DOES ABSTINENCE FROM POLITICS BY SPIRITUAL ORGANISATIONS MEAN INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN CATASTROPHE BEYOND BRINGING NOMINAL RELIEF TO THE VICTIMS ? IS THIS TO BE DEEMED ROOT-AND-BRANCH REFORM ?

DOES ABSTINENCE FROM POLITICS BY SPIRITUAL ORGANISATIONS MEAN INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN CATASTROPHE BEYOND BRINGING NOMINAL RELIEF TO THE VICTIMS ? IS THIS TO BE DEEMED ROOT-AND-BRANCH REFORM ?

When religious organisations do not voice their protest against political barbarism perpetrated throughout the world because they wish to avoid political entanglement, they lose their spiritual credibility as well, for who would believe that such a cowardly stance can come from superior consciousness and not plain dereliction of fundamental spiritual duty to the suffering human gods and goddesses? Such spiritual organisations should never take the name of Rama and Krishna by way of spiritual reference or even the Bhagavad Geeta for that matter, for these were seminal personalities who stood up against the evil of the day to restore social balance and harmony, seminal texts that teach resistance in an affirmative way and not compliant passivity by any means. In such action these heroes established the dharma which is the foundation for higher spiritual attainments.

Indifference to catastrophic human destruction the world over with a quiet spiritual aloofness is not what Swami Vivekananda would have approved of. This does not thereby mean that such spiritual organisations must directly involve themselves politically to redress the violated social balance but it surely means that it is bounden on them to take up a moral stand against horrendous barbarism of powerful nation states, be it Great Britain of colonial inheritance or Nazi Germany or USA or any other like regime that perpetrates indiscriminate violence against the embodiments of divinity that men, women and children are. Powerful moral messages may be given by these organisations to the world which will kindle consciousness and inspire resistance against the oppressive forces rather than preaching from the pulpit passive principles of piety in pretentious or puerile terms which will have no bearing on the ground reality of indescribable human suffering.

Of what avail is spirituality if it will make cowards out of men and women? Better by far will it be to die game on the battlefield of life fighting for justice and freedom. May Krishna grant us some such spirituality that cowers not in fear when faced with terrible adversarial forces that threaten to snuff life and hope out of humanity !

I wish to see such spiritual men who do not leave their disciples in war-ravaged Nazi Europe and seek shelter in safe America (USA) when spiritual realisation of the immortality of the Self ought to have persuaded the sage to have stayed on in Norway and suffered the same fate as his disciples at the hands of Nazi barbarism. Surely, Swamiji would not have quit quarters thus, and if he, hypothetically speaking, that is, did so, were he to be living till the 1940s in Nazi-invaded Europe, I would have lost all sense of veneration for this valorous warrior of the Spirit. Thank God that I can still venerate and worship this seminal being as the fearless soldier of the Soul unlike so many others who quit their post when danger and death loomed large in their faces from political aggressors like the Nazis or the Islamists in their respective historical contexts.

Written by Sugata Bose