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Morality is ascribed to universal principles of right conduct endemic to mankind. Right is the differentia of the moral. The character of the enforcing agency decides the classification of the conduct involved.
If the enforcing agency be political, the right thing is a matter of law; if ecclesiastical, a matter of religion; if public opinion, a matter of convention. Right conduct is only occasionally the same for all institutions. There are often conflicts as regards right conduct in various fields.
Thus, people are described as morally bound and legally free, morally guiltless and legally responsible, moral victors and actual losers, and vice versa. Morals are very often identified with sexual habits, ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’ being so much identified with sex conduct that bad citizens and unscrupulous businessmen are condoned “good husbands and fathers”.
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The patterns and principles of conduct that come under the scope of moral are so diverse that it is not possible to analyse the subject matter scientifically on the basis of a single formula. Explanation of morals in terms of the biological instinct of self-preservation or in terms of use appear to be artificial and without any basis.
Huxley said:
“The notion that the doctrine of evolution could furnish a foundation for morals seems an illusion”. In all societies birth, wealth and position modify the obligatoriness of the code.
The subject becomes further complicated by the fact that one group’s virtue or moral code of conduct may be a type of conduct forbidden or prohibited for another group. Thus, the code for females is stricter than the code for males.
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The woman known to live like a man is condemned while a man who consorts with prostitutes is accepted everywhere. Likewise, racial factor introduces variations in moral codes among different racial groups.
In countries where colour bar exists, right conduct for whites is not the right conduct for negroes and vice versa. In fact, the code of right conduct or moral code is not universally followed. Sometimes variations are allowed, sometimes variations assert themselves, and sometimes variations operate in secret In other words, variations always exist.
Every moral code depends for its due observance on the socialisation of children from their infancy. The values and ideals of society are indoctrinated into children by the family and other socializing agencies. The children are made to develop some emotional attachments and loyalty to these values and ideals.
“The emotion soon becomes so overladen with habitual rules that the rules themselves seem intuitive and inevitable, when they are only familiar”.
Where this is not the case, the moral codes “receive protective elaboration and are reinforced with secondary agencies created ad hoc. Such elaborations and agencies are the courses in ‘character building’ now in vogue in American school and in some other countries, the rise of the discipline called ‘social ethics’ and the curious ‘citizenship’ courses. Others are the extra-governmental censors; ‘patriotic’ societies ………… and the new creations of the churches. All endeavor to validate codes recognised though not admitted to be shaky.”
In India also we have many such character-building associations. But the most pervasive sanction for any complex of morals, irrespective of whether these are codified or not, is religion.
“Its sanctions, involving supernatural rewards and punishments, enter early into the consciousness of the young. In the child’s experience the God invoked to enforce right conduct consists of the word “God” and the feeling and attitude of the person speaking……… By its use the code is readily made momentous…… The same practice keeps atheism reprehensible and obscene and sustains the widespread delusion that disbelieving in God and possessing a criminal disposition are synonymous, that without religious sanctions morals must decay”.
The close link between religion and moral code is gradually being snapped in recent times. Two developments are responsible for this. Institutionalised religion is gradually losing its sway over the minds of people. Religion is increasingly becoming more individualized. The most outstanding social and cultural development of the last few centuries has been in the direction of secularization of culture.
In traditional societies, religion was all-pervasive in the sense that religion ordained everything from birth to cremation or burial, including even mundane matters. These characteristics are also applicable to religious people in modem societies. But a very subtle difference has crept in. With regard to theology, people are gradually moving away from mythical interpretation to a more rational one.
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Secularization of culture involves not simply an increase in rationality in the thinking of men, but also” a diminution of the sacred” which is often characterised as ‘ desacralisation’ (or desacrilisation) of the attitude toward persons and things. Desacralisation actually means “the withdrawal of the kind of emotional involvement which is to be found in the religious response, in the response to the sacred”.
Hence the religious world-view is no longer the basic frame of reference for thought. People no longer interpret the world around them in religious terms.
“The separation between morality and religion is one prominent feature in the cultural changes of the past century, both in the sense that a clear distention has been made between ritual and moral rules, and in the sense that, with the decline of religious belief, it has been necessary to find a new basis and content for the moral rules”.
Paradoxically, this separation between religion and morality brings the two closer on another level.
As Bottomore points out:
“Religion has become more an individual and private matter………… while morality has become more social, in that it is increasingly concerned with social justice rather than individual virtue. This change of emphasis is apparent even in the moral doctrines of religious organizations, which are much more concerned with social relations and social problems than ever in the past”.
In India a discerning observer of various religious organisations will not fail to notice that “there is a disposition to tone down the doctrinal and religious aspects of religion, and emphasise above all the utility of religion in solving social problems and creating fellowship”.
In recent years there has been another important development. Moral codes are increasingly becoming closely associated with political doctrines. “Moral disagreements are now very frequently political disagreements, and moral beliefs are largely incorporated in political ideologies”.