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WHY MEN ARE HANGED
caste, sex, class (as the case may be) can be preserved, crime cannot be successfully combated, however severe may be the punitive measures, or well organised the administration of justice. The more decadent a society, the uglier and more widespread are the crimes. Forms of crimes are determined by the social conditions under which they are committed. While the majority of criminal acts are economically motivated, in India as well as in any other country, socially organised as described above, the peculiar cultural atmosphere of this country breeds specific types of crime. There is still another peculiarity, which springs from the
same source.
In every country, legal punishment of crime is sanctioned by the established religion and orthodox codes of morality. But as rule, the criminal, while bowing down before legal justice, enforced by the power of the State, is more or less rebellious as regards the religion and morality which endorse his punishment. In India, the criminal's psychology co-operates with his punishment. Even if he feels that law has done him injustice as he often does, victimisation of the legally innocent being not infrequent, he himself supplies the moral justification of the injustice done to him. It is all written in his fate,-result of his karma. Instead of revolting against the injustice, he finds in it divine dispensation.
Fatalism, which sums up the much advertised
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