Spirituality, Democracy, and Social Well-Being
摘要
This chapter explains the interlinkage between democracy and social well-being through the lens of spirituality. Indian society since historical times has been plagued by ‘graded inequality’ premised on caste, a governing feature of Indian social life. Hence there is no singular social but multiple socials in India. A defining feature of this graded inequality is isolation, segregation and enforced exclusion on one hand and an absence of fraternity and social endosmosis on the other. Social being reciprocal, the location and construct of self becomes an important category in understanding how the social gets constituted in categories like nation, religion, caste consciousness and finally democracy in the Indian context. Given the diversity of Indian society, the social is deeply embedded in the religious. Thus, religion is an important vantage point to understand the very experience of social and how it shapes and reshapes Indian democracy. Suffering as an experience often gets relegated to diseases, disorders, pathologies, etc. However, suffering happens to be a phenomenon universally experienced by every individual whether healthy or diseased. Hence, the study of suffering, what constitutes the ‘social’ in suffering and thus social well being as an antidote become crucial and relevant in contemporary times. In recent times, there has been a surge in the anti-conversion laws in India based on rhetoric of nationalism. But in spite of numerous attempts of secularization of the public sphere, Indian consciousness still continues to be dominated by religion. Hence, the study of phenomena of religious conversion acquires an added relevance in contemporary times. Nationalism in its truest spirit ushers in a democracy when the sanctity and dignity of individual personality is respected and upholded in the truest sense of the term. Fraternity becomes a means to that end. The Indian Preamble proposes, “Fraternity, assuring the dignity of individual and unity and integrity of the nation”. This chapter explains the interlinkage between spirituality, Maitri and social well being vis-a-vis democratic triad of liberty, equality and fraternity.