Taking something that doesn't belong to you is wrong according to Hinduism. (So is hoarding
something you don't really need that someone else does need!) Yet the command to practice asteya,nonstealing, was never enforced as strictly in Hinduism as it was in the West. In medieval Europe, a starving man could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread.
Hindus were a lot more flexible about this kind of thing. In a country with an increasing number of hungry people, it has long been acknowledged that sometimes you have to do to keep body and soul together. Punishment for poor people stealing something they urgently needed like food or clothing was not severe, and sometimes wasn't enforced at all. Gratuitous theft, however, was viewed less tolerantly.
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