The Baul Philosophy - In search of self-esteem and self-sufficiency for a society
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrijm.2022.v07.i09.018Keywords:
Baul philosophy, self-sufficiency, self-esteemAbstract
In the era of Globalization, liberalization and free trade a sense of complementing each other had grown over the last few decades. At the same time, the society had witnessed an erosion of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. The concept of Gandhi and Tagore seemed to fade away slowly. In the background of such gloomy picture, there are few rays of hope. In the present article, we will devote our attention to one of them The Baul philosophy. This philosophy has the elements of liberalism, universalism, particularism, naturalism and mysticism. The Baul philosophy derives its secular fabric from different faiths like Hinduism, Islam, Christanity and Buddhism. Because of this, the Baul philosophy was hailed by Tagore as the syncretistic tradition of Bengal. Thus, here we do research of an indigenous philosophy to regain the self-esteem and self-sufficiency of our own society.
References
Gandhi asserted that nature produces enough for our wants, and if only everybody took for him/herself and nothing more, there would be no people dying of starvation in this world (Kripalani, 1965: 130)
The real history of our country bears testimony to the devotion for synthesis which has been shared by common people as the innermost truth in their emotional depths. This devotion can be located among the Bauls their syncretistic tradition as a common heritage of both Hindus and Muslims... This confluence is the real reflection of Indian civilization. This inspiration...has been relentlessly at work in the depths of the village milieu of Bengal.
R Tagore, Introduction to Mohammad Mansuruddin Haramani; Lok Sangit Sangraha(Calcutta, University of Calcutta Press, 1942)pp ix-xii.
Sustaining Local Lifestyle Through Self-Reliance: Core Principles Dora Marinova, Amzad Hossain and Popie Hossain-Rhaman, Wooltorton, S. and Marinova, D. (Eds) Sharing wisdom for our future. Environmental education in action: Proceedings of the 2006 Conference of the Australian Association of Environmental Education.
Edward C Dimmock. The place of Hidden Moon-Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava Sahajiya Cult of Bengal, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1968, pp280f
Shahshibhusan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, 1969, p160-161.
R. N. Tagore. The religion of Man, p. 110
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This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).