The individual should harmonise his life

Home > 2004 Issues > August 01, 04 Business & Economy An economic policy for India By Dr Dipak Basu Organiser Home (The writer is professor in Economics at Nagasaki University, Japan.)

The Hindu view of life is that the personal life of an individual is ultimately subject to the same universal law as of all nature. The fundamental principle is the ‘theory of karma’, which says that each action eventually causes a certain effect. Everything in nature, from abstract thought to practical action, is determined and directed by this law. Man sets himself the goal of freeing himself from the bondage of nature. The meaning of a man´s life, according to the Indian culture, “is the awareness of the soul to its bondage and its efforts to stand up and assert itself” (Romain Rolland, 1944).

According to the message of Krishna in ‘Bhagawat Gita’, this freedom can only be achieved by karma yoga or selfless work and gnana yoga or pure knowledge (Bhagawat Gita, Ch. 3, Verse 3; 1983). Karma yoga recommends working for the sake of the work itself, not for the fruits of the work. Work without pay, absence of attachment to the result, generally to the point of complete disregard for one´s personal interest, complete selflessness is the karma yoga. This is essentially opposite to the ‘utilitarianism’, which is the philosophy of ‘globalisation’.

Sri Aurobindo (1947) has explained it further. Principal contradiction of human life is that between the individual and society or aggregate, the essence of ideal law of human development demands that the individual should harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate. Individualism, the ideal of Western culture, propagated by the ‘globalisation’ process, does not correspond to the ideal view of life according to this universal law of nature.