Arrest fall of moral standards by better generational upbringing

Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood
President, Interfaith Coalition for Peace info@icpindia.org 
President, Zakat Foundation of India info@zakatindia.org 
New Delhi

Fifteen year young Tapasya Singh is got killed by father for roaming around with schoolmate. Anil Dagar shot dead Anita Dahiya for protesting against firing a firearm at a family function. Shahid and Shamshad jailed for Dhaula Kuan gangrape. Amrik Singh kills wife Mahinder Kaur for dowry. City Bank Relationship Manager Shiv Raj Puri duped the depositors of hundreds of crores. CAG blames A. Raja for 1.75 lakh crore 2G scam. Niira Radia alleged to have manoevered ministerial postings. Entire Parliament session is stalled by the Opposition. A political party exonerates its CM’s immorality as it is not strictly illegal. IAS officer Ravi Inder Singh arrested on charge of leaking out sensitive classified information. IFS officer Madhuri Gupta and Army Major caught for reported spying. Court takes action against cops for falsely implicating innocent men in criminal cases. Another court orders enquiry into land scam and probe CM's role. There is clandestine disruption of public peace by exploding bombs by some wayward, disgruntled members of two communities. At other places we have inter-caste one-upmanship for a slice of positional cakes in different wings of the state. Terrorism has travelled from private to state domain. Road rage cases are commonplace. For the media, ad revenue is often more important than concern for ethics. The list goes on.

We do have remedial provisions in our constitution coupled with a plethora of laws. There does exist a leviathan of constabulary presenting cases to the judiciary resulting, at times, in conviction. The media’s eagle eye is dutifully perched on crimes and other cases of dishonesty, corruption, dereliction and delinquency. Yet, the standards of public and private morality are worsening year after year, decade after decade. The National Crime Record Bureau says 59,38,104 criminal cases were registered in India during 2008 as against 6,01,964 in 1953. Thus, while the population increased by 2.8% (from 36.1 crore in 1951 to 102.7 crore in 2001) the crime mass multiplied about ten fold. The 2008 scenario includes 1,96,856 crimes against women. Out of 21,467 rapes 19,542 were committed by persons related or known to the victims. Of the total number of all crimes, 24,535 were committed by persons before attaining the age of adulthood. As compared to 1998, the share of cognizable offences to total crimes went up by 22.5% in 2008. Drugs seized in 18,798 cases weighed 1,16,913 kg. Among the persons arrested for drug trafficking more than 99% were Indian nationals. According to NationMaster.com, we stand at number ten in the world on the crime graph though, interestingly, on the graph of acquittals we are number one in the world.

The family physician has two ways to keep his flock healthy. One, wait for the illness and then administer medicine. Two, keep on taking preemptive measures by way of regimented diet, exercise and tonics. The state, including the fourth one, has been doing much by way of the first option. However, we need to recapitulate that the treasure of conscience has been bestowed by God only upon the homosapiens, not on any other creature including the angel and the jinn. But why has the conscience of a large number of our fellow citizens stopped to prick ? Our loud thinking reveals that, in order to remain fully useful, every mechanism has to be adequately nurtured. The objective of such training should be cultivation of human urge to keep the dictates of soul much above the carnal instincts. It is a call for the more conscientious members of the Indian society to now go in for the second option. We need to devote substantial attention to systematically bring up the subsequent generations in such a way that their character is chiseled to become intrinsically much stronger than that of ours. For this purpose, our every stitch in time will certainly save nine. The cliché is worth the resort. We must look inward. We need not continue to only conveniently bask in the glory of the Indian concepts of Tarbiyat and Sanskaar. Are we giving sufficient attention to what goes in the mind of the children between three to ten years of age? Is every minute of this eight year crucial formative period of life being duly filled with incorruptible pearls of high morals heading toward becoming first class world citizens of tomorrow ?

Why don't we mind keeping our girl child's legs bare while the boy's are covered ? Why do we have to prefer a western innovation developed in the last one century over time tested injunctions of the Vedas and Shastras ? Are we afraid of being dubbed as conservative or fundamentalist? Why does the media happily eulogize a baring of female body as bold and modern? What long term influence do these attitudes have on the character formation of a generation ? Why don’t we get out of the cultural slavery and lead the 21st century world from the front – even in the domain of generational upbringing ? Let us pledge to expand ourselves across the real contours of liberty. Let’s no longer be ‘free’ only of limitations of basic morality even though it is the common human heritage. Going a step further, during that period itself, the child should be made habitual of daily stint of meditation, prayer, yoga, namaz – as the case may be. That would stand him or her in good stead during the rest of life to remain cool even in stressful situations.

The basic eight year grounding in letting the conscience have the upper hand over material temptations makes the values of honesty, probity, truthfulness, justice, humility, frugality - lifelong habits mostly working as compulsive prick for the conscience in testing circumstances. On top of that, a section of each faith group will have to regularly and systematically upgrade the effectiveness of refresher doses of keeping the generational mettle upright. The current and future citizens will have to ensure that the faith groups do not become alibis of intra-national or international parochialism or political rivalry. It must be noted that national or provincial boundaries are sacrosanct for the sake of administrative convenience fitting into the circumstances obtaining at a given point of time in history but these should never get a boost at the altar of larger considerations of humaneness. The national or provincial demarcations are factors of time, natural developments, war, diplomacy or political considerations.

A German citizen today is as good as he was a citizen of East or West Germany a few years ago. The fundamental human rights of the people of Nepal or Gibraltar today remain the same as when they were nationals of India or Spain. A national of Bangladesh is no less a world citizen today than he was as national of Pakistan in 1970 or of India in 1946. The list goes on. Likewise, the intrinsic rights of the people domiciled today in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh remain the same as when they were domiciled in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Madhya Pradesh. All through all these peoples were and remain world citizens with certain irrevocable basic human rights irrespective of their changing national or provincial affiliations. Thus nobody should be treated as better or worse based on colour, caste, religion nor on domicile or nationality. The child must be taught to appreciate that the dignity of every human being is equally valuable. This aspect is mostly going by default in our academic syllabi. Simultaneously, each child must not only recite but also understand and analyze the message given in his or her scripture. That would help the foundation for a more sensible citizenry tomorrow.