UlanBatori wrote:
Get a mirror, open your eyes and see if you can look yourself in the eye and say:
I AM QUALIFIED TO PASS JUDGEMENT ON MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI
Oh! And pls remember to get a BandAid and splints ready to reattach your nose as it breaks against the mirror.
No offence to UB, but I've been thinking about this, the above principle kept bothering me.
This "don't judge unless you're qualified" is, it seems to me, an x-tian principle - beam in the eye vs. mote, he who is without sin casting the first stone, etc. In Hinduism, ordinary folks have always delighted in intellectual debates, where we judge all and sundry, sparing none - Krishna and Rama, Bhishma and Drona, Duryodhana and Yudhishtra and Karna. Do we think about "are we qualified?"
If the actions of somebody affect you (and this effect could be as part of its overall effect on posterity), then you have the right to judge that action. But you do have the responsibility to judge fairly, with full possession of all the available facts, which you also have a duty to evaluate impartially. If enough facts are not available, *then* you withhold judgment.
Fair enough? In effect, everybody has the right to judge everybody else, since all our actions affect everybody else. Do you have the right to pass and execute a sentence? Probably not (unless you are in a qualified position of authority), although in the extreme case, you can inflict a "shaap," regardless of your qualifications vs. the qualifications of the perpetrator. Vishnu Himself has been cursed several times. If the curse was legitimate, He accepted it.
In fact, folks were frequently admonished (Dhritarashtra for instance) with "think of how posterity will judge your actions." So why should Gandhi be spared the judgment?
So this "don't pass judgment unless you are fully qualified" seems like a canard to me. Last from me on this OT issue in this thread.