Descent In To Hell

The recent physical attack on a cab driver of Indian origin by the rising Australian sports star, Michael Hurley, in Melbourne, is quite disturbing. At a time when the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby is on a confidence building tour of India(after the racial attacks on the Indian students there), this incident could not have been more badly timed. The dispute was over the cab fare to be paid. It was then that the drunk Hurley punched and kicked the cab driver in the loins.
"Melbourne is a big city and this happens" said Brumby while reacting to the incident. Acts of similar kind in France, the U.S.and elsewhere tend to get explained away as urban crime and misdemeanour. While we leave it to the experts to debate the complex nature of today's urbanization, we do need to take in to account the increasing number of incidents of such 'crime' which are taking place in the Indian cities as well as cities abroad.What seems to be shaping the attitudes as the recent media reports suggest, is what 19th century writers called the 'Mammon Gospel'. Witness the recent furore over austerity drives etc. in India for example.
Perhaps here we could turn to the eminent English educationist, historian and writer of the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle, for some insight.(He had also visited and travelled in Australia). Carlyle's book 'Past and Present', published in 1843, was an attempt to understand the early modern society in England. It "is the only one which strikes a human chord,presents human relations and shows traces of a human point of view" said one progressive commentator of the time. Though Carlyle in his later works was to move away from his 'forward looking' views and was even accused of racism, his comments on the Mammon Gospel are instructive.He was to argue that the 19th century England had acquired an 'unchristian' new hell.The hell of modern England is the consciousness of "not succeeding, of not making money" To quote him:
"True we with our Mammon Gospel have come to strange conclusions.We call it Society;and go about professing openly the total separation, isolation.Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war,named 'competition' and so forth,it is a mutual hostility.We have profoundly forgotten that Cash payment is not the sole relation of human beings.'
Perhaps we need to address these 'strange conclusions' as they keep cropping up in the reactions to the various incidents, Australian and others.(SFC, PG with the help of Mr. Ajay Mahurkar and Dr. Dolly Mathew).