Smita Pani: Re: [World Malayali Club] The Sinners

May I request you sir,not to use the general forum as a commode of personal tensions.My intention is just to highlight the plight of those who are ostracized and to show how easily one is ostracized.In that context I wrote that left hand in Latin is sin.Well,I am not very accurate,it is left handedness that is sinister in Latin.But my point is clear.I have come across many who score low marks and who feel treated like sinners.And same is the case with people who have taken fixed deposits,taxed on the interest which is less than the rate of inflation and are treated like sinners,when they cannot pay and as a result may get treated as sinners.If you have great scholarship please write enlightening articles.Please do not treat the forum as an outlet for personal tensions.Derision and denigration are not good methods of communication.I am stopping my responses with this.My topic is not Latin.It is branding people as sinners unjustly.

On Wednesday, 11 May 2016 3:52 AM, "Narayanaswamy Subramanian s_narayanaswamy@yahoo.com [worldmalayaliclub]" wrote:

Dear fellow-Malayalis

Having earlier condemned practically everyone, including the patently innocent, as sinners:-

 (1) The left handed were actually the sinners, as sin means the left hand.

(2) Those that did not conform to the social mores were treated as sinners.

(3) The sinners were branded on the face with a hot iron, so that the people could know that they were sinners.

 (4) Fixed Depositors in banks or those that save in the post office certificates, are the modern sinners.

They give life to banking but like the forests which are cut away or the rivers that are poisoned they too are tortured with more harassing forms to be filled. They are the Satan afflicted to be branded with detailed forms for being tolerated. 

(5) Today scoring low marks in examinations and getting burdened with a rotten marks sheet, brands one as a sinner. 

(6) Today in a population of 125 crores only 14 lakh individuals pay income tax and majority of them partly on fake income as they are the sinners who took fixed deposits.

our expert in sin and sinners now claims that:-

"My intention is to focus attention on the manner in which people get ostrasized."

Nevertheless he gamely insists:-

How  many students get treated as sinners when they get low grades?Is it  right.Can you deny the horrible injustice meted to those taking Fixed  Deposits (i.e. having to fill in "harassing" forms)?

His manic obsession with sin, sinners, and the need to rescue them from their predicament seems to ignore deliberately the saner aspects of the subject.

My considered response is as follows:-

When  someone -- who not only does not know Latin, but knows even less about  the Jewish Torah, the Christian Bible, the four Christian Gospels, the  Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of the Saints -- lectures loudly about  sin and sinners, it is perhaps time someone disabuses him of his  fantasies.

All  the more when he tries to cow all of us into thinking that we are all sinners, i.e. have committed sin, in one way or another.  And should  be detested.

According to the Christian "Epistles of the Saints, Romans 6.23," every sin leads to condemnation and to eternal death. 

So, our fantasist plays upon what he assumes is our terror of death, especially early, or premature, death.

But  every Hindu, every Buddhist, every Jain, every Sikh, knows that  whoever and whatever is born must of necessity die (and be re-born, according to  God's will, unless he or she attains saayujyam, nibanna, moksham,  amrutham, merger with the Eternal Self). Death is a natural, normal, and inevitable consequence of birth.  It is not something which ordinary humans should be terrorised by.

As  far as Enlightened Hindus are concerned, death is to be welcomed as  a release from the vicissitudes of this life, an opportunity to be  reunited with God.

Consider the following Vedic manthrams:-

മൃത്യുര് മാ അമ്രുജ്തം ഗയ:

അഹം വേദ ന മേ മൃത്യുഹു.  

ന ചാ മൃത്യുരഖാഹരത്.

മൃതം ജീവം ച യത്കിംചിത്.  

മൃത്യോര്മ്മുക്ഷീയ മാ അമൃതാത്. 

അപ മ്രുത്യുമപ ക്ഷുധമപേതശ്ശപഥങ് ജഹി.

Our vociferous fantasist should get  a renowned and capable Vedic purohit to translate and explain, so as to  get the full flavour and deep meanings of these authoritative  pronouncements.

Be  that as it may, the very concept of sin is peculiar to the Semitic  group of creeds -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  It is a sort of  philosophy aimed at inducing guilt among even the newly-born.  They  teach that every man and woman is guilty of "original sin" and must  expiate it by human sacrifice.  They introduced circumcision, i.e.  chopping off the foreskin from the male penis, as a substitute for  whole-body sacrifice.  Today every male child being inducted into these  three Semitic creeds is circumcised.  Often soon after birth, even when the helpless little innocent has committed no sin, is incapable of committing it, and does not even know what sin is.

The  Christians insist that in addition to circumcision, the original sin is  expiated only by the death on the cross of Jesus Christ ("the  Saviour").  Neither Jews nor Muslims accept this revolutionary (and, to  them, blasphemious) doctrine.  But to Christians, denial of this is  unforgivable and leads straight to eternal Hell.

Our  fantasist brands everyone who has a fixed deposit in a bank, and  everyone who scores poorly in an examination, as a sinner.  By this, he  hits at both adults and youths, leaving out only newly-born and  still-born babies.  Would he agree that every Christian child is born a  sinner till baptised, first by Holy Water, and then by the Blood of  Christ?

If  he contends that anyone left-handed is a sinner, how about born  cripples, victims of thalidomide, Zika, poliomyelitis, partial  paralysis, albinism, claw-foot and claw-fingers, hirsutism, alopecia  universalis?  All marks of sinners, or unsought medical conditions?   Inflicted by an uncaring god?

No.   Our fantasist should wake up to reality.  

Sin is an invented condition,  invented by religious terrorists and blackmailers to gain dominance  over the unwary and the weak-willed.  To make the labelled sinners beat  their breasts with their clenched fists and cry aloud, "Mea culpa!"  And to  extract money and goods from them to do "good works" in exchange for delivery  from the imputed sin.

We  can understand murder, rape, abduction, prostitution, even missionary  activity in India and elsewhere to induce apostasy, being labelled sin.  So, should we put  to death all these offenders?  What if three fingers point towards us  when we point one finger towards them?  

Rhetorically, if God created sin  (by creating the rule sinned against), is He not the greatest sinner of  all?  Similarly, is not the law-maker responsible for breeding the  law-breaker?  Especially if the laws are unjust to the meek and to the  weak?

S Narayanaswamy