Train to Pakistan

by Khushwant Singh

‘Morality, Meet Singhji, is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.

‘There is no crime in anyone’s blood any more than there is goodness in the blood of others,’

If the fear of the gallows or the cell had stopped people from killing or stealing, there would be no murdering or stealing.

In a country which had accepted caste distinctions for many centuries, inequality had become an inborn mental concept.

The doer must do only when the receiver is ready to receive. Otherwise, the act is wasted.

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed.

We do not go in for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith. Thought, which should be the sine qua non of a philosophical code, is dispensed with. We climb to sublime heights on the wings of fancy. We do the rope trick in all spheres of creative life. As long as the world credulously believes in our capacity to make a rope rise skyward and a little boy climb it till he is out of view, so long will our brand of humbug thrive.

Consciousness of the bad is an essential prerequisite to the promotion of the good.