No End to Greed for a Few Pieces of Silver

Joginder Singh ji
(Former Director -CBI )

What we call, real estate or property quite often is the foundation, of crimes of greed. If a person owns land or property, the land and house also own him. Wars, quarrels and killings have been caused, over undefended wealth and property. The father of communism Karl Marx had propounded the abolition of all private property.
Most crime in the world is about real estate or property. All the so called world conquerors like Alexander and Mughal and others like British and French invaded and took control of India for the sake of adding to their already existing property, which were called their empires. They were thieves, but came under the different garb and openly went about their purpose with the use of their might.
The common thieves also respect property. Their only peculiarity is, that they want to acquire the same for themselves, without working for it. The world and the society judges us, by our possessions. Our station in life and position, is determined, by what we own in life. Indeed, if we examine our scripture Mahabharata, it begins, with the dispute between two set of Cousins, Kauravas and Pandus over the distribution of empire or in other words their ancestral property. The former refused to give even five villages to the Pandus and literally tricked them, into going in for an exile of fourteen years, after a bout of gambling. To add insult to the injury, in a bid to win over their property or portion of the empire, they bid their wife Draupadi, in the final and ultimate, gambling dice play.
Of course, the entire episode, led to the unique scripture Gita being preached to a reluctant Pandu warrior Arjun, by Lord Krishna. If there was no Mahabharata or a grand war, between the cousins on property, there would have been no Gita. The world would have been poorer to that extent.

It was again a property dispute as to who should succeed to the Empire of King Dashrath, which led Kekayee, the youngest of his three queens, to extract a promise from her husband, her son Bharat would succeed to the empire and not the eldest, Lord Rama, who would have to spend fourteen years in exile. Out of this dispute was born Ramayana, which is revered as a great scripture, revealing, as to how finally the truth and righteousness will always win over the evil.
What we call real
So recently when I read a news item, that a man was allegedly stabbed to death by his younger brother over a property dispute in Jharoda village in Delhi cantonment area of the National Capital, I did not feel a bit surprised. The body of the killed person by name , Milton Peter, was found lying in a pool of blood by his father , who informed the police. According to a report the accused, Dominic Peter, younger brother had a property dispute with his elder brother Milton and they often used to have arguments over it.
Their father returned home in an inebri­ated condition one and saw his sons Dominic and Milton in a heated argument.
He did not bother to inter­vene and went to his own room. When next day, the younger son Milton, did not come out for breakfast, the father went to his room and found his body lying in a pool of blood. When he enquired about Dominic, his elder son, he found that he was not at home.
Obviously, the greed has no time or boundary to its capaciousness. Its one object is to perpetuate itself. It is an endless phenomenon. It has no pity for any living human beings. It is prepared to act ruthlessly and to snuff life, as long as it can gain a few pieces of silver or gold.
It only illustrates, that where money is concerned, morals walk away. All the wealth in the world is too little for a greedy person. Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough. Says Bhagwat Gita; "Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed". But will humanity learn from Gita?

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