________________
Visualizers of this dreamland do, however, admit : "It is failing in Sociological Theory that it has rarely examined concepts such as guilt and conscience."37 This single but solid confession has brought the ship of penology safely to the shores, from the gusty winds seeking fundamental social changes over the turbulent waters of punishment and waves of treatment. Now the ship can easily sail into the deep waters of religious philosophy and in the right direction towards the infinite realms of conscience, veiled and clouded as it is by karmas.
Jaina penology is the child of Karma philosophy. The criminologists know karma in its retributory and retaliatory role. Association of karmic atoms forming a karmic body (kārmaņa śarira) gloss over conscience of non-liberated souls since eternity. As it obstructs the innate qualities of soul, karma is the enemy of conscience, number one. A human-being, with the developed faculties of sense organs and mind is most equipped to fight against this enemy and even annihilate the same, securing for himself liberation, the Mokşa. For having so annihilated the enemy, the Lord Arihanta (the Destroyer of enemy) is revered and saluted first38 among the five, all not by names but for their sheer merits ! Different religions, all seeking self-purification, are the different strategies adopted in the fight against karma. Karma has a determining effect on the events but the karma philosophy is not the philosophy of pre-determinism. There is ample scope, of course, for free-will and for effort (puruşartha) ; hence the call for fight against karma. Investigation at the psychic and psychological strata and the ideas of fundamental social changes by way of social re-arrangement, howso. ever laudable, are certainly not the last word for crime-causation and crime-prevention. More subtle than the psychic and more visible through its efforts, the karma influences individual souls, subjecting to births and deaths, gains and losses, pains and pleasures, etc so much so that the individuals cannot even indentify their real self.
For the sociological theorists, who are deeply engrossed in the dialectics of materialism, distinction between fair and foul means has little meaning for bringing about the fundamental social cbanges. Social immunity from crime does not necessarily mean in their dictionary an end of individual dishonesty, corruption and fraudulent practices since they emphatically eliminate moral hygiene, ethical standards and reli
37 The New Criminology; for a Social Theory of Deviance, p. 52. 38 Famous Namokkara-mantra of the Jainas is salutation to the five deservings :
Arihanta, Siddha, Acar ya, Upadhyaya, Sadhus.
JAINTHOLOGY / 79
