Friday, November 4, 2011

Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (politics and spirituality) that was published in Newsband


Politics and spiritualityPolitics and spirituality must go together. But is it possible? Spirituality and politics are both full-fledged disciplines, both need total involvement. So, each can become involved in the other`s discipline only at the cost of the erosion of his own. The spiritual person will lose his dedication in the realm of politics, while the politician will lose his political interest if he involves himself in spiritual matters.
However, both disciplines are needed to build a better society. If spirituality is inner science, politics is external discipline. We need both. Each must complement the other, while maintaining its own identity.
Spirituality is inner beauty without having external strength, while politics is external strength having little inner beauty. They need each other. The spiritual person must serve as counsellor to the politician, and the politician must serve as booster to the spiritual person. This sharing will benefit both.
The spiritual person is Self-centred; the politician can help him by taking him out of his individual cell, so that he may acquire more experience of human life. The same is true of the politician. Politicians are by nature over-ambitious and this sometimes leads to disaster. It is at this juncture that a spiritual person can give them practical advice which will enable them to curb the over-ambitious side of their nature, making them more realistic.
In the past, the religious gurus used to be advisers to the kings and kings were their supporters. In our present society, in terms of number, we have enough spiritual persons and we have politicians in abundance as well. But, we are not able to benefit from the two because of a lack of sharing process between them.
We need to develop a dual system of education - formal and informal. Formal education can produce educated politicians but we also need all members of society to be spiritualized. This goal cannot be achieved through formal education. There should be an informal type of education whose teachers are spiritual gurus. These gurus can teach our present-day generation through interaction, discourses and dissemination of literature.
Thus politicians and religious leaders can be helpful to one another without interfering in each other’s systems. Thus we need spiritualized politicians and politicized spiritual persons. This will improve our society.

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