Reincarnation Leads to Incest? A Moral Dilemma in Hindu Belief

Introduction

Sikhs and Hindus often criticise Muslims for practicing cousin marriage, portraying it as immoral. However, this criticism is ironic given their own belief in reincarnation.

According to this belief, souls are reborn without memory or records of past lives, meaning a man who marries a woman, while his own mother, grandmother, and sister died long ago, has no proof that she is not, in fact, one of his close relatives reborn. If divine guidance truly aimed to prevent impurity, their Supreme Being could have provided clear signs or records to avoid such accidental incest. The absence of such safeguards reveals a fundamental contradiction in their moral stance.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (AS): Reincarnation Is a Doorway for Incest

Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (AS) pointed out that the belief in reincarnation in the Vedas lacks any divine guidance to prevent immoral acts like unknowingly marrying one’s own close relative reborn:

If it is assumed that God has guided towards virtuous deeds in the Vedas, and that this is the essence of the Vedas’ knowledge, then the belief in reincarnation reveals that God does not intend to guide people on the paths of purity. This is because, with the cycle of reincarnation, God does not provide any list or indication to identify whether a soul reborn is someone’s mother, grandmother, or sister. Due to this apparent negligence on God’s part, people fall into deception and commit forbidden acts. For instance, when a man marries a woman, and his mother, grandmother, or sister had passed away long before the marriage, what proof is there that the woman he married is not his mother, grandmother, or sister? It appears that God is indifferent to the spread of such immorality, or perhaps He deliberately desires that impurity prevail in the world. Otherwise, would He not have the power to send a written document with every newborn child, specifying their relationships, such as this child being related to so-and-so in such-and-such a way? Or could He not grant the child the ability to declare, for example, “I am so-and-so’s grandmother or mother”? Since God has not done this, it suggests that, according to the Aryas’ conception of God, every immoral act is permissible.

[Rūhānī Khazā’in, Chashma Ma’rafat, pp. 41-42]