Kolkata Rape – Making Sense With Bhagavad Gita

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
The recent rape in Kolkata has shocked the conscience of the nation. What makes people do such things? The Bhagavad Gita explains that it is Kamesha Krodhesha in 337, that it is not just Kama, lust or sexual attraction is just a universal principle of life. But when the lust rages against boundaries, when the Kama is permeated with anger, anger against what? Anything that restricts its indulgence, any form of boundary, then that becomes so destructive that it can become the enemy of the world.
Let’s try to understand this a little better. The three things, there is Kama, there is lust and there is rage, anger and the rage is against boundaries and when the boundaries are too strong, there is resentment and the boundaries can be broken. Then there is rejection of the boundaries in reprehensible ways, such as these kind of horrendous crimes.
So the solution is, first of all, to establish and enforce boundaries and then it is to decrease the rage. So what does that mean? That in society, there have to be boundaries. Boundaries can broadly be imposed in two ways, legally and culturally.
At a legal level, there has to be not just stronger punishment for such crimes, that is of course essential, stronger and faster punishment, which will act as a deterrent when people know that they won’t get away with such crimes. Then that will act as a strong deterrent. Justice should not just be done, but it should be seen to be done.
And in today’s legal system, where often such cases take a long time to even be prosecuted, what to speak of, penalized eventually, then that lets people get away scot-free. So strong rulership is required for this purpose. Along with that, the boundaries are to be imposed even at the level of culture.
That means that people who do such things need to be strongly shamed and such actions need to be publicly condemned. Now, of course, we may say, who will not condemn such actions? And that is true. When such brutal actions happen, they are condemned.
But quite often what comes before that is very often entertained and it’s considered as just harmless indulgence. The Gita explains that lust is like a fire and it says it’s a fire that can become insatiable. So, today with so much propaganda, so much availability of sexually agitating stimuli all around us through the media, and especially through pornography, where increasingly violent forms of sexuality are being normalized, then all of this is acting as a fuel for the fire.
And that fire keeps burning, burning, burning. And it’s not just in the media, even in normal culture, when indecent jokes and indecent comments and indecent is a very decent way of expressing it. Very foul words and obscene to the point of being obnoxious, that kind of comments are just considered normal.
And then all of this is fueling the fire. The fire grows, grows, grows, we decide a limit beyond the fire should not grow. But then the fire is constantly being fueled, it will explode in some cases.
So that rage comes when on one side, there is a strong desire craving the belief that I’m entitled to enjoyment, and that enjoyment is unavailable because of boundaries. Now, in the Western civilization, there is, yes, there’s a fueling of lust, but there is also, relatively speaking, easily an availability for people to fulfill their lust. And also, there is a broad understanding of individuality and the importance of individual consent.
So, when people want to indulge, they find such ways to indulge, but forcing oneself on others, that is not so much done. In more traditional societies, the boundaries were enforced through just the social separation of the sex, genders, but now that is not happening. And if the women are not seen as individuals, as persons, but are just seen as objects, then their consent is not considered important.
A person has lust, they could be gratified in many different ways, they could even go to prostitute, they could try to proposition a woman, but the urge to force oneself comes not just because there is lust, there is anger. And anger wants to express itself through power, through not just enjoyment of one’s senses, but through domination and exploitation to the point of destruction of the object of enjoyment. And that’s why sometimes the very object that one seeks to use to gratify one’s senses, I’m deliberately using the word object here, because that’s how people who become predatory, people who become like beasts, see the other person.
The object, they don’t just want to enjoy it, they don’t want to disfigure and destroy it. It’s horrendous. So, such fueling of the fire of lust, whenever an opportunity presents itself, it will just burst and destroy the boundaries and then destroy the object that they find.
So stronger enforcement of boundaries and stronger efforts to prevent the fueling of lust are essential, then gradually the rage will decrease. Anger can be stopped by knowing that if I get angry and I do something, I will be punished. Anger can also be stopped when the underlying craving is addressed.
This is where ultimately purification is required, purification by which one’s longing for pleasure can be fulfilled in more sattvic and spiritual ways, rather than simply through the unending exploitation of various objects in the craving for pleasure. That’s why spiritual culture, which enables one to sublimate and to elevate one’s longings for pleasure are ultimately very important. Now, of course, people who do such barbaric activities will be far away from any kind of spirituality.
And that’s why for them, boundaries and forcible deterrence is very important. Now, what about those who are victims in such situations? It’s a very tragic situation with them and they deserve full support and sympathy for recovery from the horrendous crimes. Of course, if they have survived, thankfully in the past, the victims have been shamed as if they were guilty.
But with time, as the understanding is growing, victims are treated not with shame, but with sympathy. That is a positive change. At such times, bringing in the philosophy of karma or any such thing will simply be irrelevant and make us heartless.
When Sita is abducted, nobody asks what was her karma because of this happened. Ram and Lakshman consider it, it was our dharma to protect her and we failed in that dharma. And therefore, they go to the extent of fighting a war, even galvanizing an army so that they could get her back from the evil Ravana who has abducted her.
So the point is, in such situations when injustice happens, our focus should always be on what is our dharma, not on what is their karma, in the sense of what is the karma of the victim. Once we start going into what is the karma of the victim, it’s a free fall towards heartlessness that can be monstrous. If a person is robbed and they go to the police, will the police say or can the police say it’s your own karma because of which you were robbed? If somebody steals our lunch at workplace and then we complain, we know also who has stolen it and we complain to the authority, they say it’s your own karma, it was robbed.
If a baby is crying, should the mother think, oh, it’s my baby’s karma that the baby is crying? No, the mother should be thinking, what is my dharma? It is to comfort my baby. So we should not at all bring in karma over here. Now, in such situations, what is the exact cause of the person’s suffering is very difficult to understand.
In the Srimad Bhagavatam, in the first canto, when there is a discussion with the king Parikshit, he asks the victim, what is the cause of your suffering? And the victim says, it’s very difficult to know the cause. So we understand that sometimes in life, life is unfair, life is brutal. And the Gita says this world is Dukkha there and all of us can be victims in different ways and especially with a lust that rages against boundaries, increasing society, women can be victims.
So women need to be aware of this and take measures to protect themselves. Now, that is different, very different from blaming them if they are convicted, that should never be done. But recognizing that there are exploitative elements, they need to have measures for defending themselves.
This is where at an individual level, we need to work to correct and counter the dangers that are present in today’s society. Now the last part, where is God in such situations? Now, God generally acts in this world by empowering human agents to fix problematic situations. The whole purpose of the Bhagavad Gita was to enable Arjuna to do his dharma so that dharma will be established and protected in society.
So here, the first meaning of the word dharma is duty, Arjuna needs to do his duty so that dharma in the sense of law and order needs to be protected, will be protected in society. So that is what each one of us needs to do our part and gradually society will fall in place. El Salvador, a country in South America, was considered the world capital of crime.
And one God conscious head of state came over there and in some of the interviews, he says that when the crime, and it was not just petty crime, it was deadly gangs which were there. They were wondering how to address it. In the cabinet, they prayed, they said, we all prayed to God.
And now the crime there has dramatically decreased. It’s considered one of the major miracles in decreasing of crime in today’s world. So if individuals take responsibility to do their dharma, then and if you pray to God, God can empower us to all become part of the solution.