The law of kar­ma has an ef­fect on every­one, says Prakash Ra­mad­har, the leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP). Ra­mad­har, the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, was de­liv­er­ing greet­ings at the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions on Wednes­day night in Ch­agua­nas.

He said one of the most im­por­tant lessons he learned as a child was from his fa­ther Siew Ra­mad­har. It was that one must do un­to oth­ers what you want oth­ers to do un­to you.

Ra­mad­har, MP for St Au­gus­tine, said the Hin­du con­cept of kar­ma or ret­ri­bu­tion had a way of catch­ing up with peo­ple and the pow­ers of the uni­verse had a way of re­ward­ing those who dished out dis­hon­esty and oth­er neg­a­tives.

On the flip side, kar­ma re­ward­ed those who did good. Ra­mad­har said that was an im­por­tant les­son to teach young­sters and could go a long way in shap­ing to­mor­row's gen­er­a­tions of adults and lead­ers.

He al­so re­flect­ed on the words of Gand­hi, who said: "Be the change you want to see in this world." Ra­mad­har said those words were very much rel­e­vant in to­day's so­ci­ety as we shaped a bet­ter na­tion.

He said the vi­sion for the fu­ture should in­clude a na­tion where peo­ple lived in tol­er­ance and har­mo­ny, where jus­tice was avail­able for all, where cit­i­zens were spir­i­tu­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly healthy and there was no dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Ra­mad­har said every­one had a du­ty to con­tribute to shap­ing so­ci­ety. "This is a du­ty to our­selves and our chil­dren," he added.