Anita Ezung
In the year 2004, leopards of the national park of Mumbai made world headlines. Leopards all of a sudden became man eaters. So, when the naturalist studied the strange phenomena of the animal behavior they pointed out that despite the kills, leopards were not man caters. They concluded that man had been trespassing the animal’s territory by destroying their natural habitat, and therefore in order to protect its territorial boundaries for survival, leopards were resorting to attacking and killing human-beings.
From the very beginning our planet has been governed by the law of nature, and trespassing it brought dire consequences to the earth and mankind, like global warming, floods, landslides etc. Shivaji, the Marathi leader, had great respect for the law of nature, before going to the battle he always instructed his soldiers never to harm the enemy’s children, women and not to destroy their crops.
“Jungle law” is perceived as unethical, unruly and survival of the fittest in the world of the jungle talks. But the English born writer and naturalist Jim Corbett wrote in his book “My India” about the established law of the jungle he came across some incidents of animal behaviors, and one of the most touching events that Jim Corbett witnessed was between a, month old goat’s kid and a tigress. The kid seeing the tigress from a distance thought it was her mother and started bleating, where as the tigress gave up her stalk and walked straight up to its” prey: The kid went forward to meet her and the tigress stretched out its neck to smell her. For a moment the queen of the forest and the kid stood nose to nose, then the turned and walked off the direction from which she had come. So, Jim Corbett writes, will the society have the slightest regard to the established law of the jungle as the tigress had? If so, then there would be no war, for the strong man ‘would have the same consideration for the weak, as it is the established law of the jungle.
Similarly, from very ancient times, people believe that natural calamities and adversity happened due to man’s sin. So, in olden day’s people in order to purge their land they imposed capital punishments to criminals who committed heinous crimes, in some society they were even exiled to ward off bad omen or the curses of the gods, in the family and community.
In the shadow of a highly civilized world and modern society, man has lost its ancient values and has become paradoxical. Educated and cultured on the surface, yet evil in imaginations. It is ironical when heinous crimes like rapes, kidnappings, killings and injustices me being perpetuated around the world the innocent children, women und men out or sheer pleasure, lust and covetousness, which is indeed trespassing the law of nature.’ David, Israeli’s greatest king and a Biblical figure, when he committed sin out of sheer lust with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah his army commander and later he sent her innocent husband to the fore front of the hottest battle to be killed (2 Samuel 11:4, 15).The people of Israel couldn’t bring their King before the law and punished him. But God’s .divine judgment came upon King David and his whole household. Though King David repented and God forgave him, yet the consequences followed him one after the other. King David realized his terrible mistakes more closely, his parting advice to his son King Solomon was that he should keep God’s commandment. In that course lay the only hope of peace and prosperity.
Once while traveling by train from Calcutta to Delhi I met a war veteran who shared his personal experience about his army life. He was also one of the thousands of soldiers commissioned to fight a war in the 80’s. During the war they had captured the whole town of the enemies, but to their dismay, they found all the men and boys above ten years had gone into hiding leaving behind their women, children and babies at the mercy of their enemies.. The war veteran seeing the young innocent teenage girls reminded him of his younger sister back home in his country. The horrors of war he said cannot be expressed with human words but in the midst of all the confusion and atrocities, he could only protect and save a group of innocent girls from the other frenzy soldiers. After the war ended only four of them came back alive of Three-thousand soldiers that went from his city. Today, at the age of 42, he is the only survivor. He said, “mercy and goodness follows him all the time.’ The law of nature is. ‘You reap what ever you sow.’
(Courtesy: AIR, Kohima)
