One nation's corruption

Aung San Suu Kyi declares corruption to be a universal phenomena adding that though the fight against it is worthy, there might never be a time when it is eradicated completely.

Whereas this is true and the evidence of unlawful practices, crookedness, graft, fraud, bribery, and deceit stare at us from all corners of the world, is there reason to believe that (dare I say it?) Indians have a somewhat more nuanced relationship with the malaise?

In all the sound and fury whipped up by the Anna Hazare movement, a deeper enquiry is called for about the phenomena. Could it be that the lisping schoolgirl from Delhi who says she is “like fed up and will like support Anna Hazare, he is our rock star” is fighting against a completely different form of corruption than the auto rickshaw driver in Hyderabad or the IT engineer from Bangalore? And the young man wearing his ‘Anna Tee and topi’ and waving his tricolor while giving a sound byte — which form of corruption exactly is he opposing? And of course, who is to question the strident spokespeople of Bollywood on their ‘poutrage’ against the practice?

Even the most perfunctory examination of corruption discloses that its embodiments are numerous. From collusion to cronyism, to bribery to embezzlement, to the peddling of influence, electoral fraud, price fixing, nepotism, and organised crime, the manifestations of this intrinsically-human affliction are hydra-headed.

As far as my knowledge of Indian mythology recounts, our Gods and Goddesses existed in divine moral ambiguity and were given to acts of whimsicality, lasciviousness, deception and fraud, which defied any Occidental value systems of what constituted as right and wrong.

In fact, our most revered spiritual text, the Bhagvad Gita, is famous for advocating a theory of relativism which stressed that actions are required to be undertaken beyond ones attachments or sense of morality, (moreover those actions have been already committed.) Moral ambiguity is not only the monopoly of Hindu theology, though. In his book Does he know a mother’s heart, Arun Shourie has quoted extensively from the world’s leading religious texts to show that their spiritual leaders have existed in a paradigm that often is bewilderingly cruel and inexplicably morally ambivalent.

In his book India Calling, Anand Giridharadas attempts to address this issue by examining his grandfather’s value system (inherited from the British colonists) with that of India’s self-made industrialists like Dhirubhai Ambani whose methods, many of which would be unacceptable in international spheres, nevertheless were organic legitimate and symbiotic to his roots. Indians, Girdhidas argues, are less inclined to regard helping a needy relative get a job in one’s office or educating the offspring of a helpful government official as acts of corruption.

We have a different set of beliefs in what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and unacceptable and what is corrupt and what is not. Ergo, one nation’s corruption is another nation’s SOP.

It is prudent to remember that before we were colonised by a country known for its empirical faculties and its sea-faring prowess, we were a conglomerate of states ruled by hedonistic, often amoral, feudal kings.

So has the time come to channel the anguish about corruption into a more introspective enquiry into India’s tryst with it? What accounts for our country’s endemic corruption? Have we always existed in a moral gray area? Or are we looking at ourselves through someone else’s lenses?

Uncomfortable questions but worth examining.

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com