Social criticism, the senseless one
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
न विचारितां ठायाठाव । काय भुंके तो गाढव ॥1॥
केला तैसा लाहे दंड । खळ अविचारी लंड ॥ध्रु.॥
करावें लाताळें। ऐसें नेणे कोण्या काळें ॥2॥
न कळे उचित । तुका ह्मणे नीत हित॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
A donkey brays without considering the time or place. The wicked and reckless receive punishment as they deserve. Such a one never learns in any age that kicking will bring consequences. Says Tuka, he does not know what is proper, nor what is right, nor what is in his own best interest.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
A donkey brays without thinking of time or place. The wicked, reckless fool gets the punishment he earns. He never learns, in any age, that kicking out brings a beating. Tuka says: he does not know what is fitting, or what is right, or what is good for him.
What it means
Tukaram is naming the pattern of a person who acts with no sense of where or when, like a donkey that brays anywhere. Such a one lashes out and is then surprised by the consequences, never connecting the kick to the beating that follows. The point is not contempt for any single man but a warning about reckless heedlessness, which earns the punishment it brings on itself. He closes flatly: this kind of mind cannot tell what is proper, what is just, or what is in its own true interest, and that blindness is its own undoing. Read it as a mirror for the moments we act without weighing time, place, and consequence.
Social Criticism
Rebuke of hypocrisy, caste pride, false teachers, greed, and religious pretence.
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