The Virtue of Mercy

The famous hunter, Jim Corbett, was particularly interested in shooting tigers. To justify this cruel act, he had an explanation ready: “I hunt tigers to protect my townsmen from man-eaters.” Most hunters find some justification or the other for the cruelty of their acts. But some, like Colonel Jaipal, whose memoirs, “The Great Hunt”, were published by Carlton Press, New York in 1982, see no need to justify themselves.

Colonel Jaipal freely admits what others fight shy of. He makes no bones about the fact that killing crocodiles gave him an intense pleasure. He would creep up on these creatures, fire at them and watch exultantly as they fled into the water where they writhed in pain, beating their tails grotesquely, and jaws agape, gasped for breath. All this gave him “quite a lot of thrills.”

It is perhaps intrinsic to the human mind to want to go after others, to make plans to trouble them. And when people succeed in these plans, they revel in what they think is their ‘success’. But little do they realize that in the Hereafter they shall be held accountable for their deeds. In contrast, someone who controls this urge and lives in the world in such a way that he becomes a source of mercy for others will find that the doors of Heaven will be opened to him in the Hereafter. We have to root out the evils of callousness and cruelty within ourselves to prove ourselves eligible of entering the gates of paradise.