April Meeting Announcement and March Meeting Notes

April Meeting Announcement and March Meeting Notes :
April Meeting:
Date: Sunday, April 12, 2009
Time: 10:30 am
Venue: Empress Garden
Topics: 1. Nature and Literature; 2. Depiction of the downtrodden in Literature

March Meeting Notes:
It is Basant! Spring!

We shared the venue with a group of Bengalis celebrating the onset of spring. The colourful candy floss and ice candy beckoned. We reserved the treats for later and got down to business though the attendance was thin.

None of the members had anything to change about the Literature Club. So we went on to the next topic viz “Morality in a changing world”. As usual the members' views were as diverse as the crowd around us.

Some questions that arose were “is the economically weaker section by and large more ethical than the well heeled ?” “ Have we improved at all as compared to the earlier decade or century?" "Yes, women’s lot seems to have improved at least in the urban set up as compared to the bride burning and widow’s head shaving days, but we have a long way to go.”

Certain basics were addressed. What is morality? Who decides what is right or wrong? The mores of the society are time specific and place specific. A responsible society should fine tune the mores to enable one and all, at the cost of no one in particular.

After all the first signs of non-violence arose when human beings started living in a community giving rise to ethical self-restraint. This has its origin in religion. Religion in the broad perspective, not institutionalized religion divorced from spirituality shackled by externally applied rules.

The idea is not to break every rule and question religious beliefs but to not be a captive of artificial rules uninformed by spirituality because after all the soul of a religion is its spirituality. There is no place for exploitation, oppression, arrogance and frenzy. Propriety, truthfulness and simplicity constitute morality. Religion is first reflected in morality Hate ensures spiritual defeat according to Dr Radhakrishnan.

The irony is when being religious means to empathise, when propriety , truthfulness and simplicity means moral or religious behavior. Most of the violence since time immemorial is in the name of religion - Crusade , Jehad. The irony is the changing times do not change the basic violent streak in man.

Thanks Renuka for the contribution!!