Why I believe in reincarnation

Somewhere in a barren, sun-beaten countryside, a little boy—hardly seven years old—works 14 hours a day mostly by a hot brick kiln so that he can get a meal and Rs. 10 a day. At another place, a boy, still younger, chops wood in the hot sun in the backyard of a small tea shop—so that he can earn at least his own bread and not be a burden to his family. Children who are just about eight or nine years work long hours in small rubber units, handling corrosive material with their bare hands—and they are paid for a month less than what you or I earn in a day.

No one tells these children management mantras on tips on how to be successful in life, how to improve your personality and interactive skills, how to become thought leaders, or how to achieve career goals. In fact, they hardly have any goals, any dreams, or any life at all. For, unlike us, who are ambitious and refuse to be complacent with just being engineers or middle level managers drawing paltry five or six digit salaries (and devote ourselves fully to our own lives and careers), these are children God hated even before He created them; why, they were made without even the capacity to aspire for anything!

These children bear out an unpleasant, shameful truth about us—that we are the beneficiaries of some blatant injustice… some divine injustice, some cosmic sadism: an injustice we prefer not to analyze. And we owe our sophisticated positions to that unreasonable discrimination by the Gods. By that we are in a position to seek professional success, expand our social circles, why, even speak of civility or righteousness. If we hear that we actually deserve much more and that there are sigma techniques, management regimens and all that will bring out the best in us, we are eager, enthusiastic about them. Yes, we have the power to slither to the top of some corporate gutter, we have the power to write and speak the language of the masters who had made slaves of our ancestors, the refinement to express our exasperation through words like ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ instead of using their regional equivalents such as @#$% or &*$@, using which would make us pariahs! We have the power to earn more and more and more even while those God forsaken children toil day in and day out for a meal.

I am not against people who dream of and want to increase their wealth or foray ahead along their career paths; but I just cannot understand why some people are in a position to do all these, while others are not. Circumstances? But who is responsible for it? Why does a child who has done no wrong in this life suffer? Why are some people who have done nothing really good blessed with circumstances that are conducive to achieving much more than what is required for a comfortable life? It is this question that makes me doubt the sanctity of the Gods even when I stand inside the most sacred temple, gets my goat when they call him ‘my merciful lord’ or prostrate before him in routine prayers.

The only possible explanation I find for this injustice in creation is the theory of reincarnation. It vindicates my Gods, my concept of God…as an entity that is the benevolent creator, the father of entire mankind. Your suffering is not the inequity of the Gods, but your own making.

If this has nothing to do with this life, has it something to do with previous lives? What sin had that ten-year old boy who was burnt to death in Aligarh do in this life? Why was that seven year old thief brutally assaulted by a sadistic mob of adult brutes in Culcutta? Was he actually even capable of committing any crime? Why was a ten-year old boy shot dead by two drunken Haryana police thugs who flaunted the power of their pistols by shooting into his little heart? Where was the merciful creator then, if at all he were merciful? Isn’t God a bloody SOB? A bully, a brute who does not deserve even the contempt of man because that too would be too little? It is plain that the victims have done nothing sinful in this life. Yet they suffered and no God came to their rescue. How can you still call God merciful, just, or kind? If you do not believe in ‘past lives’ and sins of past lives, what other theory do you have to vindicate your Gods? How do you defend them? Or what else can explain this? If you have any explanation, do let me know, my dear friend.

And now, even if reincarnation might explain the injustice we see around and vindicate our Gods, is it fair to be punished in this life for some sins of the past? What crude justice!

Yes, I doubt the godliness of the Gods…and right from that moment, I see man as a horror.


V K Rajan