this is taken from a small booklet authored by sardar bhagat singh. it was originally written in gurumukhi and later translated in english. if someone has any objection about copyrights of the same, please note that my objective is only to spread the word..nothing more!
continue from part three
hence we find the wide differences in the fundamentals of various religious creeds, which some times assume very antagonistic and conflicting shapes. not only the oriental and occidental philosophies differ, there are differences even amongst various schools of thoughts in each hemisphere. amongst oriental religions, the moslem faith is not at all compatible with hindu faith. in india alone buddhism and jainism are sometimes quite separate from brahmanism, in which there are again conflicting faiths as arya samaj and sanatan dharma. charwak is still another independent thinker of the past ages. he challenged the authority of god in the old times. all these creeds differ from each other on the fundamental question., and everybody considers himself to be on the right. there lies the misfortune. instead of using the experiments and expressions of the ancient savants and thinkers as a basis for our future struggle against ignorance and to try to find out a solution to this mysterious problem, we � lethargical as we have proved to be � raise the hue and cry of faith, unflinching and unwavering faith to their versions and thus are guilty of stagnation in human progress.
any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. if after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. his reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. but he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. but mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.
a man who claims to be a realist has to challenge the whole of the ancient faith. if it does not stand the onslaught of reason it crumbles down. then the first thing for him is to shatter the whole down and clear a space for the erection of a new philosophy. this is the negative side. after it begins the positive work in which sometimes some material of the old faith may be used for the purpose of reconstruction. as far as i am concerned, let me admit at the very outset that i have not been able to study much on this point. i had a great desire to study the oriental philosophy but i could not get any chance or opportunity to do the same. but so far as the negative study is under discussion, i think i am convinced to the extent of questioning the soundness of the old faith. i have been convinced as to non-existence of a conscious supreme being who is guiding and directing the movements of nature. we believe in nature and the whole progressive movement aims at the domination of man over nature for his service. there is no conscious power behind it to direct. this is what our philosophy is.
as for the negative side. we ask a few questions from the ‘believers’.
if, as you believe, there is an almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent god-who created the earth or world, please let me know why did he create it ? this world of woes and miseries, a veritable, eternal combination of numberless tragedies: not a single soul being perfectly satisfied.
pray, don’t say that it is his law: if he is bound by any law, he is not omnipotent. he is another slave like ourselves. please don’t say that it is his enjoyment. nero burnt one rome. he killed a very limited number of people. he created very few tragedies, all to his perfect enjoyment. and what is his place in history? by what names do the historians mention him? all the venomous epithets are showered upon him. pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning nero, the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked.
one changezkhan sacrificed a few thousand lives to seek pleasure in it and we hate the very name. then how are you going to justify your almighty, eternal nero, who has been, and is still causing numberless tragedies every day, every hour and every minute? how do you think to support his misdoings which surpass those of changez every single moment? i say why did he create this world � a veritable hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest? why did the almighty create man when he had the power not to do it? what is the justification for all this ? do you say to award the innocent sufferers hereafter and to punish the wrong-doers as well? well, well: how far shall you justify a man who may dare to inflict wounds upon your body to apply a very soft and soothing liniment upon it afterwards? how far the supporters and organizers of the gladiator institution were justified in throwing men before the half starved furious lions to be cared for and well looked after if they could survive and could manage to escape death by the wild beasts? that is why i ask, ‘why did the conscious supreme being created this world and man in it? to seek pleasure? where then is the difference between him and nero’?
you mohammadens and christians : hindu philosophy shall still linger on to offer another argument. i ask you what is your answer to the above-mentioned question? you don’t believe in previous birth. like hindus you cannot advance the argument of previous misdoings of the apparently quite innocent sufferers? i ask you why did the omnipotent labor for six days to create the world through word and each day to say that all was well. call him today. show him the past history. make him study the present situation. let us see if he dares to say, “all is well”.
from the dungeons of prisons, from the stores of starvation consuming millions upon millions of human beings in slums and huts, from the exploited laborers, patiently or say apathetically watching the procedure of their blood being sucked by the capitalist vampires, and the wastage of human energy that will make a man with the least common sense shiver with horror, and from the preference of throwing the surplus of production in oceans rather than to distribute amongst the needy producers�to the palaces of kings built upon the foundation laid with human bones…. let him see all this and let him say “all is well”.
why and wherefore? that is my question. you are silent.
all right then, i proceed. well, you hindus, you say all the present sufferers belong to the class of sinners of the previous births. good. you say the present oppressors were saintly people in their previous births, hence they enjoy power. let me admit that your ancestors were very shrewd people, they tried to find out theories strong enough to hammer down all the efforts of reason and disbelief. but let us analyze how far this argument can really stand.
from the point of view of the most famous jurists punishment can be justified only from three or four ends to meet which it is inflicted upon the wrongdoer. they are retributive, reformative and deterrent. the retributive theory is now being condemned by all the advanced thinkers. deterrent theory is also following the same fate. reformative theory is the only one which is essential, and indispensable for human progress. it aims at returning the offender as a most competent and a peace-loving citizen to the society. but what is the nature of punishment inflicted by god upon men even if we suppose them to be offenders. you say he sends them to be born as a cow, a cat, a tree, a herb or a best. you enumerate these punishments to be 84 lakhs. i ask you what is its reformative effect upon man? how many men have met you who say that they were born as a donkey in previous birth for having committed any sin? none. don’t quote your puranas. i have no scope to touch your mythologies. moreover do you know that the greatest sin in this world is to be poor. poverty is a sin, it is a punishment.
to be continued…
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