Responsibility of thought.

Recently I saw a documentary based on Kabul which was titled as ‘Love crimes’. This documentary majorly focused on propagating the rights of lovers. Let’s dive into this and understand what it was all about. This documentary was about the couples named ‘Yakub’, ‘Sakeena’ and ‘Azhir’, ‘Nauheed’ who were in jail on the charges of moral crimes of doing/making love without a social consent.

Now what are these moral crimes?

The crimes which are related to the breach of the moral standards? In simpler terms, the crime of these couples was that they dared to love in a society where it was prohibited to love on their discretion. One of the couples was imprisoned for 10 years and other one was given a life sentence, but wait it gets worse. At the time when Azhir and Nauheed were caught by authorities, Nauheed was carrying an illegitimate fetus of 3 months.

Lot of questions were raised on this story, many were about the human rights and others were about the freedom of expression and free will to take decisions. But as usual nothing much happened as sharia laws still stood a tall in Afghanistan even after the defeated effort of ‘Uncle Sam’ to liberate her from Taliban. These love crimes are unheard of in our society but really can we say that?

The restriction of having a wed lock in the love marriage kind of an arrangement is no less than these instituted laws. But yes, the difference is that we are not restricted legally, but our societal pressures force us to modify the personal thinking spaces. Which not only modifies the thinking related to love marriage and openness related to it but also modifies the perception of people towards their yet to be life partner. 

This type of *decision making impairs the thinking capacity of a person to choose a person whom they are in love with (or approaching that more logically that the person with whom they are comfortable and can adapt in the natural form rather than manufacturing there behaviors for the sake of getting married into wealthy, and socially upscale families). I don’t comment on this that the whole behavior modification will work for good in the long run but yes certainly the degree of blame transfer will reduce in case of any relationship malfunction or happening of any unforeseen event in the relationship.

*The independence of decision making will keep a person at solace by reassuring the person that the sole reason he is successful/unsuccessful is because of one’s own decision not because of his parents/peers/motivators. This makes him an informed decision maker, but when the right of decision making is taken the person becomes judgment impaired and unhappiness creeps in.

I gave a thought to these moral crimes and moral laws, which were meant to modify the thinking processes of the people and curbing the right to think freely or can say to think in the given nature of stipulated process. The laws in democratic countries like India are not the moral laws, they are in place to modify the actions which are evident and are in tangible nature. They are to increase the justness in the society where the fundamental rights of the citizens needs to be safeguarded. These laws does not take into purview the intangible crimes (Like moral crimes) into consideration, but on lighter note we we have institution of religion and karma in place for intangible crimes.

I am not a fan of moral policing, as it takes away the right to think freely. But just for the sake of an argument let’s think this way. Which situation is better mere action is offensive/criminal or a seed of thought which propagates the offensive/criminal action? And moreover, this can also be a case that the person initiating the action is different than the person who has planted a seed of thought, would your decision change in this situation?

Let’s hold our thought there and continue, with an instance which happened back in 2012 in my native state Punjab.

In Punjab back In 2012 there were series of riots between the workers of ‘Shromani Gurdwara Prabandak Commettie’ (SGPC) and followers of a prominent religious leader ‘Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan’ because he offended the former sect by emulating the dressing style of Sikh guru ‘Guru Gobind Singh Ji’ (as in this religion there is strict conduct not to objectify the guru’s and follow only one supreme power i.e. ‘Knowledge of nature and virtue’). 

Back in 2012, there were curfews imposed across Punjab, because of violent happenings which were carried out by the followers.Mostly, it is said that this uprising was guided by the Dera authorities itself. In the period of 10 years this baba has become so popular amongst his followers that this single person is able to polarize the state elections of Punjab and Haryana. People have started to idealize this person, they are ready to sacrifice themselves for upholding this person’s prestige.

So in the fall of 2012, when charge sheets of rioters were submitted in the court, I was surprised to see that there was no charges filed against ‘Baba’. Police couldn’t gather enough evidence to accuse him for the violence. So is this an example of brainwashing people or is a simple criminal intent of a mob mentality? We should keep in mind while taking decision on this that the propagator of all this is the nurturer of the root of this heinous motivation.

Conclusion and Final remarks:

Analyzing this further the majority of the population (target audience) is not well read, and doesn't have a rational mindset and they try to believe and institute there trust on a person who is confident, clear, and conform to the societal truths and practices and survives for the greater good of the society. Firstly, the trust is built up by the well-read and outstanding speakers by using knowledge of surroundings with some splash of imagination and making things new and spicy for people. Slowly people start taking interest and soon after sometime that interest changes into trust where they stop questioning the person’s point of view and adopt the sayings as it is.  Their actions and doings are affected by these teachings and at some level do affect the decision making of these people. It depends on the mentality of the people how seriously they take these things and practice things. But if the people are not matured, to handle the thoughts of ferocity and run out on streets decimating public property whom should be blamed?

It brings back us to the point where we started, what is the responsibility of the thought bearer in this case where the carrier of thought process is much more responsible than the people who are just adopters of the same. Does the onus of implication lies on the person who is imparting this?

But this give rise to the situation where the orator shall be aware of the audience’s mental capabilities which is let alone difficult but impossible. But we believe in the maxim that the individual is responsible for his doings but what is the validity of the free consent in this case, where there is measurable difference in the mental capabilities and exposure (in terms of experiences) of audiences as compared to the orators who is responsible for the entire aftermath actions of the audience pool.