| |
The materials of the present study are based primarily on empirical investigations. Secondary data has also been used to give a quantitative flavour to the qualitative materials. The primary data include : age, sex, marital status, economic condition, medicare facilities, religious activities of the older persons belonging to the villages - Krishanganj in Nadia and Muradi in Purulia. From the religious leaders, conception about religion, spirituality and relationship with ageing as well as views on the role of spirituality in solving the problems of the elderly have been collected. The secondary data obtained from the Muradi village in Purulia comprise age of the heads of households and their opinion about the importance of religion in their life. Data from Tarakeswar in Hooghly include age, sex and purpose of visit by the Tarakeswar bound pilgrims. Methodologically, this study adopted participant observation, interview case study and life-history for collecting primary data. Questionnaire - guide, field notes and tape - recorder ware used. The fieldwork was carried out mostly by the principal investigator, intermittently covering a period of about 6 months in 1999.
From field investigation it appeared that the elderly people look for answers to why they are ill. Often they search for moral significance to their illness and hope that religious doctrines will help to ease their sufferings. Some may look for spiritual guidance also to assist accepting new roles in the family as 'dependent'. In-depth studies studies conducted among a number of deprecated elderlyat Krishnaganj revealed that their value in life changes with illness, their horizon gets smaller and smaller and bed becomes their domain. In Purulia, village people often attributed some diseases like leprosy, infertility of women, sannyas ( cerebral stroke ) etc. to the sins the affected persons committed in their past life. Usually, when a rural elderly afflicted with multiple chronic diseases like Asthma, Blood pressure, Diabetes, Cancer etc. negative thinking set in resulting in a lack of confidence, suffer from sadness, sleep disturbance, decreased activity, lack of internet and ability to make any concrete decision. In these cases, the older persons believed that spiritual counselling could give them necessary strength to accept their illness calmly as a pre-ordained matter. However, we would discuss about it in details later. Let us now turn to the first objective of the study.
|
|
