COMPROMISE WITH ORIGINAL SIN

COMPROMISE WITH ORIGINAL SIN

The Original Sin is a reality.  The Holy Scripture sets it at the very beginning, in the first book, The Genesis.  But the reality of the Original sin keeps changing from time to time.  The Original sin is the sin of the world and the situation of the world keeps changing from time to time and epoch to epoch.  Jesus Christ has redeemed us from this sin.  But we still have to be saved through our conversion, through the transformation of every individual and the world as a whole.  St. Paul says, “we are holy and yet we have to be holy”. Holiness is given and it is also a task at the same time.  The message of the Gospel, the life, the death and the resurrection is the path to move towards freedom from the original sin, towards total redemption of the world.  Redemption is not to be understood in terms of going to heaven.  It has to be understood as redeeming the world from the sin of the world, the original sin.

The situation of the world in the context of Corona virus Pandemic:

To proceed from where I left last time, let me put forward some thoughts on the Original sin in the context of the Pandemic called Covid 19.

The virus is neutral creature and it does not make choice between the rich and the poor; It does not make distinction along the lines of caste, class, culture, religion.  It affects all people of all nationality, all cultures, caste and religion. 

So, India and the world at large is threatened by the Pandemic.  India seems to be doing well on dealing with the infection as the lock-down was started at very early stage. But the none the number of infected people continues to rise.

Why do I link the pandemic to the discussion on the Original sin, or the sin of the world? 

Let us state first. The virus was brought to India from China, Dubai and many other countries.  It is clear that those who brought this virus to India could easily be called upper middle class and rich people. The people who returned from China, Europe and America were either business people or those working abroad.  There is not question of being moralist about this.  These people are not to be blamed. They were infected and had been in the danger of being killed by the virus. More and more people started getting infected and there had to be rapid action to control the spread of virus.  Massive efforts were underway to locate, identify the people who had come in contact with the infected returnees from abroad.  Then started lock-down as an effective way to control the spread of the virus.  As I stated earlier, India had started the shutdown earlier.  As a result the number of infected people and deaths has remained low compared to the rest of the world.  The recovery rate too is commendable.

The people who were infected in large numbers were from upper middle class.  Though they say the people above age of 60 with comorbidity, meaning who were suffering from heart disease, diabetics, high tension etc. were at grater risk.  The elder people’s immunity normally comes down.  Accordingly, the health department took good number of measures to prevent as many deaths as possible.

Many Indians were stranded in Europe, America, Iran where the pandemic is more severe. The government sent planes to rescue and bring back these Indians.

Now I come to the most contentious issue.  When the prime minister declared complete lock-down, it gave the people just four hours’ time. He addressed the nation at eight p.m. and the lock-down came into effect from 12.00 midnight.

The lock-down meant people could not come out of their houses. All shops, public places, factories and all the construction work and any other activity you name it, was stopped.  On the dot of 12.00 midnight all the workers lost their jobs.  Their number goes into millions.  The most affected people were migrant labourers who had left their homes and states and come to the big cities for work.  These workers were staying on the construction sites, in the shanties and congested places.  And now they find themselves without jobs.  Since the lock-down happened in the middle of the month, they did not get their salaries.  They did not have any savings.  Many had not received their salaries for months.  They had no place to stay.  Social distancing, which was essential for saving oneself from infection did not permit them to continue staying at the work sites, shanties and in the crowded place.

One thing that has become abundantly clear about the kind of attention our economic and political administration has given to the migrant labourers and daily wage earners.  The rural distress caused by utter neglect of our agriculture had driven the scores of our rural population to the cities in search of jobs.

The cities and towns where they migrate live a precarious life.  They may not have ration cards, voter ids and Aadhaar cards.  They do not enjoy their entitlements.  The native citizens look at these migrants with suspicion.  But without them the cities will not be able to go on. They work in sanitation area, clearing the garbage of the city; they work as domestic maids without whom families will not go on; they do menial work, like cleaning, helpers in small scale industries. They are in construction work, building huge condominium, factories, flyovers, bridges and metros. But they do not enjoy their citizenship.  Their children get no facilities for education, ration and food securities, medical facilities.  While they always remained aliens to the cities and towns, the cities and towns could not function without them.  They provided the life line to the cities. 

Having no alternative, they began to walk back to their homes, several hundred miles away from their work site.

This time their pain was excruciating. There was no transport facility; they had to walk hundreds of miles to their home.  The stories we hear of their plight is heart rendering.  One young boy cycled 1800 kms to his home.  One boy walking back from Nagpur to his home in Bihar had reached Hyderabad with his companions.  As they were sitting to rest, this boy fell on his back and died. His dead body was carried to his home. What pain his family members must have suffered to receive the dead body of their son. There was another man had walked a few hundred miles.  His home was just 50 kms away from where he had reached.  But he was not to reach.  He died and only his dead body reached his home to be handed over to his children.

The Story of Mahesh Jena from Orissa:

Jena, 20 years, was working in an iron casting facility in the Sangli  Miraj MIDC Industrial area in Maharashtra.  He was earning Rs. 15,000.00 a month.  After the lockdown was announced his company was closed for three months.  He did not have money to continue to pay the rent and feed himself for three months. He was left with just Rs. 3,000\.  He waited for a week.  There was no hope for him in Sangli.    He thought it wise and set out on the cycle to his home, 1,700 kms from Sangli, to Badasuari village in Jajpur in Odisha.  “All of a sudden, I decided to go back home to Badasuari village in Jajpur by cycle.  It was a matter of survival.  On August 1, I set out.  Though I did not have a map, I remembered the names of the major railway stations during my train journey here”.

On the week long cross country ride, Mr. Jena made most of the cool, predawn hours, cycling till lunch before taking a break.  He would stop at the few, still open dhabas for bath, lunch and a nap before getting back on the cycle.  “I was averaging 200 kms per day”, he said.  He reached Jajpur late on April 7 only to be stopped by villagers, who were reluctant to allow him in without checkup.  They informed the district administration, and he was sent to a quarantine centre at a school in Bichitrapur.

Munna Kumar:

Munna Kumar, 35 years of age, of Muzaffarpur in Bihar was employed as a construction worker in Gurugram, the millennium city with gleaming skyscrapers, shopping malls, upscale eateries and night clubs.

The night Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a three-week lockdown, Kumar’s employer gave him the marching orders.  With no money to pay the rent in his slum cluster, he had no option but to return to his village with his meagre saving.

“My employer treated me badly.  I will not go back to Gurugram even if I have to die of hunger.  I will do so in my village”, Kumar said, revealing the trauma that will remain imprinted for as long as he lives.

Baleshwar Das:

Baleshwar Das, 45 years of age, comes from Bihar’s Madhubani district.  He was employed with a leather products factory in New Delhi.  With the factory shut, he along with 6 others began to reach their homes at least 600 kms away.  Das said he would return to his workplace the moment the lockdown is lifted as, “my life’s savings are still with my employer.”  Isn’t this is a good remark on Jan Dhan Yojana of Mr. Modi?  Das had no chance to open a Jan Dhan account to put his “life’s savings”, and remain a free wage labourer.   It is reverse case of bonded labour.  Instead of employer giving loan to the labourers and keep them bonded the employer keeps labourers money with himself to keep the labourers in bondage.

This is not the first time that the migrant labourers had to desperately return to their villages.  When demonetization was announced, the government had taken cash out of the market.  More than 80% of our economy function on cash transaction. The informal economy had completely collapsed.

The more serious issue I want to come to is the manner in which the government went about during this pandemic. 

Government sent aeroplanes to bring back our people stranded in the foreign countries.  But they could not organized transport for the migrant labourers to reach their home states.  To add insult to injuries the police took to lathi charge the people who were going back walking on the road.  Some were forced to do frog walk as a punishment for coming out on the road.  The maximum number of police force in India comes from the rural and the poor section.  These people had forgotten their past and behaved like brutes, flogging the miserable migrant labourers as if they were cattle.

The UP government sent buses to bring thousands of students who had gone to Kota, Rajasthan to give IIT entrance test.  Of course, these people did not come from the category of the poor migrant workers.

The main point that I want to make here is that this is an Original sin, the sin of the world. 

None of us individually are responsible for this sorry state of affair.  But the situation is in human.  Such things keep happening again and again.  Our history, the history of our nation is the history of brutality meted out to the weakest.

I had seen on the main alter of a church in Kerala an inscription on either side of the crucifix, “Be Little and Serve the Little.” It was an indication of what it is to be a Christian.  It is what Jesus told his apostles, just before he died, “Wash one another’s feet”.  This is the path to fight against the original sin.

When we make a confession we ask for forgiveness for ‘what we have done and what we have failed to do’.  But of course, we believe that in the situation narrated above we do not have anything to do.  Many have donated to feed the migrant workers, many have arranged to shelter the migrant workers and given them food.  This is highly commendable work and we have to solute these generous souls for doing this. 

But the main issue is not that the migrant labourers are shelter less or hungry.  The issue is that we are living in an unjust system.  The government has kept huge amount of money to build new parliament building.  The Government has sanctioned huge amount of money to build a bullet train from Mumbai to Ahmadabad, the two largest hotspots of corona virus.  Government will give huge bail out package for the big industries to tide over the crisis caused by this shutdown.

Already Niranjan Hiranandini, the president of the Industry body of real estate developers has already made it clear that they would need $ 200 billion, with the ability to go up to $ 300 billion.  He says they would require $ 100 billion immediately and then after four months another $ 100 billion and after 8 months the third installment of $ 100 billion.  $ 300 billion would mean Rs. 22.89 lakh crore.  This is indeed a mind-blowing figure for India to cater to.  Where will this money come from?

This request comes from Niranjan Hiranandini.  Surely there will be many more coming the government with begging bowls.

Now there are a few questions come to my mind.  No 1, who are the people who borrow from the bank huge amount in loan and fail to pay, willfully, most of the time.  We have heard of huge amount of NPAs, (non-performing assets) with the bank.  The most of the non-performing assets have been declared as bad loans and written off.  This is an annual feature with the banks.  Vijai Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Chausky, to mention a few, have escaped our country with huge amount of money borrowed from the bank in fraudulent manner and sitting pretty in overseas countries.

We have been made to believe that these industrialists, capitalists are the saviours of the world.  If the poor have to be out of poverty, they should get employment with these capitalists. Hence the government has to hand over its wealth in the hands of these capitalist class and waits for the poor to benefit from them through the process of trickling down effect.

When we find ourselves in this unjust and in human, sinful situation what are thoughts? Do we ask the Lord what He would like us to do; what we should do?  We regularly go to make our confession to the priest.  We confess our sins.  But what sins?  We never confessed that we have failed to do anything about the injustice in our society; that we have failed to stand up with the poor for justice.  The priest too never asks us if we have failed to bring justice to the oppressed.  Richard Rohr puts it as, “Vast majority of the Catholic confessions have to do with pragmatic problem solving.  The ‘supposed sins’ that divert our attention from the real evil that is destroying our society.  The present practice actually trivializes the immensity and urgency of our moral need.”  

We are not the creators of the original sin.  We may contribute to the existing sin of the world.  But we do not do anything to do away with this sin of the world.  We come to an understanding about it.  We develop theories to explain away the sin of the world.  We live in peace by making compromise with “the sin of the world”.

THE SIN OF THE WORLD

THE ORIGINAL SIN

The book of Genesis tells us that the original sin came into the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve.  This concept of Original sin indicates one important thing.  By disobedience the humans broke the relationship with God.  Further they wanted to be like god, a desire to replace God by one’s own self.  There may be more and better reflections on the meaning of disobeying God. 

Why was God so strange that he wanted Adam and Eve not to eat the ‘fruit of the tree’.  There is some thing deeper in it than we can understand from the plain text.

It is clear that the sin came into the world through human beings and there no second god or god like ‘god of evil’ who brought sin into the world.  God is one and he is good. No evil can come from God.  It is due to human folly that the sin came into the world.  Human beings are responsible for the Original sin.

Why is it called original? Because, any one individual is not responsible for the original sin. It is original because it has become inherent in the history of development, history of mankind.

Original sin is not one single act but it is an evolution, creation over a long period of time. It is an evolution of a situation.   You can call it “A Situation of Sin”, “a sin of the world”.

Original sin is a situation in which we are born and find ourselves in.  We are individually nor responsible for this situation.  We have not created this situation.  But we have contributed to the situation by being part of the situation, going along with the situation, committing sin and adding to the situation.

I have with me on example to illustrate this “situation of Sin”.  It is, for example, “CAPITALISM” as far as the present epoch is concerned.  We are living in the capitalist world, capitalist situation.

In capitalist situation there is private ownership of the productive assets, land, water, money capital, and the means of production.  The private owner who owns the productive assets invests his money capital and employs the workers who have no ownership over what the capitalists own.  The workers own their capacity, energy and skill to work, and they are called workers.  The society is divided into the capitalists who own and the working people who only work and produce.  Since the capitalists own the means of production, they take away what is produce by the workers.  They pay the workers wages. The capitalists sell the product and recover what they have invested and over and above that they get profit, excess value that the value they had initially invested. (There are more sophisticated explanations to each of these categories. For our present purpose this suffices.)

The capitalists earn so much of profit that there remains a huge amount of surplus over their initial investments.  They spend part of this for their luxurious life.  A part of their profit, much greater part than what they have themselves consumed they again invest in their capital and enlarge their capital.  Over a period of time their capital becomes large, multiple times bigger that what they had initially invested. Their living style too get sophisticated. Mukesh Ambani builds a huge mansion in Mumbai, with a swimming pool inside and a helipad above.  The Rich become RICHER.

The Workers get only wages. Wages are called the cost of living of the workers and their families. The workers spend their wages to look after their families: house, food, education of the children and medicine in times of sickness.  The workers may save some part of their wages but it is nothing more than what they require in times of emergencies. His children also become wage labourers (workers).  Some of them remain unemployed. Strictly speaking the y do not improve their situation.  They get older and poorer.

It is said “a silk worm spins silk all its life and at the end it becomes a butterfly”.  Silk worm through its life activity reaches a higher stage of existance.  But the worker remains worker.  A sericulture farmer takes the cocoon spinned by the silk worm.  In order to harvest silk from the cocoon he puts the cocoon with the worm in side in boiling hot water.  He kills the worm inside the cocoon, which was in the process of becoming a butter fly.  It is only in that process alone that the farmer will get long yarn of silk so that it can be woven into beautiful saries, which the delicate women will wear and look pretty for men to enjoy them.

The story of the worker is not the story of the silk worm which through its life activity becomes a butterfly, a higher level of existence.  But it is like the story of the silk worm owned by the farmers, which goes in the boiling water to take long strand of silk from the cocoon. Worker dies as a worker.  In his life process he makes the capitalist wealthy and bigger and bigger capitalist.

The story of the capitalist is the story of Mr. Ambani, who becomes one of the richest men in the world and builds a house with swimming poor in side and helipad above.

Julius Nyerere, the former president of Tanzania once said, “When it rains the water from the driest region ultimately goes to the sea where there is plenty of water.  It is a natural process. Similary, in the capitalist society the wealth of the poor nations and poor people goes into the hands of the rich people and rich nations, who already have a lot of wealth.  This happens through the natural functioning of the economic and political system that we have created.”

We rarely understand the parable of the ten gold coins that Jesus gave in the gospel of Luke 19:11- 27. (Luckily just I open the Bible now and I put my finger on this page. Please read this parable and save me the trouble of narrating that here.) “The ‘noble man’ went to a distant country to acquire another kingdom for himself”. He called ten servants and gave them ten gold coins to trade and make more money. The conclusion is “those who have much more will be given to them. Those who have nothing whatever they have will be taken away from them and given to them who already have”.

Jesus is talking in the context of Jewish society.  Jewish kings did not wage war on another kingdom to capture their kingdom.  It was considered sin to make profit out of one’s business.  Here, a “Noble man” goes to get another kingdom for himself and while he is away, he wants his servants to make more money for him.  And he orders, to those who have more will be given more and those who do not have, even what they have will be taken away from them and given to those who already have.  We should be wise enough to understand the parable in the Jewish and Christian spirituality.  This parable is condemnation of the society that goes along the lines of the “KING”.

Now I am holy man and a capitalist and I decide to run my business in the ways of God.  I will not make profit or share my profit with the workers.  In the next round of production, I will start at the same level as my first cycle.  I will have not money left from my profit to reinvest into capital, expand my production, introduce latest technology, produce better quality goods and cheaper goods and make super profit.  But all the others capitalist will do this.  At the end I will be thrown out of production as my product will not match the quality and cheap cost of the other capitalists.

But if I want to be a capitalist, I should be like everybody else.  I am compelled to accumulate profit, expand my production and make super profit for my survival as a capitalist.  I have no freedom to be a “holy capitalist”.  If I want to remain a capitalist I will have to go by the ways of the capitalists’ world.

Sidharth opted out of the kingship and became Goutham. His way was that of a sanyasi. Beg and live with bare necessities. He was like a Baloo in the Jungle book singing and dancing and living with bare necessities.

Joachim and Anne opted out of the normal run of the society and lived like Goutham with bare necessities and brought Mary up with that spirituality.  Mother Mary was out of the system, she was free from the situation of sin.  Born outside the original sin.

Jesus gave a drastically a new way of life for us.  The weak will be strong, the last will be the first, master should wash the feet of his slaves (there should be not master slave relationship, no big and small categories). Break your life give your life so that the world may live.  Jesus instituted a “New Society, a New Jerusalem” where people were called to live by dying, grow by breaking and giving to others. The last supper was the beginning. He commanded to “do this in his name and memory”. We have to do a soul-searching reflections on the command of Jesus.

Soon after the resurrection the disciples of Jesus sold all they had and held everything in common.  No body lacked anything. Everybody had enough for their need.

When I spoke about confession and confessors diverting our attention from the main issue that destroys the social fabric of our society and speak about sing in a very trivial form.  What is needed is transformation of one self and of our society.  Work to create eucharistic community, not sitting in the church building but by shedding blood on the alter of transformation.