Vice and Virtue

Vice and virtue are the outcome of mental perversion under the influence of time, space and person.

The mental perversion which is vice in one country or in one age passes for virtue in another country or another age.

Thus it is unwise to attach absolute importance to the notion of vice and virtue nurtured by some individuals at a given time.

Vice and virtue have their origins either in religious faith or social prejudices, as a of natural or other causes. They undergo changes in time, space and person.

In ancient India, grief-stricken wives, mourning the death of their husbands, were dragged pitilessly onto the funeral pyre and burnt to death.

Those who did this remained unaffected because according to the their scriptures it was a virtuous act.

• Today, however it is treated as a vice.

These fabricated religious injunctions have been a repeated cause of exploitation.

Placing blind faith in the scriptures people used to derive pleasure from cruel human sacrifice.

• The scriptures also proclaimed that to live the life of a virgin was a vice.

Hence, it was common for a 9 year old girl to be forced to marry an old man waiting at the jaws of death.

After the death of her old spouse, hymns were chanted to make the young bride believe that she:

• was destined to return to her husband after her own death
• had no right to marry again.

Polygamy was not forbidden for men.

A woman who was married to a man having a number of wives suffered a life of misery due to her co-wives.

The folk lores or doggerels bear an excellent testimony to this: “Peace will come with my co-wife’s death. Oh what joy! I shall kill my co-wife and adorn my arm with bangles.”

Even today within the same social group the cutting remarks of the mother-in-law and the husband’s sisters rob the wife of her zest for life.

The story goes that a wife had her rice rationed to one earthen cup full by her mother-in-law.

One day, that measuring cup broke into countless pieces.

Oh, what joy the wife felt. But the mother-in-law cruelly remarked, “The small earthen cup has broken, but the big one is left for us. Your joy is in vain, daughter-in-law, for my hand will now be your measure.”

Can there be any greater cruelty than this? Even when supplying the minimum requirements meanness was perpetrated with such cruelty.

The inhuman rules and regulations and tortures inside the house filled a woman’s life with bitterness.

Nobody knows how many have wept away sleepless nights having suffered tortures for which no redress was possible.

The dogma of the scriptures crushed their emotional feelings, their hopes and aspirations like a steam roller flattening soft clay. Nobody has paid any heed to their sobs and tearful outbursts.

The irrational social dictates based on vice and virtue have been a perennial source of injustice for human beings.

Humanity has always been hated and trampled.

No scripture should gain supremacy by slighting or neglecting humanity. Scriptures should be written to further human progress.

They should provide rules, but these rules should in no way send humanity to its grave.

Their utility lies in promoting freedom from bondage and leading humanity along the path of union with Cosmic Consciousness, the source of everything.

Scriptures that throttle society to death or arrest its natural movement, should never be accepted.

Vice and virtue should be defined in the interest of human values not on the whims of certain individuals.

People must move towards that stage which is the zenith point of human progress and from which no further advancement is possible.

• Vice is that which blocks this movement
• Virtue is that which facilitates it

To exploit an individual, a group or the entire society for one’s own interest or the interest of the group is vice.

To rob a person of the right to exist is also vice.

There should be scope to punish such acts.

But punishment is not an end in itself.

If punishment kills or prevents one from progressing along life’s path, it may also be treated as vice.

Punishment should be for rectification.

The penal code will be based on human values.

Ananda Marga’s social treatise states:

1. Use sweet words and inform the offender of their mistake.
2. Use harsher words to convince them of the social damage caused by their actions.
3. Inform them about the possibility of penal measures.
4. If the situation warrants, take penal measures against him. But remember, punishment should be inflicted humanely.

Those who commit acts of vice should be given scope for rectification.

If they fail to realize what they have done, they should be convinced by logical argumentation.

If they ignore such reasoning they will be liable for punishment. Only the offenders themselves will be punished – under no circumstances will their relatives be punished too.

Penal measures will be withdrawn as soon as the offenders have corrected themselves. An entire life should not have to be wasted over a single act of vice. On no account should anybody be branded forever.

Those who worship a marble deity in the dark corner of a temple and neglect the poor multitudes – who are themselves an embodiment of God – gain nothing in this life nor for the life hereafter.

The neglect of a person who is the embodiment of God is tantamount to neglecting God Himself.

A truly righteous person realizes that God does not confine Himself to the temple, but manifests Himself in His creation.

In the Vipra era, humanity was affronted by the creation of divisions between high and low.

People of high-birth would lose their caste if they merely stepped on the shadow of the so-called low-castes.

Even worse, if a Vedic Brahman touched a person from a low family he was declared an outcaste.

In no other age has humanity suffered such hatred and insult.

Rabindranath says, “By standing aloof from your fellow man daily, you have hated the God enthroned in his heart.”

Instead of hating anyone, the Sadvipras will encourage everyone to build good careers. This will be Sadvipra’s principle duty. None should feel that they have been doomed for good.

The Present Age and Human Values

At present, life is valued on the basis of money.

These days, a person who possesses wealth is revered. A person without money is honoured by none.

The poor have to woo the rich just for the sake of earning their livelihood.

Human values have become meaningless. Human beings have become the means for the rich to earn money.

The rich, having purchased the human mind with their money, are busy playing a game of chess with the other members of society.

Bereft of everything, people toil round the clock to earn a mere pittance.

Those who are at the helm of society are constantly suspicious of others. They forever count their losses and profits.

They have no desire to think about the plight of humanity.

Rather, to gratify themselves they are ready to chew the human bone, and suck human blood.

For the self-centred, there is no place for feelings of mercy, sympathy or camaraderie.

The railway stations and market places are full of half-clad beggars and lepers desperately stretching out their begging bowls, earning their livelihood in the only way they know.

They are fortunate if anyone contemptuously flings them a copper coin.

The old blind beggars sitting all day long on the steps of a bridge automatically lift their bowls whenever anyone walks past.

But their hungry pleas fall on deaf ears.

On the other side of the social coin, sumptuous dishes are being prepared to entertain the rich dignitaries.

These contrasts ridicule the present human society.

Today, those who occupy high posts are also respected. Dignity is attached to post or rank.

A station master will take great pains to prepare the railway minister’s visit. But he will never trouble himself with the inconveniences faced by the ordinary passengers.

Luxurious houses are built for high-ranking officers while the poor live in shanty towns, barely protected from the elements.

I am not saying that large houses should never be built, but that everyone should be provided the minimum requirements.

I admit that both rice and tasty dishes are necessary for people. But I shall not demand a sumptuous dish from the goddess of food until I see that India has been overflooded with an abundance of rice.