Spiritual Socialism- Solution to Crisis of Civilization (An Old and Rare Book)

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Shri S. R. Sengupta has been associated with the MICA Industry for over four and a half decades. Widely travelled, he was a member of the Government of India Export-Import Committee (Eastern Zone). The MICA Adv. Committee, the MICA Enquiry Committee and The MICA Sub-Committee of the ISI.

A graduate of the Calcutta University (1945). Shri Sengupta had to move over India from his village in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) after partition.

Shri Sengupta belongs to a family deeply devoted to Sri Ramakrishna and Mother Sarada Devi. Both his parents had their initiation from the Holy Mother Sarada Devi. Shri Sengupta himself had his initiation from Swami Biraswarananda, former President of Shri Ramakrishna Math and Mission.

As one involved in the MICA industry. Shri Sengupta feels that the use of strategic MICA In the preparation of deadly war materials portends danger to the world. He believes that there is a crisis of civilisation to which the solution is "Spiritual Socialism.

It is quite obvious to all intelligent people that Modern Science has been transforming the life of humanity with its tremendous theoretical practical and technological achievements which have been greatly benefiting the world in solving several of its mundane problems as well as contributing immensely to the advancement of our empirical knowledge in several fields. It has also brought the countries and the people of the world closer and made communications easier. There was great hope that science would bring prosperity, culture, happiness and peace to mankind. But it is a great paradox that in spite of the wonderful developments of science and the amazing achievements of technology for the past three or four centuries in the modern age, humanity is facing today an unprecedented crisis in civilization, threatening its very existence.

We have already passed through two world wars, and a third one seems to be hovering about with the accumulation of tremendously all destructive nuclear and other weapons. All over the world tension, terrorism, and violence are rampant; there are keen political, economic, and religious conflicts. The world is made unsafe to live through ecological pollution, through excessive industrialisation and enormous burning of liquid and hard fuels by the factories and transport system of land, water, and air. Exploitation of earth's resources beyond measure and denudation of forest cover, out of insatiable greed for profit, to feed gluttonous consumerism, have been going on without caring for the consequences on generations to come.

Human civilization is facing serious socio-economic problems today. The series of observations made in this book may be broadly classified in two parts the problems and their solutions.

There are plethora of influences that human society has to face arising out of the results of the application of applied science in our day to day life. It requires no elaborate discussion to establish that the present state of civilization is passing through a new age of science.

But the role of religion and its contribution to the growth of civilization could not be overlooked. Practical application of science is becoming increasingly materialistic, giving rise to many social evils, aggravated by fundamentalism and hatred among different sects of religious faiths, negating harmonious growth of science and religion based on 'monism' (Advaita).

To express in a more simple way, the present crisis of civilization in the background of scientific developments, given below is an extract from the address of Mr. Adlai Stevenson, at the meeting of the International Astronomical Union, in the year 1961 which raise a vital issue:

"You (Scientists) have given us dangerous powers but we have not yet learned to control them. You have given us the tools to abolish poverty, but we have not yet mastered them, you have given us means to extend the span of life, but this may prove a curse, not a blessing, unless we can assure food, survival and then good health and good life for the bodies and minds of our exploding population, you have made the world small and interdependent, but we have not yet built the institutions, which scientific progress has made obsolete. Every great change wrought by science is foreshadowed years ahead in the laboratory or on the drawing board, but it is not until the new device is fully built and functioning, and has astonished the whole world, that we begin to think of its human and political implications, we are forever running to catch up to-morrow, which what you made necessary yesterday."