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CRIME AND KARMA
tained by coercion and repression. But the pro cess of social dissolution cannot be arrested. Prisons present a true picture of the situation in the country.
How does such a precarious system still stand ? The answer is found in the mentalityphilosophy of life, if you please-of the victims of the system. The uniermined systein is guaranted not so much by political coercion as by spiritual oppression. The fundamcntal guarantee is provided by cultural traditions which constitute a secure foundation of the political order of repressive laws. The law of karma reinforces the laws of the Imperialist State. The belief in providential preordination serves as the safety-valve for the inaintenance of the decayed politico-economic order of colonial exploitation, superimposed upon feudalpatriarchal social relations.
This is not the first time in the history of India that fatalism or religious prejudice on the part of the masses is assuring continued existence of a bankrupt socio-political system. In the “Golden Age" of ancient India, the masses also starved, and suffered from all sorts of misery. There is plenty of evidence to this cffcct to be found in the Mahabharat, for instance.
Barahamihir, for example, describes a conversation between two men in a sad plight. One, voicing the spirit of revolt, naturally engendered by intolerable oppression, says : “We are suffer
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