Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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be divided into water tight compartment called social, political, and of religious, all act and react upon one another. Service to man is service to god. Religion is not other worldly nor does God lives in the other world. For him religion is the law of life and god is the living power. He emphasized religious and spiritual values for dynamic fulfillment of life. For Gandhi, God is truth and love, ethics and morality. Identification with God is impossible without self- purification. Moral life is necessary for spiritual purification. The idea of self-purification is a good lesson for world peace in Gandhian Thought. According to Gandhi prayer is the essence of religion. It is nothing other than the inward communication with the Divine, Gandhi said that prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness, peace and response in our daily acts. Science has given tremendous power in the hands of man but unless it joins its hands with religion, it will wipe out the human civilization science and spirituality must go hand in hand. Mere science cannot give us real peace or happiness.
Gandhi's conception of religion is capable of standing the scrutiny of science and reason on the one hand and guiding us to the new dimension of the spirit in man on the other. He has made religion revolutionary enough to meet the challenges both of science and social change. To Gandhi a free and peaceful world will emerge only when the spirituality irrigates man's personal and social life. Gandhi's religion opens his heart for his
Country men. He had a dynamic and positive attitude to life. It was a synthesis of contemplation and action, of individual salvation and social concern. But there are some critics of religion. For, example, Karl Marx was highly critical of religion. According to him, "Religion the sole of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people". He says, "Kill religion. God will dead". Thus according to the Marxioan theory man has created religion for the exploitation of other human beings. Lenin also says that religion is one of the aspects of spiritual oppression. Nietzsche is an avowed atheist, an anti-Christ. He says that God is dead. In this way we find some critics of religion. Of course Marxist's view on society was true for a certain society, which prevailed in Europe at a certain time. Any extension of his view to the present society, which is a welfare society, is unwarranted.
The deepest craving that religion quenches in man is the wish for cosmic peace. The social aspect of religion unites man to his fellow beings. The bond that units man to God strengthens also the bond of unity existing between man and man. This is described by Gilbert as "The basis of brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God". Moreover the various religious institutions like Church, Temple and Mosque etc established a centre of Peace among human fellowship. But in the present society the influence of religion appears to have diminished to a great extent. If every country admits the rule
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