Tulsi Prajna 1993 01

Author(s): Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 8

Value Education for Secular Society
may also note that this becomes all the more necessary when we find that the true truths that lie behind democracy and socialism can be integrated and expressed effectively only when the ultimate spiritual aims are recognised and promoted.
In sum, the urgent need of India is to evolve a clear concept of secularism on the basis of a recognised body of spiritual knowledge which embraces all domains of human life, physical, emotional. vital, dynamic, intellectual, ethical and aesthetic.
Having said this, let us observe that secularism, in spite of its ambiguities, has several clear and distinguished features. It stands for life, it affirms ideals of growth, and it aims at the maximum possible perfection of life; it stands for liberty. it affirms the individuality of individuals, and it aims at ever-growing being and becoming; it questions dogmatism, ignorance and superstition, it affirms the ideal of truth, science and scientific temper, and it aims at progressive and comprehensive knowledge: finally, it combats authority and privileges of the select few, it affirms the right of the weak and the oppressed, it aims at universal emancipation.
Secularism is wedded to the conception of the right of all individuals as members of the society to full life and the full development of which they are individually capable. The master potency of this conception is so great that it is no longer possible to accept the theory that the many must necessarily remain for ever on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and light. It is impossible for us to accept as an ideal any arrangement by which certain classes of society should arrogate development and full social fruition to themselves, while assigning a bare and barren function of service alone to others. Full development of all is the mark of secularism.
The second master idea that secularism would affirm is that the individual is not merely a social unit, but he is a soul, a being, who has to fulfil his or her own individual truth and law as well as his or her natural or his or her assigned part in the truth and law of the collective existence. It is for this reason that secularism insists on individual freedom, on individual initiative, individual thought, individual will, individual consciousness.
Application of these two conceptions has led to momentous experiments in democracy, socialism and democratic socialism. These experiments have not been entirely successful. It has been found that when liberty is assured, equality has suffered, and when equality is sought to be assured, liberty gets strangulated. In fact, democracy puts forward a trinity of values, liberty, equality and fraternity, and it appears now that the key to the fulfilment of the democratic ideal will depend upon the extent to which the value of fraternity will be applied to the disbalancements which are created in experiments of liberty and equality. A serious issue for secularism is to fathom deep into the heart of fraternity and to create conditions January March 1993