Despite its trivialisation in the 20th century by hippies, ‘‘karma’’ remains a powerful concept in the land of its birth. The oldest moral laws of India are encrypted in her mythology. Take this story of Brahma. Once, a blazing pillar of fire suddenly appeared between earth and sky. Brahma flew up to find the top and Vishnu burrowed underground to find its base. Vishnu dug deep but came back defeated. Brahma, as the Creator and Grandsire of gods and men, was too proud to admit failure. He forced a falling ketaki flower to perjure that she had seen him reach the top of the pillar of fire (which was in fact Shiva). When the lie came out, Brahma, though Creator, was banned from being worshipped. Nor is he, even today, except in Pushkar and Utthamarkoil. The point of the story is that even the Creator had to pay for his crime.Just so, nobody in the two epics escapes the consequences of their actions, even the unintentional. Dasaratha kills Shravana by mistake while hunting but as cursed by the boy’s blind parents, pays by losing his own son. Pandu kills the sporting rishi couple and dies in turn when he makes love to Madri. After their ‘‘victory’’ at Kurukshetra and the death of Kunti, Gandhari and Dritirashtra in a forest fire, the Pandavas, save Yudhishtira, drop off one by one like flies. Even Draupadi, more sinned against than sinning, because she couldn’t help loving Arjuna best. Yudhishtira himself, when he lies about Ashwatthama (narova kunjarova) loses his lustre. His feet, that always seemed to float above the ground, come down with a thud.The Name of God may be our eventual salvation, as plenty of other stories describe. But first, there is a karmic score to settle, which is why we have the equally powerful concept of prayaschit: formally expressed repentance. Without justice, though, “repentance” is meaningless, however sincere the spokesman. We definitely want to move on from the past. God has shown the way, long before the PM and his party leader prayed together. This August 15 and after, we want to know if Congress/BJP have the requisite marg darshan.
