CRIME AND PUNISHMENT’No matter what their future, at the dawn of their existence all men seek a noble view of man and existence’-AYN RAND

The work of a dangerous mind murder by paul cezzane(1839-1906)

For last one week or so , Indian channels have streamed on us relentlessely the story of a criminal gangster who killed eight policeman in one go who had gone to capture him on a raid.
Such continuous exposure tires one of a so trite a theme as a crime but I will take it as an opportunity to ponder over the fact of crime and evil in human existence which has been an indispensable element of Man and his society ever since they come into existence.

In Social Psycology and practice
of Criminal law and much so in literature one comes across myriad explanations and theories of crime .But the world of crime is an ocean which no one can dream to fathom completely. Yet again and again it stokes ones curiosity to understand what are the deep secrets of crime in depth of the human soul and in the labyrinths of social life which makes the fact of crime so prevalent and possible in human life .
Someone has said that there are as many reasons of crime as there are men in world.
It can be a general truth. But there are societies and their systems and there are circumstances which can almost pull a man like a magnet to the situations where a man is at war with world and with himself.

In literature Fydoyor Dostevesky is the Russian novelist who is considered the master Psycologist of evil Psyches. His novels like Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov and Idiot explore deeply into indivdual psyches of criminal characters.
No general principles are postulated by reading these novels but the motives of the individual characters, their mental universe and the drive which inexorably pushes them to their acts is considerd unsurpassed any where in world of literature.

Personally I feel Shakespere is unparralleled in crafting a villain and exploring his soul.
Mabeth ,Lady Macbeth and Iago of play Othello are such characters in whose souls shakespere enables you to have a deep peek .
I think shakespere has created the perfect evil character in Richard III who will stop at nothing to gain his ends.

But Dr jekyll and Mr Hyde if I understand its theme correctly reveals 9the fact of crime most truthfully. Mr jekyll a perfect gentleman has invented a chemical concoction. when he drinks it he transforms into a complete devil (Physical features including)and does the most heinous acts possible. When its effects are gone he returns to his old self.

The theme of the novel is that the Hero and the murderer both are within the same man.
The courageous thing is to recognise that there is also a murderer inside us . Let it express itself in conciousness and not repress it there. That will be a guarantee it will not express itself in action.

The literature is replete with stories of crimes . I will mention only two more.

First is the novel Les miserables by Victor Hugo. This story tells how nobleness and greateness in one man can dissolve the great power of evil in other.
To paraphrase a long long story very very shortly , Jean valjean a very poor lumberjack steals bread from a shop to save his family from hunger. He is sentenced to nineteen years in jail for that under then French law.
Unhappy in jail he tries to escape it many times, is caught everytime and is released when he is forty years old. He had entered it at age of 17 years.
When he comes out of prison no one is even ready to talk with him ,forget providing any help because he wears the yellow badge which in those days had to be worn by every released convict.
At last a preist takes him inside his house treats him with utmost compassion and respect ,provides him with food and bed.
At midnight jean valjean wakes up and steals the two gold candle stands which preist had put besides his bed and runs away from the house.
Next day he is caught and brought before the preist. The preist orders the policeman to release him and says he has voluntarily given it to him.To make his story more convincing he says to the convict I had given this silver basket also to you . why did you leave this behind?
Then he goes very close to jean valjean and whispers in his ear:Jean valjean,my brother today I take your soul from devil and give it to god. Never break your promise to me that you will use this gold for good of you and others.
How this gesture turned a man who was on verge of becoming a die hard criminal to a saintly character is the long great story of one of the gratest book in world literature.
.In the novel there is a sentence -‘There are no bad plants. There are only bad cultivators.’

Dr jekyll and Mr Hyde

Then is the story of Angulimal the most dreaded criminal of Buddhas times whom buddha turned into a saint.
The story says Angulimal was a troubled young and highly sensitve soul who goes for refuge to a godman to gain some peace. The godman turned out to be a crook in the garb of a great man. This broke his trust in nobleness of human beings thoroughly and completed his hatred for mankind to full. He resolved to kill at least one thousand men and wear one finger from the corpse in his pearl as his achievement . Every one avoided him by his best means except his mother who used to take food for him.when he had killed 999 persons he found it impossible to get the last man because by now people would avoid him by whatever means they could.
The man at last is said to have told his mother to not come to him any more because he will kill her to fulfill his promise of killing a thousand men!
Buddha when heard about him resolved to go and confront the evil in Angulimal.The greatest evil could not stand for even few minutes the radiance of buddhas life. Buddha rescued him from the clutches of devil to release the divinty within him.We all have read thr story in our school days.

There are too many social and psycological theories of crime.One I remember vividly is the label theory of Howard becker.
By this theory ,society as it is ,when finds a person in a deviant act hardly helps him to give an understanding of the fatal consequences of the act and use most effective means to get him out of it .It rather puts a label to him as a thief or a cheat etc . once a person comes to accept this label of society he has entered that territory from where there is almost no coming back.

One other is the Sub culture theory of Crime. According to it in society there are sub cultures within the Mainstream culture of Society. Such subcultures have their own value systems. In a sub culture where deviant acts done on society are considered courageous a criminal is admired and gets his sustenance.
Then there is Emile Durkhiems theory. According to this sociologist, crime is inevitable in a society and it serves a function also because it reaffirms the moral boundaries of society(changes the concept of what is good and bad in society) and helps in social change.(Do not try to understand this theory too much. No one gets its exact meanings )

Lastly there are our Marxists or commies
who believe that when they will establish their Utopian society there will be no crime in society.(In a great irony of human history when Marxist have created such societies in recent history they have created such criminal states that their countries became slaughter houses where people were killed in millions only because they differed from them in one or more respects)

Other than Literature and social theories crime is the loaf and bread of cinematic medium. But only very few movies explore its complexities at deeper levels.I can name two movies which have brought forth deep unconcious motives which can drive a criminal behaviour . They are ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Psycho’.

The Moral law within and the starry heaven above

The moral law within and the starry heaven above

What about the Punishment part of crime?
The truth is neither society nor man can punish a criminal act in real terms. The man and society can exact only revenge and retribution.The punishment or say the real punishment can be exacted only by the Divine.
Immanuel Kant ,the German philospher ,said he believes in the divine for two reasons.
‘The moral law within and the starry heavens above.’
So it is really the moral law within written on the soul of everyman which brings the punishment. The smallest indiscretion brings forth an unplesant sensastion and the smallest good deed done is rewarded with a pure joy.
The criminal infact voilates the edict of nature in committing a criminal act against his fellow human being and nature bring the punishment . His criminal act takes him away from the life within him , impedes his way to attain a bridge with all life and alienates him from that divine source to strive for which is the purpose of human life.
His journey takes a reverse way -From truth to untruth, from light to darkness, from eternity to death.
In words of another great man ‘The vulgar soul is best punished by his own vulgarity.’
Though in the intoxication of his superficial and temporary power the poor soul of offender can decieve himself to be happy.
Remember the words of Christ-Pity them for they know not what they do.
Who can exact such punishment but Divine?

THE COLORS-RED AND BLUE

I am not aware if there is someone in this group who is a passionate lover of the art of painting.I am not talking of the usual and common inclinaton to like pictures and colors. I am talking of that effect which a ghazal by your favorite singer, say ,a mehandi Hassan or a song of Lata Mangeshkar makes on you.

VERMEER-GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

MONA LISA -Lenardo da vinci_painting we heard about and saw since childhood

There is a saying,almost a cliche,in the world of art that some realities or truth of existence are communicated only through particular mediums. So what is conveyed of reality by a an artistic work of painting or sculpture can not be conveyed by music, poetry or a novel.
The next thing for me to say is that I personally have never been able to penetrate so deeply into the heart of the art of painting. This to me is a self demeaning statement but it is the truth.
To me my kind of music , poetry or literature can reveal ,for a moment, the lucid and blissful glance of reality but it has not happened to me ,at least to such a level,with painting.
I am better with sculpture. A statue of Buddha from ancient India can throw its vibration of utter calm and peace on me and can transform a tempstuous mood into a better one .But to my utter regret and despite best efforts I miss that effect of paintings on me.
I say best efforts because I even once joined and completed a certificate in art appreciation conducted by National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi.

I learned a lot about painting and the name of great painters of the world from East and West but it remained to a large extent a theory .
Perhaps all of us have heard such names
as Leonardo da vinci, Rembrandt, Vermeer,Vincent von gogh,Claude monet ,paul cezzane as great masters of painting from west, Jamini Roy, Raja ramchandra verma, Nand lal bose, Maqbool fida hussein and many others from East.
But the course was not all together without benefit. It taught everyone about some basic principles of the art of painting and sculpture .I will like to share these principles with you.

The starry sky – VICENT VAN GOGH

THE LILY-VINCENT VON GOGH

First as I already said the visual medium of plastic arts, that is painting and sculpture reveal those realities which we cannot percieve in other mediums.
To the one who is capable of percieving so , the effect of paintings are like what the mystics describe as the effect of the visions of god, incommunicable.
Some persons more than others are extremely sensitive to subtle variations in colors either in painting or in nature.
Lines too, like color , have specific effects.
The symmetrical balance of parts of a painting, the easy fluency of a curved line, the decision of a straight one, all are contribitions to our aesthetic pleasure.
Second, in a painting, what is primary is the elements of color, line and mass .These should be all that must engage the attention or all that should be expected to provide the enjoyment to the observer.

Christ in sea storm -Rembrandt

From this point of view , weather the painting is of Maddona and a group of saints ,or a bowl of fruit , or a group of buildings is utterly indifferent
In other words the literary or human significance of painting qua painting is utterly indifferent.
This is the theory behind what we call abstract art.
The poetry of painting is line and color , which have their own imaginative reverberations, induce a hypnosis and a dream in a way that is analogous to that of words and rhythms but that is nonetheless that of a painting and not of poetry.
Those liquid blues or yellows or reds or browns, that shadow falling here, that emphasis of mass there , it is in terms of these, too, that the imagination is controlled by art of painting.

Claude monet -The lilies in the lake

RAJA RAVI VERMA _THE EAR RING

The general considerations applicable to painting apply to sculpture also but it is a distinctive art in the sense that its theme and subject matter , in the first place, is primarily the human body.

The sculptured figure is intersting to look at as it arouses feeling of muscular sympathy and tension and repose, awakens incipiently the desire to sense and the sense of touch.
Sculpture unlike painting does not have the resource of color. It depends on line and mass for its effect.

NAND LAL BOSE – THE SOIL TILLER

JAMINI ROY

Sculpture demands a kind of grandeur of theme , and has flourished in ages where life was afforded in grand manner either materially or spiritually . As it did in Athens. or Italy in the rennaissance or in Ancient India.
It is a beautiful art , but a chill retrospective monument to civilizations that are dead.
Finally , I said above that painting doesnot stir in me those levels of feeling which I can get so many times from some lines of say Shakespere or others or ghazals or indian classical music .

Phidias Athenian sculpture

But I will narrate a personal incident to the contrary.
I once went to an Exhibition of Painting in Delhi at a place called India International centre.A young and relatively new aritst was exhibitng his work.
Among other works there was a work where a man , half prostrate and in a sombre breathless tired expression was holding something like a globe on his back.
Behind him there was splash of Red colour, predominantly dark and in lighter hues.
In front of his eyes was calm blue color in dark and in other shades
After gazing at the painting for a while I found that the artist just disengaged from talking with someone and was passing by me.
I asked him if he can explain the painting for me. This is what he said;
I have used predominantly the colors of Red and Blue in this painting. The Red color behind the figure of man represents the struggle of man thru life. The blue colour in front represents the peace and happiness he yearns for.
I was awestruck. Suddenly the colors and the painting had an altogether deep different meaning for me.
My deep intense feeling was- So this is the art of painting. The figure of man between Red and Blue moved me almost to tears.
Later on I read the cloumn of late writer Khuswant singh in Hindustan times. He had been given the same explanation and his feelings were same.

P.S.I hve written above lines to just as much exhort myself to understand the art of painting as anyone else
I drew upon a book called Arts and the Man by Irving Godwin to state some principles underlying painting and Sculpture.

THE GOLDEN BOUGH, JAMES FRAZER ,ISHT DEVTA AND MASAN PUJA OF UTTARAKHAND by kcjoshi ,Adv,DHC

I would like to introduce you today to a very special religious custom widely or I might say universally prevalent in uttarakhand hills. It is called the worship or obeisance to Isht Devta.
To point out its origins and deeper meanings would be task of Anthropologists. But I would like to state it as I have seen it since my childhood upto the present.
By this belief Various clans have their specific local deities. There are various names for these deities.(My one is GOLU DEVTA)These deities are ever present around us invisibly supervising our affairs and goading us to our good. Periodic obeisance must be paid to them by some communal form of worship .but sometimes they might be angry as well. particularly if we have ommitted some specific perfomance which was required to be done for the sake of the deity .Then We may face problems in life which we feel are unusual. If you are in such a suspicion then you go to some mysterious kind of preists who are experts in telling how exactly the problem can be solved by special pujas.
Sometimes it may turn out that rather than a deity some ancestor ,say, upto three or four generation ago was dealt cruelly by other family members(usually such ancestor is female).Her soul has not found rest. It has to be pacified and put to rest to quell the problems dogging one.
In that case such special people have to be sought on whom the deity incarnates himself.
The deity has to be invoked by some very special form of prayers by experts to emerge(if i am to enrich you with the local dialect this special form of prayer is called ‘JAGAR’ and these special preists are ‘DUNGREEJ’)
If the deity chooses to emerge he reveals the solution and it is hoped that problems wouldnot recur now.I saw first this in my family and village. Later on I found the tradition is prevalent and thoroughly entrenched in whole of Uttarakhand.
To me ofcourse this all looked very superstitious and I thought our hillsfolk are specially backward to believe such things.
But I immensely liked the drama accompanying such religious rites .The Dungrees have special drums and tongs and very special prayers which are half songs and half dialogues. This combined with The excitement and awe that any time a supernatural deity would emerge in a human had elements of a great drama. When the deity emerged after lot of efforts it gave out a terrible shreik. It shuddered and trembled in great agitation,spoke haltingly and in angry or highly patronizing tones. Never in calm voiice but always highly agitated. All this added to the mystery and awe of the spectacle.
Growing up I was more and more curious about this phenomenon. In Delhi University I once mentioned this to a fellow Uttarakhandi student. He was highly amused and we exchanged the names of our deities. His was BHOLUNATH.I asked him can it be a subject of anthropological research. It was then that he mentioned and asked me to read The great Antropological work of JAMES FRAZER called THE GOLDEN BOUGH.
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. It was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published 1906–15. It has also been published in several different one-volume abridgments.(I have a huge one volume abridgement) The book like its title is magical .It has recorded almost every ritual and folk custom practised anywhere in earth by human beings. The work was aimed at a wide literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855) and its influence on contemporary European literature and thought was substantial. It is in this book I came to know that the phenomenon is universal.
In my copy it is in Chapter seven Named as INCARNATE HUMAN GODS
It is a big chapter and not easy to paraphrase
But at one place it says
The incarnation commonly known as inspiration or revelation reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power. In other words its usual manifestations are divinations and prophecy rather than miracles……….The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is worldwide.
Describing one such instance in Polynesia it says:
As soon as the God was supposed to have entered the priest the later became violently agitated and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy ,
the muscles of the Limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted and the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth,as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed and in shrill cries and violent and often indistinct sound revealed the will of the god

Exactly as I used to see

JAMES FRAZER

Further it is written:

But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply the illustrations of general principle.
I never ever thought while seeing these religious rites that perfect explanation and illustration of these phenomenons have been done in a world famous book.
I have also tried to keenly observe how the highly educated present generations of Uttarakhandis react to these customs .Infact I never met one who rejects it out of hand.
The response is part amusing ,part wonderment. There is a sense of reverence inspired by the fact that it is a relic of those religious customs in which our ancestors believed so much and the solace provided by these incarnate gods made their lives more bearable.
But perhaps it is not belived that there is any
specific intervention by god on our behalf. All Bounties of god are available to all and after that we are on our own.It is just worship of Almighty in a different form(I once saw a photograph of our NSA Ajit Doval,an uttarakhandi attending these annually performed pujas at his village )

THE MASAN PUJA IN UTTARAKHAND
I will now like to menton one specific form of worship which relates exclusively to girls. The girls and their families in uttarakhand hills(very prevalent in villages and not so unusual in towns) believe that some ghost (called Masan in local dialect)somewhere had an eye on them when they would have passed a forest or other desolate place. It has infiltrated their lives and creates problem of many kinds. It is supposed to become real active only after marriage . So after marriage all the usual or unusual problems are attributed to it.
Again the solution is a special kind of ritual. Some years after marriage when problems are suspected due to Masan this ritual has to be performed at her parental place.
In this either a goat or a cock has to be sacrificed to propitiate the ghost along with all other rites and being so pacified the ghost goes its own way.
Once I and a cousin of mine almost bribed some of these ritual performers to take us to the sight of performance where everyone is not allowed.The ritual was performed in midnight in a forest .A cock was sacrificed . lot of mumbo jumbo was utterd and at dawn everyone returned to his place.
The girl remained at home. Only requirement for her was to not step out of house till dawn.The party of course recieved fees for all this trouble.A regular source of employment for these people.

Now all ladies in the group who have been in Ranikhet or any other place in hills for a considerable period of time and have any suspicions on this account you must contact me. I can arrange a Masan puja. You will have a chance to see a kumaoni village and you will shed off all effects.

If you have been into forests or have crossed a water stream at odd times in hills (like the one which runs at the bottom between the ridges on which canossa convent and war memorial hostel are located) there are more than fair chances that some apparition has managed to enter your life and is influencing your behavior.

So friend this was all about THE GOLDEN BOUGH, JAMES FRAZER ,ISHT DEVTA AND MASAN PUJA OF UTTARAKHAND.

MAY MY GOLU DEVTA BLESS ALL OF US