SPARE THE CHILD OR BEAR THE ROD!
seems to be the new axiom for the Norwegian
neo-barbarians who have unjustly detained and after a trial, which looks quite
unfair even by our Indian standards, sentenced our Indian Telugu couple
Chandrasekhar and Anupama to 18 months and 15 months imprisonment respectively
for an alleged offence of violence against their own child. It was the 17th
century English poet, Samuel Butler, who in his poem Hudibras, perhaps using a Biblical root, coined the saying ‘spare
the rod and spoil the child’, which has later been adopted by and often
attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United
States of America. Truly so, and
we have a similar axiom applicable to more variegated circumstances declaring ‘dandam dasagunam bhavet’ [the rod delivers many good results] that is also meant to work and be applied in the
course of child rearing. We are aware that some of our own intellectuals
recently disapproved of these two traditional axioms and the practices
indicated by them saying the times have changed and the concepts of human
rights and duties have transcended this constricted ancient thinking and now
domestic violence, especially violence against children, is to be seriously
deplored and so the Norwegians were perhaps more correct in this regard.
However, this distorted interpretation of the so-called ‘good’s of the
seemingly progressive thinking and law of the Norwegians, for that matter of the
‘developed’ West, overlooks the general moral degeneration in human and family
relations in those countries and systems and the rise of so many other vices
like drug-addiction, maniac acts of violence by spoilt children, promiscuous
and abhorrent sexual practices, child and woman trafficking and above all
racism, veiled or open, etc. and the rise of demonical terrorists like Anders
Breivik (more
fanatical and cruel than Kasab of 26/11 mayhem whom we hanged recently) and the so mild punishment of such dastardly
criminals. Also overlooked is the imperative need to accord the foreign
residents in any country due respect and enough freedom and facility to follow
their own cultural, traditional practices so long as they do not interfere with
the public peace and law and order. On both counts we people of the Orient seem
to fare better than those of the Occident – especially the Norwegians – who
fall so short of real ‘civilization’. §§§
