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Is it really valid or just a belief? ‘Karma’ is a concept that is basic to the Hindu religious philosophy of human salvation leading to immortality or ‘moksha’. There is a Sanskrit verse in the Bhagvat Gita about the significance of Karma: “Kayena Manasa Budhya, Kevalair indriyairapi
Karma represents the actions of men & women during their ‘many’ lives, past, present and future. According to this Hindu concept, there is no short cut to liberation or ‘moksha’ and it takes innumerable births, may be thousands of them as mentioned in the Gita, for one to graduate in the highest 'university' of Karma to get that priceless 'ticket' to ’moksha’. How valid is this concept of Karma which underscores the principles of ‘punishment for crime’ and ‘reward for good work’ not just in the present life but also lives before and beyond the present? No other religion focuses so much on reincarnation and the relevance of the past and future lives of humans, as Hindu religion does in determining the question of human salvation. Are the standards set out by Karma equal to or attainable by the human capacity. Or, is Karma a tall order for most humans to perform? This is one of those million dollar questions for which there is no rational answer in any of the Hindu scriptures, all of which seem to be evasive in their answers. Let us therefore take a bold look at Karma and review it from the simplistic ‘human point of view’, rather than from what the scriptures have made it to be, an ‘iron law’ that should not be questioned! If Karma is a kind of ‘contract’ between God Supreme and the hapless human being, the terms of the contract raises some genuine questions about the fairness of the contract for the salvation of the human being.
Look at the big picture of our planet with its men & women, adults & children, of many nationalities, races, colours and religions. Are they all inspired, obsessed or guided solely by nothing but the law of Karma in their daily pursuit of life amidst so many problems on Earth? Certainly not! So why bother the humans with this Karma ‘bug’, especially when they know nothing about their past or future and all they are concerned about is their present life which they are struggling to lead to the best of their ability?
And, on a different note, the law of Karma may not be quite appropriate to animals in wilderness, referred to as a ‘food chain’, consisting of the herbivorous and the carnivorous groups, the former serving as food for the latter under a scheme or law of ‘might is right’. What then is the salvation ‘route’ for the animals, both herbivorous and carnivorous, which are none the less God’s creations? Until we get a clear answer concerning the animals, it will be futile to talk about the fate of other God’s creations like the plant ‘life’! But more specifically, don’t the above principles of karmic punishment of humans sound more cruel and criminal than the original crimes of humans? Have the humans become total misfits in the lives allotted to them to deserve the cruel aftermaths of Karma? Or is Karma ignoring and overlooking the great human achievements since the dawn of life on Earth? Of course, God created a universe that is vast and expanding. But it is the humans who ‘dressed up’ and made ‘livable’ an otherwise naked planet that they inherited from God! God’s Universe is vast with its billions of stars, constellations and galaxies, which nevertheless are just huge fireballs and nothing more.
Desikachary Vembar
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(Yogis, having abandoned attachment, perform duties or Karma by means of body, mind and senses, for self purification )
God has limitless attributes. He is formless and yet can assume any form, is Great, Mighty, without a beginning or end, etc., whereas His creations including the humans, though supposed to be endowed with an deathless Soul, are burdened with a material and perishable body that is more designed, by virtue of its senses, to committing sin due to a weak will to resist the same and as such prone to breaking God’s commandments more often than not. That explains why there are very few saints in our world consisting of billions of humans! Therefore the ‘Karma’ contract appears to have some ‘legal’ loopholes in that it is tilted very much against the frail humans as a party to the contract. Secondly, humans, on their part, didn’t give consent or volunteer to be born ,which is purely an act of God, and as such how can humans be bound by a contract to which they were never signatories! 
There are a few other aspects of Karma that are not quite convincing to the human intelligence. If we accept Karma as a characteristic that is peculiar and unique to each individual, and as such to be rewarded or punished in a unique manner individually, what explanation is there for the innumerable cases of simultaneous killings of hundreds, thousands and even millions of innocent people, including men and women, adults and children? Did the millions of Jews who were put to death in Hitler’s gas chambers inherit a ‘common karma’ from their previous lives? What about the instant deaths of hundreds and thousands of victims in air crashes and shipwrecks or during natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, etc.? Do the above represent some kind of ‘wholesale’ or ‘mass’ Karma in action? 
On the contrary, look at the great marvels of human creativity on planet earth with its glorious civilizations in the past and glittering ultramodern mega cities and flourishing suburbs with spectacular infrastructure in our own times, which are monuments to what humans are capable of achieving. Indeed God created the Universe, but He needs the help of humans to add substance and ‘value’ to His planets! The above analysis makes us to wonder whether the law of Karma whereby the humans are reincarnated by repeated cycles of birth & death, may after all be a ploy by the ‘clever’ God to continuously ‘hire’ and engage the humans in the task of ‘developing’ His vast ‘Universal’ empire, a task that will make it impossible for humans ever to attain the so called salvation !
