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history? Throughout the centuries religion has provided human-beings with an anchorage, something to hold fast to in times of stress. Unfortunately, in the last hundred and fifty years man has been steadily drifting away from religion. This spiritual drifting, this lack of proper moorings is more in evidence in the West and has finally led to a loss of spiritual values, a disintegration of the moral fibre. The process has been a continual one. In mid-nineteenth century Matthew Arnold diagnosed the malaise from which the world suffered
“... this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,” and the plight of man in such a world?
“And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.” T. S. Eliot, the voice of the 20th century says substantially the same thing in his poems when he describes modern western civilisation as the Wasteland and its inhabitants as the Hollow Men. Significantly, Eliot ends his poem with words from the Upanishads:
Datta, dayadhvam, damyata
(Give, sympathise, control) Obviously then, religion has been a more active force in the East than in the West. Is it a mere coincidence that all religions have sprung from the east? Even today, in the second half of the twentieth century, in spite of the tremendous influence of the west, religion plays a dominant role in the life of the Indian. Whereas the western
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