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Since age plays an important role in shaping the value orientation of a person, it is expected that its impact could be noticed on the nature of religious/spiritual expectations. Likewise, sex also serves as an important factor in shaping a person's mental make- up, style of life and value orientation. For tracing the relationship between age and spirituality, a crude procedure was adopted. along with the collection of information about value orientations of the heads of all households at Muradi, a simple question was put before each and every respondent. "How much time do you spend daily in religious practices - like prayer, worship, japa reading religious texts and meditation?" The result of the survey is presented in the table below.
Distribution of respondents by duration of time spent in religious practices and age-group of heads of households
Duration of time spent in religious practice (in minutes) |
Age group (in years) |
Total |
25-34 |
35-59 |
>60 |
0 |
83.89 |
50.98 |
14.28 |
61.72 |
<10 |
8.05 |
26.80 |
20.00 |
17.81 |
<15 |
4.70 |
13.07 |
22.86 |
10.38 |
>30+ |
3.36 |
9.15 |
42.86 |
10.19 |
Total |
100.00 |
100.00 |
100.00 |
100.00 |
(Sample) |
(149) |
(153) |
(35) |
(337) |
Source: Survey of Value Systems and Social Change
61.72% of the heads of Muradi households abstain from performing even the elementary form of spiritual practices, while the proportions of respondents spending daily 10 minutes, 15 minutes and 30 or more minutes are 20, 22.86 and 42.86 respectively. An overwhelming majority (88.89%) of younger heads do not perform any religious rituals daily. The percentages of adult and old heads of households are 50.98 and 14.28, respectively. Those who daily spend more than 15 minutes in these activities comprised younger heads 8.06%, 22.22% adult headsand 75.72% older heads of the households. Thus, the table suggests a strong relationship between age and religiosity contextually, Chakravarty's study of some urban celebrities shows that "48.89% believe in the existence of a relation between old age and religion (2000: 49). In other words with advancement of age an individual's the inclination towards religiosity (spirituality) increases. This appears to be traditional feature of Indian people. That the maximum proportion of younger respondent was non-performer of religious practices on a regular basis possibly because their value orientation is entirely different being imbued with materialistic values more than those of older group. But in the case of older person, the majority seemed to have felt the need of spiritualism because they were usually physically too weak to participate in any gainful work, afflicted with multiple diseases, suffer from neglect and abuse due to their dependence nature and possessed plenty of time at their disposal for devoting themselves in religious practices for earning a merit and replenishing their sins of the early life.
The relationship between age, sex and purpose of religious practices (pilgrimage) by the Tarakeswar Pilgrims is highly pronounced which id presented in the three diagrams.
Purpose of visit by age-group
Source: Chakravarti, Prafulla.
1984: Social Profile of Tarakeswar, Calcutta Firma KIM Private Ltd.
A look at the diagram 1 will show that compared to older pilgrims the younger pilgrim's visit to Tarakeswar was more for the purpose for obtaining material benefit. The adult pilgrims also visited the Tarakeswar pilgrim centre for general welfare and fulfillment of material benefit. The sex-wise variation in the purpose of visit has been shown in diagram 2.
Source: as before
Diagram 2 shows that compared to female pilgrims, pilgrimage for earning punya (religious merit) as well as fulfillment of spiritual need were pronounced more by male pilgrims. Diagram 3 presents the graphical representation of the purpose of pilgrimage by the female pilgrims by age group.
It is seen that the percentages of male pilgrims in the spiritual, material and recreational are 18.49, 61.13 and 20.38, respectively, while the corresponding figures for females are 5.89, 79.41 and 14.70, respectively. The graph further reveals that the younger pilgrims are particularly motivated by recreational urge, the adults, by the material needs comprising therapeutic, economic and general well–being, whereas most of the older pilgrim's undertook pilgrimage more for the spiritual necessity. “When the two diagrams are compared with each other, it becomes clear that all the three female groups behaved differently from those of males….As many as 74% old female pilgrims have come out of spiritual need. For the older males the relative incidence of visit for material purpose is less and spiritual purpose is more compared to the old female pilgrims” (Chakrabarti, 1984: 119-120)
Having discussed the above relationship between spirituality and two demographic variables e.g. Age and sex, we shall now explore the target group, i.e., Who Needs Spiritual Counseling.
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