By Yashas Ramakrishnan

To many a mind, religion is the single most important factor when it comes to practically anything, from making life decisions, minor or major, to their day-to-day actions, to even their self-driven code of conduct. Indeed, having a religion, a faith in some being or cosmic force so far greater than oneself is often calming for the mind, for it allows them to believe that not everything is in their hands, and so any misfortune that may befall them, any misdeed or wrongdoing done either by or upon them, is all for a greater cause. Religion need not be the following of a set of religious scriptures to the ‘T’, nor does it need to be practicing your meditation or prayers at a Church or Mosque or Temple once or twice a week, or a day. No, religion is, at its heart, faith. All you need for faith are two things – belief in a cosmic force, a universal entity, so to speak, that guides every decision, every action, every moment in time that we experience, and faith that what it does is the right thing.

Religion is a wide pronged subject, with a variety of nuances and topics to discuss, but at its core lies its humanity. Humans are a vengeful species; right from the ancient times of King Hammurabi in Mesopotamia to the modern-day punitive reform prison system, human beings are always finding ways in which they can do wrong upon others, justifying their own violence and wrath as ‘vengeance’, or, in more ‘pure’ terms: justice. But only a select few humans have the power to dole out justice on their own – be they Kings or Queens, Judges or States-people, the like. Some have the ability to influence justice through their own means – lawyers, politicians, industrialists. But the vast majority of humanity, the ‘common people’, so to speak, have absolutely no voice of their own when it comes to justice, despite every single person on earth having at least some primal need for justice, in some way or another, be it as blunt as the man that robbed their store owner’s cash register, to a more indirect approach, perhaps a centuries-old wrongdoing due to a strife between creeds. 

This need for justice rarely translates into action – most people are far too weak, or fearful of the consequences, or too bitter or too forgiving in their own minds to take any action to right the ‘wrongs’, be they physical, mental, or situational. Sometimes, they may even doubt themselves, whether the ‘wrongdoing’ they are so eager to avenge is truly wrong at all, ethically, morally, or otherwise. And so, they leave it up to their religion. This refers to the baseline idea of ‘Karmic Justice’, wherein Karma, the great force of the Universe, acts as the Balance that ensures that no good deed goes forgotten, and no criminal act unpunished. In truth, many believe it to be a fallacy in human thinking, a gap in logic in favor of faith, a mantra the weak sing to find some way to live with their own miserable lives of failure, contempt, and injustice. They know they can never truly be given justice, and so, in some effort to escape this reality, to reassure themselves that the world really is fair, they accept the idea of Karmic Justice and move on with their bitter, mundane lives, and even if there is no true justice, these meek creatures will be satisfied simply getting mental closure through this prayer of theirs, this call for Karmic Justice.

I will not lie, there are many instances where Karmic Justice does seem to work indeed. Perhaps in some faraway city, some man worked to death, mistreated by his colleagues, exploited and abused in some dungeon-like office no better than a coal mine may decide to quit, and with that first action, all the other exploited ones leave. Perhaps in some city, a girl brutally shot dead by a bitter, scorned lover gets her ‘Karmic Justice’ when that same man gets killed under a bridge by the very man he bought the gun from. The poor faith-followers may think that these are the tendrils of Karmic Justice acting upon the industry or the criminal individual, but no, it is simply the might of the human force of will. Maybe the Universe guided their actions, maybe it did not. That we can never know. But whether or not some Invisible Hand guides all that happens in this world, people must know that first and foremost, before Universal, Religious, or Karmic forces come into play, that the willpower of humanity is the single strongest force in this world. Perhaps Karmic Justice is at play, perhaps it is not. In the end, its existence may only be indirectly felt by us as humans, for its ways of working are simply a means some use to explain the inexplicable, at least in their eyes.