Nitish Banka

    • ACT OF GOD!

    The interview of Ashok Singhal by a news channel dragged all my attentions to a very important liability. With all the charm this liability is called “Act of God.” Ashok Singhal in his interview declared the Godhra riot to be an “Act of God.” Well, now the query which pops up is whether God will be punished for this offence or not.

    To answer this, first of all we should know what Act of God is. Act of God is an act of God. We associate all the natural beings with god, i.e., God is nature and nature is god. In simple words, whatever are the acts of nature is the act of God. Since, human beings are also a part of nature, it may appear that human activities are the acts of the nature, i.e., by further deduction, the act of God! But, the activities under the human control have been kept outside the definition of Act of God. Hence, miracles and disasters are act of God. But, the legal definition of this phenomenon includes mainly and, only the negatives of the term. Hence, mainly and only the disasters accomplish the criteria of act of god.

    Act of God thus includes natural disasters like floods, earthquake, volcano eruption, tsunami, etc. The requisites for Act of God are:
    (i) Acts without any kind of Human intervention
    (ii) Acts beyond the human control
    (iii) Acts which are unpredictable and inevitable

    Now, modern technologies have grown so much that every other disaster can be predicted and can be controlled too; at least to a certain extent. And, also the natural calamities which we face in our day to day lives is a result of human actions. This means indirectly, the act of God is the act of Human Beings and also; God resides in every human being; may be, then the act of every human being is an Act of God. Confused!

    Another deduction is that since, God punishes every human being for their wrongful acts (courtesy: religious texts); therefore the acts of God should also be punished on the grounds of equity. But sadly, acts of God are not punishable under law (FOR THE Fans of OMG!) Justice denied!