The Hindu : Miscellaneous / This Day That Age : dated January 11, 1955: Importance of religion

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Tuesday, Jan 11, 2005

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous - This Day That Age

dated January 11, 1955: Importance of religion

"Art and culture and literature will be debased and perish without the continuous support and elevating and life-giving bloodstream of religion," declared Mr. C. Rajagopalachari, delivering the convocation address of the Nagpur University in Nagpur on January 10. He said: "Religion has lived and grown and helped mankind and so it must continue. Let us not neglect the plain lessons of history. The idea that God is a notion born of superstition and fear has been abundantly proved to be wrong. Science in the higher regions has definitely found a great and infinite gap which nothing but God can fill. Travelling back from this, if we are intelligent and reasonable, we are compelled to be respectful and humble before the temples, the prayers, the rituals and the symbols that form the external substance of the prevailing great religions of the world. Abstract nouns can make essays and books but cannot make religion for a whole people of whom more than half cannot read books or essays or remember what they read. Abstract ideas cannot live but as creepers clinging to and continually drawing life from concrete forms and traditions which can be seen, felt, heard and remembered without effort. Thus has religion lived and grown and helped mankind and so it must continue."

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