God Is Unbending
The God of the Quran is not a party to evil, He will mete out due punishments to the offenders of evil.
Devi Singh, the notorious dacoit, was killed in a police encounter in January 1984. Shortly before he met his fate, Mrs Amrita Pritam, the well-known poetess, had a chance to meet him. The fascinating conversation was published in the Hindustan Times on January 22, 1984. In their talks, Devi Singh admitted to Mrs Pritam that he had committed about 100 dacoities up to that time. “We are not dacoits but rebels fighting against the government. We loot treasure, but we have never sullied the honour of any girl. We observe a strict moral code. We immediately shoot him if any of our members go against it.”
When Mrs Pritam asked Devi Singh to tell her how many members were there in his gang, he replied, “Seven men and the eighth is God.”
At first sight, this seems to be a translation of a verse from the Quran (with one minor difference) which says: “Where there are five of your people, there the sixth one is the Almighty” (58:7). The dacoit’s statement would appear to be in the same vein as this verse from the Quran. However, this is not at all the case. Apart from the similar lexicon used, nothing else is common.
The real sense in which the dacoit used these words becomes clear from what he later explained in the same interview. He said that whatever loot they took was divided between the gang members. However, instead of dividing it into seven parts, they made eight equal shares, the eighth being for God. “The part which belongs to God is given to some needy person. Giving away one part of the loot is the way of all dacoits.”
The God of the Quran creates fear in the mind, while the God of the dacoits encourages fearlessness. God is there so that He may prevent wrongdoing. However, by giving a share to God, they endeavour to make Him their Protector. Their way of thinking is that God will be their eighth member and ready to stand guard over them if the seven join together to commit some dacoity. However, the God of the Quran would never be a party to such evil. He would, on the contrary, meet out the severest of punishments to the offenders.
