“The world modern science has fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that something is missing. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience… and is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. …Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us. The same thing is true of nature and of ourselves. We do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn. The world of our experience seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing…” – Vaclav Havel, President, Czech Republic.
It is hardly surprising that a writer as sensitive and intuitive as Vaclav Havel should perceive the limitations of science, reason, and materialism as factors behind the crisis of civilisation today. The world is experiencing a millennial shift of epochal dimensions, which ordinary people experience in their daily lives as social ferment, restlessness, anxiety, or as an inexplicable phantom that looms at the edge of their consciousness.
As established institutional structures of state, society, and religion fail to provide adequate explanation or space for this momentous transition, they come to be challenged or undermined. There is a desperate search for ideas and ideals that meet the need for harmony, integration, justice, equality, and above all, give meaning and purpose to life. Science and material progress having rendered the emotional-spiritual landscape painfully barren, there is a frantic quest for anchorage in the spiritual-cultural-civilisational sources of the past. Rationalism and secularism having failed to satisfy the needs of the human psyche, religion – in the sense of an honest pursuit of civilisation’s hoary sources – is advancing rapidly to fill the vacuum in people’s lives.
For millions of men and women across the globe, religion is no longer a ‘personal’ matter between one’s conscience and a personal God. It is perceived as having a legitimate role in the public realm, as giving life meaning, direction and quality, and as vital for human development and progress. This view found forceful articulation at the five-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo + 5) at The Hague last week, when voices from major religions were brought together under the aegis of the US-based Religion Counts (a project of the Park Ridge Centre and Catholics for a Free Choice).
Religion Counts rests on the premise that human life is too valuable to be lived on the material plane alone, that religion is a perennial wellspring which can enrich life and help accomplish even secular goals. The fairly impressive public response to the workshops organised by the group can be said to vindicate the belief that religion is beginning to be regarded as a legitimate player on the socio-politico-cultural landscape of every major society.
In India, those embarrassed by the recent Hindu affirmation, who prefer a dehumanising secularism to Ram rajya, would be shocked to learn that the rational, progressive, secular West is engaged in an intense struggle to bring religion back to the public arena. What is more, good Christians are simultaneously struggling to free Christianity from the shackles of a rigid patriarchal hierarchy, so that religion can infuse and inform all aspects of their lives in a meaningful and supportive manner.
Modern Indians, for whom the small family norm is a pragmatic and painless choice, cannot even begin to imagine the torment their educated western sisters go through to make these choices in their own lives. We are so used to denigrating ourselves that we do not realise that ours is the only major civilisation in which the religious leadership does not obstruct secular striving. Be it female education, women’s empowerment, widow remarriage, divorce, small family norm, fight against casteism, our religious leadership (whether reformist or orthodox) has accommodated secular needs. Home Minister L.K. Advani recently acknowledged this alliance by calling upon religious leaders to help rehabilitate rape victims, who have hitherto been invisible.
What is more, our scriptures and traditions are flexible enough to support our changing needs. That is why, in only fifty years of independence, despite the fact that women are still harassed for dowry, the Indian mother-in-law has re-invented herself as the principal promoter of the small family norm! The question arises as to how and why? The answer is simply that the matriarch has become ambitious for her family. Hence she wants the children to be fed and dressed well, and educated properly, for which the small family is a sine qua non. Despite problems posed by sheer numbers, India is one of the most civilised societies to live in, where changes perceived as beneficial are readily accepted, the only problem being of making services like family planning, truly available to all. Thus, while village women eagerly join ‘mahila mandals’ that give access to information on family planning and reproductive health, slip-ups continue with primary health centres remaining unstaffed or unequipped.
It is therefore something of a shock to realise that in the ‘advanced’ west, women are still struggling to make decisions that affect their lives so intimately. Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, has crusaded extensively against aspects of religion that “constrain the liberation of the human spirit.” Arguing that religion is changing and is not a monolithic structure as espoused by the Vatican, she claims that millions of Catholics endorse the values, principles, and goals of the Cairo Programme of Action. As women are the most vital and lively forces in religion, CFFC demands the right of women to be educated within their religious tradition, to be considered as free moral agents, and to have the right to decide when and where to bring new life into the world. Rejecting coercion in reproductive rights, it is committed to radical equality of the sexes.
Anthony Padovano of the International Federation of Married Catholic Priests, called for making abortion safe and rare, as coercion vitiates the reproductive and sexual rights of people. Arguing against exposing women to unwanted pregnancy, he declared that motherhood is not the defining status for women, just as fatherhood does not define men. Critical that the Vatican concern with contraceptives and abortion could itself become coercive, Padovano emphasised that the Vatican should not be free to compel the world to follow its views, especially since its decisions are purely Papal decisions and do not reflect any feminine or married voices. Making a strong case for free choice, he succinctly argued that no one is ever compelled to have an abortion or use contraceptives. Women, he said, need sexual rights more than men as they have been exploited for centuries, and also because they bear the burden of pregnancy; else they will remain in bondage to their biology.
Representatives of the Jewish tradition lamented that rabbis were more tolerant in their interpretation of the law hundreds of years ago, while the Buddhist member revealed that while Buddhism believes that life begins from the moment of conception itself, the Dalai Lama favours compassion in interpreting the canon. There were a number of scholars and religious leaders from Muslim countries who explained how citizens are free to make progressive interpretations of the Koran.
The Pioneer, 16 February 1999