EVIL, CRIME AND VIOLENCE: HAS GOD FINALLY LOST THE BATTLE? By Dr Jernail Singh Anand

EVIL, CRIME AND VIOLENCE: HAS GOD FINALLY LOST THE BATTLE?

Dr Jernail Singh Anand

What keeps us holding on while watching a movie is not the even flow of events, but we always look for how and when things take a twist, a villain is introduced, and the film ends with a brutal fight in which the villain is killed and his empire decimated embodying the great ethical message that good always triumphs over evil. I have never seen a movie in which the protagonist is killed at the end, and evil is shown prospering. However, the movies of contemporary times sometimes come up with blended stories which present victims who turn villains and take on society or their tormentors. I am reminded of ‘Deewar’ in which a victimized child turns out to be a great mafia don. He was getting back on the society which had caused the death of his father, and brought the family to ruin.

When we look back at literature, and, in particular, drama, we wonder how comedy stands nowhere in comparison to the impact, the tragedy leaves on the mind of man. If we talk of lasting impact, it comes only from tragedy. Tragedy is nothing but violence which is given an aesthetic turn so that finally it evokes a wholesome response from the audience. ‘Oedipus’ ‘Macbeth’ ‘Julius Caesar’ ‘Hamlet’ are immortal works which have left a lasting impact on the mind of man, finally making them emerge as better human beings.

If we are shown a film in which people are living a happy life, after some time, we shall start feeling, why we are wasting time. What is there in it. So, that ‘what’ which we are looking for in a film is some villain, something going wrong, so that it leads to some ‘thrills’ and thrills are not possible until things take a twist, and go wrong. If we look back at Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, nobody will read it if Satan is dropped. Evil and violence are essential to make peace and poise, meaningful and worth craving for. When evil dies, we heave a sigh of unmixed relief. It is another thing this feeling of relief is different if we are watching a tragedy by Sophocles or Shakespeare. The students of literature know a tragedy effects catharsis by purging the feelings of pity and fear, thus restoring the mental balance of the audience.

Violence that we watch before our eyes on the road is different from the violence we watch in a film or even drama. Distance lends charm, even to a vile thing like a violent death. Actual violence evokes anger, and a feeling of revenge, while the reported violence makes us sit and reflect, and the servicing of our mind gets into operation.

Learning what is good may be a difficult lesson. But the instinct for the evil is quite intrinsic to mankind. Our nervous system reports faster to malignant impulses. Still, truth and untruth, and good and evil remain intertwined and in order to understand good, we have to have an instant understanding of what is evil and where good ends and evil begins. In this way, the study of evil is more important than the study of good, because when we study evil, we shall automatically understand, what is not evil, and all that is not evil is good.

Sometimes I wonder how we dislike the easy flow of life. What we call ‘illat’ in Punjabi is ‘mischief’ in English. Mischief is the sapling from which the tree of crime takes shape. Mischief in its infancy dons an aura of pleasantness, which we tend to enjoy. But it starts giving us headache when mischief takes the shape of mistakes, and when mistakes become a habit, they become the cause of cardiac arrest for the society: that is crime. A mistake can be corrected, and atoned for, but for a crime, one has to suffer. The only reason why the perpetrator of a crime has to suffer is that he makes others suffer, and unless he himself suffers, the account cannot be squared.

How evil is interspersed in our being, we can judge it easily if we filter the ideas that enter and fleet from our mind for an hour. We shall soon come to realize how evil comes so naturally to man, while for doing good, we have to force ourselves into strict discipline, and even train our mind to think right thoughts. It is shocking and surprising too, that we need no training in doing evil, while we need gurus, scriptures, oracles, and pilgrimages to understand the idea of good.

The real surprise is we have a huge array of religions, and prophets, and their teachings, their sacrifices, and their shrines which dot the earth in millions. India has a great spiritual legacy [which country hasn’t have her own?] like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Bhagwad Gita is the greatest spiritual text for right living. So, is the Guru Granth Sahib which represents the Sikh Faith. If we go further into it, we shall see how people like Yogis, Nagas, Boddhis and Lamas are required to undergo rigorous training of body and mind, to keep their minds in trim. They wear a particular dress, and lead  rigorous lives, and they are told that they must keep muttering the name of God all the time.

I cannot imagine how great is the lure of evil and violence in our lives!  They always keep us on tenterhooks, always trying to destabilize us and cause our fall.  The paradox is startling. For evil, you need no training. You can do it very naturally. Rather, if you indulge in evil, you feel so natural and normal. But, if you are told to do good, you need the backing of religious rigour, and when you do it, it is not done, it is performed, like a duty. To be good is a duty. And, you know, a duty is a task assigned to us much against our will. How happily we perform our duties?

I don’t question why Eve fell to Satan’s insinuations. Even Adam could have fallen, had Satan tried his art at him. But, I think Satan knew our modern dictum which has been the subject of declamation contests. If you teach a man, you teach only one person. But if you teach a woman, you teach a whole family. Satan might have been thinking of devastating the entire tribe by poisoning Eve’s ears. The original tribe was endowed with Original Intelligence, in the form of Innocence [which does not, however, mean Ignorance]. Satan attacked it very cautiously. He proposed that they should get knowledge and know more and more about themselves and their existential conditions.  It was tempting for them. Evil’s greatest quality is that it tempts. Men fall because of greed. That is why, Lustus, the neo-mythical heir of Satan is shown as blessed by Greda, the goddess of Greed [neo-mythology]. In fact, when man is greedy, he can be  tempted which means he has said good bye to reason and sense. It is a perverted form of trance, in which reason is put in abeyance, and man does not know when he has glided into the glittering world of crime and violence.  Just as Truth has a physical dimension in Ethics, Evil has a physical manifestation in Violence. How we love it? Our world, our newspapers are full of news items relating to crime, killings, abductions, arson, accidents, heists and scams. They never upset us. That is the neo-normal. Rather what upsets us is the absence of a villain and violence from a piece of life, as much as in a film.

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, [the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky award and Signs Peace Award Laureate, with an opus of 180 books, whose name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia]]  is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision.