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Good morning. TV can produce strong emotions. And, this week, “Blood-boiling” and “Sickening”, were typical reactions to Mr Bates vs The Post Office – the dramatization of what’s been called “the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history”. There are more horrific events happening in the world this week, but the stories of everyday postal workers whose lives were unfairly ruined by jail sentences, bankruptcy and defamation has struck a chord with many. We trust that justice will be served, errors corrected, and that things will work out OK. But the Post Office scandal reveals that the systems we count on can fail badly. It seems natural to rail against such injustice. Humanity values fairness, even expects it – which I find fascinating. Where does that deep conviction come from? It’s hardly an inherent feature of a cold, expansive cosmos or of life spawned from evolutionary pressures of survival of the fittest. Is our concept of fair treatment a particularly human fabrication in response to an uncaring universe? Or an instinctive awareness of something deeper? Some years ago, I served on the �鶹��’s Central Religious Advisory Committee. One of our sessions involved a discussion with the writers of Eastenders about the moral and ethical principles they bore in mind when crafting their scripts. The writers explained that viewers needed to be assured that life was ultimately fair – that those behaving hurtfully would receive their comeuppance. The Hindu perspective supports this intuition. The Bhagavad-gita explains that the universe being essentially fair arises from its being in accord with its creator: “I am equal to all”, says one text. “no one is especially privileged or especially condemned.” But God’s universal justice is not constrained to be fulfilled within one human life span. The Vedic texts assert that life does not end at death. Our consciousness persists and is continually being re-embodied over many lifetimes through reincarnation. In the long-term, everything balances. However, our responsibility in the here and now is to align our actions with God’s arrangement of cosmic fair play. In interview, the real-life Mr Bates, blamed “arrogance and ignorance” for perpetuating the Post Office injustice. The Gita agrees that such human frailties can crush fairness; and calls on us to be: “the gentle and thoughtful person that treats all beings with equal consideration.” Tonight’s final episode will reveal whether the plight of these postal workers has been fully resolved. Blood-boiling outrage may still be warranted; but it should also remind us to check if any aspect of our own arrogance or ignorance might be creating unfairness for someone else.