Karma Made in India - not solely - Part 1

This rather long mind-meander was originally published in its entirety in 2013.

This morning, I chose to break it up into 3 parts, hoping to make such unpleasant issues more 'digestible' because, though matters might appear different on the surface from one continent to another, what goes on 'there' goes on 'here'.

Different culture and customs, yes, but similar legal blindspots compounded by a similar enabling collusion between men and women, fathers and mothers - and the world around.

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In the realm of karma, killing 'anyone' - for any reason - is a crime that befalls the person [or persons] who orders it, just as much as the ones who execute the orders.

A Time Magazine article, India: After New Delhi Gang Rape, Should the Culprits Be Executed? by Nilanjana Bhowmick is used in this hub as springboard to a reflection on our global collective cultural Modus Operandi i.e. how separately and collectively, we co-create What-Is in our thoughts, in our homes and in our communities.

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Why kill these men?

That may spare the culprits from years festering in a prison cell somewhere in India and, generally speaking, from the unavoidable secret ache of remorse and guilt, but go nowhere towards assisting the healing of the [surviving] victims and/or their grieving families. It would go nowhere, too, in regards to a karmic amendment that both culprits and victims need to address, through any tragedy, in this lifetime.

Oh, of course, though many of us understand the notion of karma being a tally sheet not terribly dissimilar to our bank statement, actual acts of karmic amendments are as rare as they are because they are incredibly difficult to attempt. It is very difficult to live by the rules of active acceptance of what has come down and the rule of deep-hearted forgiveness while entrenched in millennia-old cultures that thrive on self-righteousness, pride and retributive vengeance.

In the realm of karma, killing 'anyone' - for any reason - is a crime that befalls the person [or persons] who orders it, just as much as the ones who execute the orders. Yes, that goes for soldiers and government officials, as well.

In a better world, in a culture better tuned to the moral ethics expected by the karmic realm, to truly balance karma and justice, three conditions need to be met:

1. if they didn’t feel spontaneously moved to do so, culprits in general, would first of all be helped towards WANTING to apologize from the HEART to the person they have hurt and/or to each member of the grieving family of the person they have killed or maimed.

2. remorseful, sincere, humble apologies must ALWAYS be accepted.

3. culprits would, then, WANT to humbly serve the one they have hurt or, in the case of murder, the family of their victim ... until further [karmic] notice.

The complicating factor is that only the victim can ever absolve/forgive a perpetrator.

Thus, in a case of murder, the perpetrator cannot ever be free of the karmic energy attracted by the crime committed. That is, not until victim and murderer, their specific karmic codes recognizing each other, find themselves locked inside a different scenario - in each of their soul’s future incarnations.

Each, then, will have a specific altruistic task to perform for the other but for reason, they will never know.

Be that as it may, humble service to the victims’ families serves as a means to amend the karmic debt and ‘soften’ the hearts of all protagonists, so as to access a somewhat better karmic status for their soul’s next incarnation.

Win-win situation = Justice has been served. Punishment has been given.

Karmic amendment has been achieved or at least attempted by all parties concerned.

Indeed, if the victim were alive, karma would be amended hourly, daily, over a period of years - as close to 'eye for 'eye' as possible - without the karmic energy of violence and death attaching itself to the 'avenging angels' of the judiciary system.

Going back to the events currently enfolding in India, any person, man, woman or child, feeling particularly ‘shamed’ by the dark deeds of his/her compatriots could similarly help ‘repair’ while paying forward - or back - their own prior, current or upcoming misdeeds.

Knowing what’s what is not for us, humans, to know. It is for the ones who are energetically concerned to humbly do something useful, free of charge and kudos, for a victim or a victim’s family – even if that victim’s ordeal will not make the headlines.

Loss-loss situation = in some countries, culprits just rot away in jail, never to be heard of again. This might be deemed a fitting punishment, here and now, for persons guilty of headline-grabbing misdeeds.

However, as ephemeral as bubbles in a champagne flute, are the very temporary emotional release of some and the euphoria of others, both tied to the mistaken belief that the direr the penalty [or the greater the financial compensation awarded from the Courts] the better the wrong has been ‘righted’.

The added notion that either might be a strong deterrent to other would-be criminals equally affords, in the darkest hours of each and every night, very little solace to either of the concerned parties.

Nothing short of a truly heartfelt deed of repair will ever begin to erase the memory of the ordeal in the victims’ minds. Neither will the memory of their acts ever leave the assailants’ conscience.

Beyond a much-needed explosion of anti-rape outrage triggered by the string of mediatised, horrific incidents in India, we have not forgotten, have we, that similar incidents have been ongoing in great number and in all democratic nooks and crannies of the free world.

We cannot discount that some 2,700 forcible rapes have been declared in New York alone, in 2011.

Though somewhat dated, it is the most recent statistic available at the time of writing, and there is little or no reason to think that the number of these declared aggressions will be significantly reduced in 2013 – and in the next few years ahead.

Many such incidents lead to enduring, debilitating shame, frequently to a permanent disability and, even at times, death – be it at the hand of the aggressor or by suicide at a later time.

It is assumed that the culture of the penis-as-a-weapon is as ancient as cavemen’s bones but, what is clear, is that this primitive mindset has attached itself to the very ink of even the most ‘evolved’ pages in history.

From the primitive culture of plunder, pillage and despoilment of women as the way to break the enemy’s morale, girls’ and women’s bodies [occasionally, too, those of boys] are commonly objectified, violated, made expandable – discarded – even to this day.

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1. 7.30 Report, ABC Broadcast: 25/01/2013 Reporter: Michael Edwards

One of the many serious questions that beg to be asked is this: how is it possible that such barbaric abuses have endured through the millennia?

Another question is: why is it that, in some circumstances, ‘our men’ are so titillated by the thought of performing forcible rape that they momentarily shut down their conscience to relieve unbridled ‘cavemen’ urges on children and on women?

When we look at who these men are, it is clear that they have not descended upon us from Planet X.

They are not mutants. It is clear that they have not been ‘cultured’ inside a Petrie dish in a laboratory by an evil professor.

These men are invariably fathers, sons, husbands, brothers and uncles to ... someone. Whether in India, in America, in China or in Europe, these men belong to their families.

“According to our culture, women should be careful about how they dress,” explained most earnestly Hardeep Singh Ahlawat, a Khap leader in India. “They should dress simply. [ ... ] There's too much outside influence on our culture these days. [1]

These families belong to the culture of their countries and there must be some very warped thinking embedded in the culture of every country, for in every country rape is far too often STILL considered the woman’s fault.

In the west, could it be that this very warped thinking is confirmed each time an indulgent adult thinks, says or acts in a way that suggests that Boys will be Boys and that some behaviours are genetically programmed and, therefore, innate aspects of the male species?

Truth: Isn’t it a fact that, generally speaking, historically and in our current societies, boys and men are ‘served’ by their mothers and by their sisters?

Doing the laundry, making the beds, tidying up the boys’ room and performing house chores in general such as making bread, cooking meals, baking deserts, washing up, soothing worries off a boy’s furrowed brow, nursing his sickly body or his broken heart, even allowing him to inflicts bouts of manly anger on the rest of the family - all these activities are of the caring but ‘serving’ nature.

It is a fact that these activities in India as in many other cultures, even to a great extent in the west, are generally performed by mothers and sometimes assisted by their daughters.

These gendered activities at the service of others, specifically males, are very different in nature from their tinkering under the hood of a car, mowing the lawn and taking the rubbish out to the street and doing the washing up.

Doing things to ‘things’ is vastly different from doing ‘things’ for another human being – for a being we cherish.

They are also very different from the genderless action of going out to work – regardless of the type of work involved.

As a result, some males, it seems, do not differentiate between accepting the caring service and support provided by the women in their household and forcibly relieving their pent-up frustrations on random women.

“New figures released by the Delhi Police reveal that a woman is raped every 18 hours or molested every 14 hours in the Capital. Shockingly, the majority of the attackers are below 25 years.” [2]

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2. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/a-woman-is-raped-every-18-hrs-in-delhi/1/125779.html

Much more than the age of the aggressors, the shocking fact is the frequency of declared rape and molestation, knowing of course that, in emerging countries as in the west, rape is by far the most under-reported crime.

Beyond clamouring for improved police response to sexual assaults, the throngs of demonstrators in India and elsewhere need to also clamour against the Indian culture of ‘eye-teasing’ - claims of harassment shrugged off by parents, neighbours and the police] as harmless.

The film producers, actors and actresses involved in the almost ubiquitous scenes of rape and submission inherent to many Bollywood films should also do some serious soul- searching for, karmically, they also share some responsibility in these matters and so do many of the multitudes of viewers of both sexes who keep this industry buoyant.

Obviously, the same karmic reasoning applies to the various elements of our own ‘entertainment’ culture that help maintain the practice of rape through series and film plots, novels, lyrics and video games.

It also, of course, applies to those who are ‘entertained by it.

It is, after all, difficult to imagine that ANY rape survivor feels empowered by seeing a graphic rape occur on the big screen or by reading explicit details of fear and horror in the pages of a novel.

It really is difficult to imagine, isn’t it?

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Part 2 will be republished a.s.a.p.