Morality

Morality is defined as sense of differentiating between what is good and bad. Moral code is the system of rules that defines morality.

Traditional system of morality prevalent in India is based on "fear" factor. A person does not steal money from other because of fear of police. A person does not indulge in infidelity due to fear of public ridicule. A person does not harm an innocent man due to fear of God. Fear factor is closely ties to the "result" one may get if indulged in bad deed. A thief would get imprisonment as result. An infidel individual would get disrespect in society as result. A person who does harm to an good man would get God's anger as result. The society functioned on this basic concept following morality. The moral code to be adhered to are defined in Smritis. The rulers at that point of time are well trained and learned in this moral code and most important of all they themselves adhered to this code. People had also fear that ruler would not pardon any one who did wrong. There was a King called Sagara whose son Asamanjasa used to kill boys by throwing them in to lake. King who got to know this threw his son out of his kingdom. So people in his kingdom very well know that if Sagara does not pardon his own son for wrong deed, he would not hesitate to punish any one else for wrong deed. Every one followed Dharma. Dharma was imbibed into education of all either by formal education or by moral stories shared by elders to children or by traditions enforced by family heads for every one to follow.

Times have changed!! They have not changed over night but changed over time and slowly. A group of disjoint people who named themselves as rationalists started to question the traditions. Not all of them are bad. Some of them had very genuine intent to change things that are outdated or out of context. Others, on the contrary, felt that everything old is outdated. They started disobeying traditions and continued to base their arguments on some flaws traditional system. Little did they realize that a system of such complexity cannot be built fool proof and little did they realize that new moral code they tried to propose had much more flaws than old one. Their system is based on very simple principle "do what you like". (it may not be as crude as I said but its the summary.) The Acharas enforced by elders are being denied stating they are old rules and we dont like to follow them. This sort of disregard for traditions by the individual's like/dislike rather than by merit started to deteriorate the morality of the society. Initial concept of "fear" started to fail as people started to become more reckless. The traditional concept works only if people feared police, society and more importantly God. Uniform moral code for all is replaced by individual customized moral code as per one's like or dislike. Irony here is person who does wrong deeds mastered the skill of giving justification for the deed to make it look good. No body wants to be called bad, isn't it? A thief who steal property of others, justified it as I stole from a person whose stomach is full or I stole to fill by stomach.

There is a person named ChitraGupta who keeps counting the sins of person and keeps a record. Sadly, he is not informed about this change of moral code and still counts the sins by old system. He was not informed that he needs to upgrade his system :-) So the result still catches up. Only difference is earlier when an innocent man is cheated by another and when the result of such deed comes in form of a misfortune to harmer or his family, then he used to understand that it is result of his sin. Now people dont understand that the misfortune is result of their sin and they think they have not committed a sin.