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An Interesting Review of the Book: "MAN'S LOVE FOR GOD:" Pritam Sen; Bharatiya

Vidya Bhavan, Kulapathi Munshi Marg, Mumbai-400007. Rs. 225.

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This article is emailed to you by Ram Chandran ( rchandran )

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Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com)

 

Philosophy of love for God

 

 

 

MAN'S LOVE FOR GOD: Pritam Sen; Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kulapathi Munshi Marg,

Mumbai-400007. Rs. 225.

 

THE BOOK under review is an exercise in a philosophy of love for God. It

consists of two major chapters, the first entitled "Proper conduct in the

philosophy of God's love'' and he second, "love's attributes." Each chapter has

different sections, in which the author sets out his view of the philosophy of

God's love, proper conduct, especially as set out in the Bhagavad Gita. In the

second chapter, which has the largest number of sections, he deals with love's

attributes, love's actuality, love's manifestation, love's joy and sorrow,

love's compassion and grace, friendship, love's freedom, faith, love's beauty,

harmony and devotion and surrender.

 

Proceeding on the basis that philosophy realises that the world process is not

random, that evolution is purposeful and that there is an established order

towards which the world is striving, and striving hard. This is a subject, which

calls for close, critical assessment. Tennyson spoke of an increasing purpose

towards which the world is moving. This became the basis of the Miller lecture

in the Madras University.

 

Thinkers like Hiriyanna, Dr. Radhakrishnan, Dr. A. G. Hogg, Dr. Urquhart

(sometime Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University) delivered illuminating

discourses on this view of the quest for perfection in the world historical

process. Hiriyanna dealt with this subject, most adequately and argued that

there was a process and a purpose in the world, which it was man's business to

understand. Dr. Radhakrishnan dealt with the spirit in man. Dr. Hogg dealt with

the challenge of the temporal process. All these thinkers felt committed to a

realisation that there was in the universe an ultimate, absolute plan. They

rejected the view that God was an irrelevance in a fundamentally lifeless

universe. J.W.N. Sullivan wrote about the limitations of science.

 

C.E.M. Joad, in dealing with the philosophical implications of modern science,

reckons with the incompleteness of a purely scientific approach to the meaning

and purpose of the universe. Dr. Radhakrishnan in a famous book dealt with the

"reign of religion in modern philosophy." Mysticism, as Dr. Inge pointed out in

his book on mysticism and in another fine book dealing with God and the

astronomers like Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington, that we know too

little as yet of the vast complexities of an evolving, expanding universe.

 

In the face of all this speculation, Pritam Sen seems to us to have concerned

himself rather narrowly with just one aspect and that too, a rather dubious and

unreal aspect of love.

 

Aldous Huxley once said that love is also a form of knowledge. The mystics live

in a world of joyous consciousness of a gracious reality. But then mysticism, as

a way of knowledge, is not every man's gift. But this does not resolve the

problem of evil. The Advaitic view that evil is unreal will not appeal to the

average human being.

 

The explanation that evil is God's punishment of man for his sins is altogether

too crude to gain general acceptance. The "Karma'' theory involves the absurd

assumption that sins committed by a man in some remote "Janma'' of his, receives

punishment arbitrarily enough in some later "Janma'', makes nonsense of a notion

of a "Just God''. Justice delayed or deferred is justice denied. How does a

loving God tolerate so much evil in the world?

 

One fears that Pritam Sen's somewhat unscientific approach is rather inadequate.

Man's love for God may be just a delusive love for a great "perhaps''. Man's

love for fellowmen is too fitful and too often so totally non-existent as to

make one wonder if man is not merely a different formulation of the beasts of

the jungle.

 

The author provokes thought and that is saying a great deal for his book.

 

 

S.R.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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