Fundamentalism and the Sikh Religious Tradition by T.N. Madan

he believed without a doubt that the results of his work were wholly beneficial. Since
1945 he has begun to wonder whether his professional success may not have been a
social and a moral disaster." He pity is that ultimately whether it is an Einstein, an
Oppenhauer or a Sakharov, he is obliged to be the instrument, not of God, nor of his
conscience, but of the parochial state or the political master about whose ethics the
mounting misery in the world is a standing monument.
There is little doubt that Marxian goals for the social salvation of man were
unexceptionable. That is why in the first two quarters of the century, these invoked the
sympathies of many a thinking person. However, in the general euphoria science and
social sciences had created, the warning given by men of religion, that the class struggle
contained the seeds of self-destruction and dehumanisation, was ignored. Soviet Russia
grew into an unchallengeable giant that had not only kept many states of Eastern Europe
as its colonies, but had also reduced its own citizens to be just soulless numbered units of
life. While outsiders had not a clear conception of the fast deterioration of internal
cohesion in this Leviathan slate, Eduard Schovardnadze, the Soviet Foreign Minister,
emphasized in 1990 that "Universal ethic should have priority over regional or class
interests or morality. Ultimately, as we have witnessed the Soviet Empire, cracked up
because of its lack of internal cohesion. The collapse, as critics of Secularism see, was
due to the fact that whereas the moral sense and its internal discipline which Christianity
had given to the Russian life, had slowly worn out or been deliberately eroded,
Communism had simply failed to create an alternative ethics that could sustain the Soviet
society or give the individual his moral brakes.
But, while recording what is felt to be the inevitable fall of Communism, as a
secular system of production, we do not in any way seek to eulogise the life of unbridled
Capitalism and its cut-throat competition. Its problems of ethics are equally chronic, and
grave, and for that matter, could prove equally dangerous for the social life of man. It is
significant that while the West was seriously collaborating with the Soviets, Soizhenitlyn
gave a clear warning that it was making a dangerous mistake, and was virtually betraying
the very facet of man that had been giving the Christian West its cohesion and hope.
Similarly, the dismal 'disarray' in the moral life of man was plaintively voiced by
Schumacker, when he wrote that nothing was in greater disruption and confusion than the
moral life of man."" Quite the same was the diagnosis of the report of the Club of Rome,
when it wrote :
"Short of world effort, today's already explosive gaps and inequalities, will
continue to grow larger. The outcome can only be disaster, whether due lo the selfishness
of individual communities that continue lo act purely in their own interest, or to a power
struggle between the developing and the developed nations. The world system is simply
not ample enough, nor generous enough lo accommodate much longer such egocentric
and conflictive behaviour by its inhabitants."
While decades have elapsed since the above warning was calegorically given by
the the authors of Limits of Growth, man's egoism continues to run amuck unabated with
the inevitable increase in wide gaps between the rich nations and the poor nations, and
the rich of a nation and its poor. We do not believe that our reading is, on the whole wide
off the mark. It is undeniable that since 1947 the percentage of Indians living below the
poverty line has been steadily mounting to the present about 50%. The increase in
population is as rapid as is the increase in glamorous, vulgar and wasteful living of the