Harjinder Singh
In India morality has been emphasized since time immemorial. I
t has been an essential part of our value system. All the religions that took birth and flourished in India prescribed set of ethics which revolve round Karma.The theory of reincarnation that originated in India only, virtually stresses upon a way of life accentuating good karmas for salvation. The sermons and discourses from the religious institutions never let go the opportunity to create fear of God among their adherents. The central idea in our great epics also revolves around ethical values. In all our social chats too, emphasis is on morality though it is a different matter how we actually behave in our day to day dealings.
What made me to ponder over and write this article is that during my stay abroad I didn’t come across people talkingmorality so often (doesn’t mean they never talk about this subject). Moral behaviour has simplybeen adapted as their way of life. In a truly civilized society people obey rules not that rule are strict but because people also deem it their duty to obey rules and such an obeisance has actually got ingrained in their psyche. The implementation too is strict but not like our country,affected mostly uponweak and poor. Even their ministers were seen penalized for their misdemeanour. Why our much- talkedmorality has become bookish knowledge for us, never practised in our daily life? Isn’t a case of ‘nearer the church, farther from God’ and in local parlance ‘chiragtaleyandhera’? May be because of our too much familiarity with the word morality,we never bother about its actual meaning otherwise how come; we have become so much tolerantin our practical life for all these miss happenings and wrong doings all around us.
Thousands and one examples can be cited from our daily life how brazenly we floutthe norms of civility. Let us start from our homes. While passing a street, one can hear very clearly the talks and screaming emerging from the houses.Some of us behave with their domestic help and underling in a way not befitting an animal. From the volumes of our TV sets one can know the channel being viewed by the inmates of the house. Blaring loudspeakers from our temples, gurudwaras and mosqueskeep our children, students, infirm and aged harassed. Kitchen left overs are seen lying outside the gates for days together for the municipality officials to handle these or kept for street dogs, who too, seem to have changed their tastes for the chicken bones. In some streets the population of dogs have an edge over human population. Perhaps we tolerate this in keeping with our belief system that everything is here through divine will. This is another matter that divine will is not in a position to make us compassionate enough to think about those little pups that are seen lying and dying in a street corner for want of food in severe winter or water in hot summer months and sometime hit or crushed under the tyres of our bike or car.Morality enters our memory only when we ourselves are bitten by some street dog. Then we give vent to our feelings that our municipal authorities are the most shirker of responsibility among all the govt. departments. And if we talk of our municipal work culture these people have always their own grievances of not having required number of dog-mangers and lack of castration facilities. They have never been found equipped with appropriate resources to maintain the adequate hygienic conditions in their localities. May be our over emphasis on morality has made us tolerate and live with all kinds of filth all around us.One can have a glimpse of our moral trust from a casual visit to Jammu University area used mainly by graduates and scholars, where the wrappers, the rubbish and the litter is seen strewnall over.
If we talk of our road habits, the less said the better. As a driver, once on the road we consider ourselves the only rightful road user, having no idea of space conflicts. At none of the stages of getting a driving license, we are told code of conduct a driver has to follow.Over speeding, jumping traffic lights, not wearing seat belts, ignoring signs, signals and road markings jeering pedestrians and what not we do to reach our destination all the while cursing authorities for mishandling traffic.
Our hills and our forests are getting denuded and barren day by day by our greed for getting more and more for ourselves.Our emphasis is on saying Bharat Mata Ki Jay where Mata is virtually getting depleted of all its precious resources with each passing day. Our moral verbosity has made it hard to separate our beliefs from our actions. This dichotomy in our preaching and practising reaches a crescendo with our ‘high quality tolerance’ in taking synthetic milk and injected vegetables, eating chemically ripened fruits,relishing dead chickens from restaurants and ingesting spurious medicines. And any talk about other prevalent vices like corruption, dishonesty, caste and sex based discrimination and rapes etc. will make this write up bit lengthy. May be our over emphasis on the word morality in the past has made us too familiar to ponder what this word actually means. I think we should ‘walk the talk’ now by bringing morality in our behaviour, becoming role model for our friends, colleagues and children especially.
(The author is a Retd. DFO)
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