An Empirical study of Spirituality and ageing in rural West Bengal
Professor Prafulla Chakrabarti, Formerly, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
People of all ages often seek to find meanings in their every day activities. Understanding the relationship as well as difference between spirituality and religion may explain and support the interest of the older persons in reaching beyond themselves, doing and caring for others and making them disinterested in mundane affairs. Religion may be considered to be the practical expression of spirituality; the organization of rituals and practice of one's beliefs. It includes specific beliefs and practices, while spirituality is far broader (Ebersole & Hess, 1985). For Swami Vivekananda, "spirituality is a perception that beyond matter there is a spirit which is omnipotent known as Supreme Being beyond which lies the Brahmanas. Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature - external and internal..Do this by work, worship, psychic control or philosophy by one or more and/or all of these and be free" - this sums up Swamiji's understanding of spirituality, (Ranganathan, 1958).
Ageing is a complex biological process. All the individual level, it represents the resilience, coping ability and hardiness of human spirit over personal, social and environmental stresses which reduce the life-span. At the social level, when groups survive into ripe old age, it spells prosperity, security and a certain level of group behavior. At the global level, ageing represents an eternal quest to overcome mortality, triumphs of medicines and technology over the scourge of infectious diseases. A nation gets the label of ageing when its "60 plus" age group in the population crosses 7%. For that matter, India has already earned such distinction of being a "graying nation" with about 7.7% of its population as 'old' or 'aged'. It has been repeatedly mentioned in several chapters before that it was not for nothing that the demographers, gerontologists and other concerned people painted a gloomy picture of the ageing scenario in India and other countries. People all over the world are searching for ways and means to combat with the problems of ageing. Religion cum spiritualism has long been considered as one of the ways to reduce the sufferings of older persons.
Although there have been a spate of literature on the efficacy of spiritualism in combating the problems of ageing in Western countries (see, for instance, Blazer (1991), Lee (1992), Waxon (1999), empirical research in this area is conspicuously absent in India. Of course, have been some works on religion and ageing (Chakravarty, 2000) but not a single study could be seen in the gerontological literature (Karkal, 1999) on the role of religion in mitigating the problems of older persons in rural areas. In the present exercise a preliminary attempt has been made to fill up the gap in understanding spirituality and ageing among the rural elderly with the help of concrete data.
The study has the following objectives
1. To examine the relationship between spiritualism and ageing among the rural elderly of different villages in West Bengal districts in order to know whether with advance ment in age ruralities feel the need for spiritualism.
2. To identity the older persons who may need spiritual counseling. It may help us to ascertain the target group.
3. To explore the potential spiritual care - givers in order to examine the role of family, friends, religious persons and community in providing spiritual care.
4. To find out different ways for providing spiritual care to the needy elderly persons to shed light on the question : How far spiritual therapy can serve as an alternative method to minimize the problems of ageing ?
It should be noted that the study is not free from limitations :
First of all, since this research is an exploratory one no firm conclusion can be arrived at from the findings. Secondly, no statistical design has been followed; the respondents have been selected purposively for which no generalization can be made. Thirdly, the statements of the religious leaders seem self contradictory. So these may not carry much weight.
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