Hari Bol....
18. Listen to Heart – Sow No Seed Rather Sow Bad Seed…
In the evening I was in the garden which was full. I would find some having brisk walking, some were walking casually, some sitting and chatting, children were running around and playing. There was a good breeze and few drops of rain also started. Slowly I observed that only few of us were left. I went and sat on a bench under a tree. I could observe garden was full of flowers. I was thanking God for this. It realized I should also be thankful to gardeners also. The gardener gives all the inputs to the plants and makes the root strong so we are able to get good flowers and fruits.
In the similar way the roots of the family also needs to be strong. When I say strong I don’t mean financially strong. According to me financial aspect is the last. I mean strong by traditions with core values. The core values can be achieved from parents, elders, teachers and complete society. If the core values are not pumped in well it will result into a bad person which will result to bad society in the similar way if the plants are not fed properly it will not give good fruits. Our human body system also works on the same principle. Heart pumps the pure blood which is purified by kidneys. The way functioning of heart is important in same way society is important is which full of values and tradition.
I was going through an article about Phoolan Devi who was known as Bandit Queen. I would like to share some portion of the article so we can understand the way family is destroyed with it culture which further leads to all negatives when Adharma (Impiety) starts clouding the society. Had the principle of Dharma been followed by Phoolan’s uncle she would have been a good citizen with so much of will power. This is a case how society with negative vibrations produces so many other negative forces as Phoolan Devi.
Phoolan was born into the mallah (boatmen) caste, in the small village of Ghura Ka Purwa (also spelled Gorha ka Purwa) in Jalaun District, Uttar Pradesh. She was the fourth child of Devi Din and Moola. Phoolan's father owned an acre (0.4 hectare) of land with a huge Neem tree on it. He hoped that the valuable timber of the tree would enable him to pay the dowry for his daughters' marriages. Phoolan was eleven years old, her grandparents passed away within a short time and her uncle declared himself the head of the family. He took over the inheritance by deceit, leaving Phoolan's family to remain in poverty. Her Uncle had a son, Mayadin. He cut down the Neem tree and sold the wood, intending to keep the proceeds for himself. Although her father submitted with mild protest, Phoolan confronted her cousin. She taunted him, publicly called him a thief and attacked him. With her elder sister, she staged a sit-in on his land. Even after violence against Phoolan - knocking her out with a brick — she wouldn't relent. In an effort to rid himself of Phoolan, Mayadin arranged to have her married to a man named Putti Lal, who lived several hundred miles away. Putti Lal was in his thirties; Phoolan was eleven. Devi claimed in her autobiography that he was a man of "very bad character". Phoolan's husband raped and mistreated her, which was agonising for her to endure, particularly due to her age and isolation. She ran away several times, and would be returned to her husband for severe punishment. She was returned to her village, being deemed too young to fulfill her duties as a wife. Three years later in 1977, she was returned back to Putti Lal's home. She protested, and was returned back to her father's home. A wife leaving her husband was a serious taboo in the rural areas, and Phoolan was marked as a social outcast. Phoolan continued to challenge her cousin Mayadin, accusing him of thievery. She took him to court for unlawfully holding her father's land, but lost the case. In 1979, Mayadin accused Phoolan of stealing small items from his house, and arranged for her arrest by the police. During the three days in jail, she was beaten and raped by the authorities. She blamed her cousin for the injustice, and developed hatred for men who routinely denigrated women. When released from prison, she was further shunned by her village and her family. When she was about 15, Phoolan was gang raped in her home by village leaders (with her parents watching), and soon after, the police at the Kalpi Jail did the same thing to humiliate her and silence her. This, however, was not enough to shut her up or cool down her anger, so, finally, the leaders of the village hired a bandit gang to kidnap her and permanently remove her from the village and district. Justice was elusive and she felt hurt by her helplessness.
Sometime later, Shri Ram and Lala Ram, two upper-caste brothers belonging to the Thakur caste who had previously belonged to the gang and had quit to return to their families, rejoined the gang. They were outraged to hear of the murder of Babu Gujjar, their former leader, and held Phoolan responsible for inciting the act. They berated her for being a divisive wanton, and she answered them back with her characteristic foulness of tongue. Shri Ram then held her by the cuff of the neck and slapped her hard, and a scuffle ensued. Phoolan seized this opportunity to allege that Shri Ram had touched her body parts and molested her during the scuffle. As leader of the gang, Vikram Mallah berated Shri Ram for attacking a woman and made him apologise to Phoolan. Shri Ram and his brother smarted under the humiliation, exacerbated by the fact that Phoolan and Vikram both belonged to the Mallah caste of boatmen, vastly lower than the land-owning Thakur caste to which they themselves belonged. After this incident, whenever the gang ransacked a village, Shri Ram and Lala Ram would make it a point to beat and insult the Mallahs of that village. This displeased the Mallah members of the bandit gang, many of whom left the gang. On the other hand, around a dozen Thakurs joined the gang at the invitation of Shri Ram and Lala Ram, and the balance of power shifted gradually to the Thakurs. Vikram Mallah then suggested the gang be divided into two, one mainly of Thakurs and the other mainly of Mallahs. Shri Ram refused this suggestion on the grounds that the gang had been composed of a mixture of castes during the days of Babu Gujjar and his predecessors and it should remain that way. Meanwhile, the other Mallahs were also not happy with Vikram. The fact that he alone had a woman living with him incited jealousy; some of the other Mallahs had bonds of kinship with Vikram's actual wife; and Phoolan's tongue did not endear her to anyone who interacted with her. A few days after the proposal for division had been floated; a quarrel ensued between Shri Ram and Vikram. Apparently, Shri Ram made a disdaining comment about Phoolan's morals, and Vikram responded with comments about Shri Ram's womenfolk. A gunfight ensued and the result was that Vikram and Phoolan, with not a single supporter, had to make their escape in the dark. However, they were tracked down in daylight by the other gangsters and Vikram was shot dead. Phoolan was taken to the Thakur-dominated village of Behmai, home to Shri Ram, Lala Ram and several of the new Thakur recruits.
Phoolan was locked up in a room in one of the houses in Behmai. She was beaten and raped by several men over a period of three weeks. She then managed to escape, after three weeks of captivity, with the help of a low-caste villager of Behmai and two Mallah members from Vikram's gang, including Man Singh Mallah. Phoolan and Man Singh soon became lovers and joint leaders of a gang composed solely of Mallahs. The gang carried out a series of violent robberies across Bundelkhand, usually (but not always) targeting upper-caste people. Some say that Phoolan Devi targeted only the upper-caste people and shared the loot with the lower-caste people, but the Indian authorities insist this is a myth; there is no evidence whatsoever of Phoolan or any of her partners sharing money with anyone.
Seventeen months after her escape from Behmai, Phoolan returned to the village to seek revenge. On the evening of 14 February 1981, Phoolan and her gang marched into Behmai dressed as police officers, at a time when a wedding was in progress in the village. Phoolan demanded that her tormentors be produced, along with all the valuables in the village. However, most of the able-bodied men had gone to the city in search of manual work, and even after an exhaustive search, only two Thakur members of the former gang of bandits were found. These two men were not among those who had gang-raped Phoolan; they were merely Thakur members of the gang's Shri Ram faction that was opposed to Vikram Mallah.
Phoolan is said to have been frustrated that no actual culprit had been apprehended. Nevertheless, she had by this time developed a deep hatred for the entire caste of Thakurs, a few of whose members had protested the killing of Babu Gujjar, then challenged the leadership of his murderer Vikram Mallah. Phoolan therefore ordered her gang members to line up each and every man belonging to the Thakur caste that they could lay their hands on in Behmai village. This included Thakurs who belonged to other villages and towns and who had come to attend the wedding in the village. The Thakur men were lined up and then, at Phoolan's order, they were shot dead by Phoolan's Mallah gang members. Twenty-two Thakur men were executed. Later, Phoolan would try to absolve herself in court by claiming that she herself had not opened fire or killed a single person.
The Behmai massacre provoked outrage across the country. A massive police manhunt was launched which however failed to locate Phoolan Devi. It began to be said that the manhunt was not successful because Phoolan had the support of poor people in the region; stories on the Robin Hood model began circulating in the media. Phoolan began to be called the Bandit Queen, and she was glorified by a segment of the Indian media as an intrepid and undaunted woman, the underdog struggling to survive in the world. The very flaws in her character and personality were interpreted as being manifestations of the suffering she had supposedly undergone. None of these stories had much basis in fact and not a single confirmed instance has ever come to light where Phoolan gave money to anyone in charity.
Arjuna talks to Krishna about the consequences of destroying the family. With loss of family immemorial religious rites will perish, spirituality will be lost and impiety will overcome the entire family which would bring corruption in women and intermixture of castes. Arjuna tells O Janardana, that men who have lost their family religious rites dwell in hell for an indefinite period. Arjuna manifests further emotions. His belief in indefinite suffering in hell indicates fear of punishment. The multifold emotions – attachment, desire, anger, revenge, fear – have overwhelmed his intellect, leaving him in confusion. Arjuna forgot that Pandavas conceived the war only to eliminate the evil of the society and revive the spiritual values. Krishna himself showed the power of example when despite being the most powerful warrior in the world he went to the Kauravas as a humble peace envoy. His example of humility coupled with his sound reasoning influenced many of the Kuru leaders, but not Duryodhana. Some people like Duryodhana are totally blinded by their greed for power. Such people if they gain power can become monstrous misleaders who can harm millions. To prevent such a calamity, they need to be taught in the only language they understand: the example of power. They can be silenced and subdued only by a display of power greater than theirs, as happened at Kurukshetra after Krishna spoke the Gita.
All Glories to Lord Krishna & All His Loving Devotees….. Hari Bol……
Courtesy : Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada ) , Srimad Bhagavad-Gita ( by A. Parthasarathy & www.gitadaily.com ) Chapter 1 : Text 41- 44
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