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What is Morality?
The dilemma of existence we all face is precisely because we don't understand
the principles, but try to think or act according to each individual circumstance.
It is like, you know, we have in India the rules of the road, one way
streets, but if there is no policeman, everybody goes through it. So this
is a useful interpretation of rules, that when nobody sees what we are
doing, we can do as we like.
One of the old definitions of morality, indeed, of all behaviour is: When
you are alone, behave as if you are being watched by everybody
else. When we don't wish to follow this principle, you find that we
have several aspects of behaviour, one for ourselves, one in public, one
at home, one in the office. And to mould our understanding of morality
to such situations, we create individual morality, group morality, national
morality, things like that. I don't think there is anything more than
one morality. We have often come across people who say, well this is Indian
morality, what about European morality? You see, it is as childish as
saying we have Indian hunger and we have European hunger. So the first
thing to be understood is that morality is one, applicable to all.
The second thing to be understood is that morality is
free of the limitations of space and time. What I mean is that what
is moral today cannot become immoral tomorrow, and what was immoral
yesterday cannot become moral today. To put it briefly, we can say that
morality is an absolute. I would like to say that wherever there is
life, there must be morality.
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