community and its immediate objective is to rid the community of bad blood between individual and individual and establish good will and harmony. It is for the society as a whole and not for any isolated individual- an ethical system for an isolated individual is unconceivable. It is true that the ultimate end of religious conduct is liberation (mokṣa). The liberato