Charmed Triangle (eBook)

Chapter 1

UNDERSTANDING KARMA

The karma theory — one of the cleverest theories of humankind!

Karma is one of the unquestioned and unquestionable truths of Hinduism. For thousands of years of their history and culture, the Hindus have lived with the ancient theory of Karma that they believe explains their destinies. ‘Everything that happens to each individual — good and bad — is written, inevitable,’ they are told. People are made to believe their lives are controlled by their Karma, loosely defined as a divine system of reward and retribution for their actions over all their past lives.

The so-called law of Karma has controlled the Indian community for centuries and still does in this day and age of science and technology. But it is only a theory and not really validated rationally. None of us really knows if it works. The system of Karma is so pervasive in the minds of most Indians that it has also become an essential part of Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.

The conversation about the theory of Karma between the two authors unfolded as follows:

Vijay

I do not believe in it. It is one of the cleverest theories ever devised to explain events in people’s lives and what they experience. Of course, as always with such theories, we do not know. But no religion can accept ‘we do not know’. Yet the theory of Karma has dominated the Indian mind. It is a basic belief of the Hindu caste system where humans in misery or poverty are said to have been born with bad Karma. It is also a justification for human misery and disease — for example, take my visit to Tata Cancer Hospital where I met little children with cancer. I think it is obscene to say this little child suffered for past misdeeds.

Bill

We believe in it as a fallback justice system, to reconcile our past and present miseries and to bring some solace to our bleeding, revengeful hearts, or perhaps as a wishful, rather hopeful, consolatory win in the future — as reward from the higher justice — as compensation for our past or present suffering. Otherwise how do you reconcile the tragic death of a young voluntary firefighter who lost his life whole fighting the recent Australian bushfires? He is survived by his young pregnant wife. If he was doing good Karma in the present, why did such a tragic thing had to happen?

Is Karma only for Hindus who believe in it?

Vijay

I had a rather interesting conversation with a very venerable Hindu scholar the other day, which just shows in what ways people think of Karma. With my usual penchant for questioning religious assumptions, I asked the scholar — a well-respected college professor —if it would be in the Karma scheme of things if a Hindu, a good and pious one, were to be reborn (hold your heartbeat) as a Muslim or a Christian. The old professor was at first dumbstruck and in a couple of seconds he was angry, angry as hell.

‘What a terrible thing to come to your mind,’ he said. ‘Karma is for Hindus. And a good Hindu can only be reborn as a Hindu.’

‘Is that in the Shastra or sacred books?’ I teased.

‘Must be,’ he said, banging his hand on the table. ‘A Hindu can only be born as a Hindu.’

‘So the brand doesn’t change,’ I said under my breath. But he heard me and his face reddened.

‘Muslims and Christians do not believe in Karma or rebirth. So Karma is only for Hindus,’ he confirmed with conviction. He then gave me an even dirtier look (most pious people are great at giving dirty looks) and left the coffee-house where we had met.

So how come Hindus cannot be reborn as non-Hindus? Does God or His Karma system have a separate computer or folders for separate religions? Does it mean a Hindu in India cannot be reborn as a Russian or an American or Chinese? Well, people like me will keep asking questions. And the truth is that the people who know everything … they really don’t know anything.

The entire concept of Karma has dominated the Indian mind and social systems for centuries. As a result, Karma has myriad popular definitions. Karma is everywhere in the Indian way of life. As far as I go, we need to be very careful with Karma theories.

Bill

Why did you not ask him the origin of the word Hindu? You should have reminded him that it is a Greek name (perhaps around the fourth century BCE) and, thereafter, a Persian name for the people of the land of Indus (Sindhu) and, thus, the Indian subcontinent, and perhaps it did not figure anywhere — in any Hindu scripture — perhaps before Kabir or the fifteenth century. The word ‘Hinduism’ is itself believed to have been coined first by the British in the early nineteenth century. It certainly does not figure in any Shruti or Smriti — Vedas, Upanishads, Puraan, the Bhagwad Gita or Ramayana. So, if Hinduism is not actually a religion per se, how can it be limited to the so-called Hindus? How do we then validate the theory of Karma? Belief intertwined with sheer ignorance blinds even the scholars.

Vijay

Well, you have rightly pointed out that the word ‘Hindu’ is not even a word of Indian origin. But there is something else in that belief that a Hindu can only be born as a Hindu and not as a Christian or a Muslim or of another religion. And that is the isolation and insularity of Hinduism. This came in later after the Vedic period as the priestly class took over.

It is this touch-me-not isolation of Hinduism which has also divided Hindu society. It came from an obsessive sense of purity and superiority. A small example is that the Brahmins began calling themselves the Twice Born or Dwij.

The higher and lower castes could not mingle in Hinduism. This was not just the Brahmins. The high and low caste division was there. The Untouchables were considered worse than dogs and cats in the caste system. The higher caste people could pet or touch dogs but would not touch humans who were Untouchables. This touch-me-not Hinduism got broader in range with increasing contact with the West and as the foreigners (firangis — the white Caucasians) came here. They were called mlechcha, or untouchable lower ones.

It is well known that Indians who went abroad and married foreign women were excommunicated from Hindu society. I recall that an uncle of mine had gone abroad to France in the 1940s to teach Sanskrit at the Sorbonne. He was young and brilliant and married a French lady. I was in my teens in the late 1950s when this gentleman came to India with his French wife. My father had been to Oxford himself and was very liberal. He welcomed my uncle and his French wife. But no other relative in Delhi accepted or welcomed the couple. He was a Sanskrit scholar and all that, but he was married to a mlechcha — a lower person, not to be touched.

The excommunication ended by the late 1960s but foreigners are still, now in 2019, not allowed to enter the sanctum of the major temples. Well, I have taken a long detour to tell you that all this was behind that pious professor saying a Hindu could only be born as a Hindu. It was superiority, a sense of purity and looking down on others.

An unquestioned faith in Karma has produced dependence and weakness

The point is that, as you did say, Karma too is linked to faith. And those with overly traditional mindsets take things of faith to be gospel truth, which is not as it should be. Faith is a good thing but only to a point. It is a way of giving yourself strength and confidence to have faith in yourself or your god. But this complete, unquestioned faith in Karma has produced dependence and weakness. Every misery and misfortune is ascribed to Karma. And there is more. Many of our social attitudes and practices are driven by the Karma engine, the worst of them being the caste divisions. Another is a lack of compassion and spirit of helping because we say it is the Karma of the sufferer.

I recall a visit to a slum by a spiritual teacher, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a man of wisdom, I thought initially. Later, he started indulging in Indian politics. He was mortified on seeing the inhuman living conditions. He was told that it is their Karma. Sadhguru became angry on hearing this. ‘It is obscene to say they suffer in a slum due to their Karma,’ he said.

Something similar happened to me at the Tata Cancer Hospital in Mumbai. It was terrible and heart-wrenching to see little boys and girls, lovely children, suffering from various cancers. A senior doctor tried to comfort me, saying the smug phrase: ‘It is their Karma.’ His words were like barbs that wounded feelings of humanity.

I think we need to think about so many of our smug attitudes and the Karma theory, which is, after all, only a theory and has transfixed us to that smug thinking. A thinking which makes the sufferer feel guilty. I mean it is so weird.

A person who suffers does so because of something done by another body and mind — another person. Not just weird; it is cruel if it is God’s justice, as Karma is made out to be in popular Hinduism.

I need hardly dwell on the Karma foundation of the worst social injustices in systems of untouchability and lower caste humans. The beautiful and humanistic philosophy of Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanishad later became the insidious monster of caste. And the basis was that a person was born lost due to Karma.

Bill

As I said, it is baffling to see even the doctors pushing the unknowns and undiscovered into the domain of...