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The importance of being good
Management guru
Gurcharan Das, in an exclusive article to The Tribune, excerpted from his latest book
The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma
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 The
book, The
Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma
turns to epic Mahabharata, in order to answer the
question, ‘why be good?’ It addresses the central
problem of how to live our lives in an examined way, and
how to cope with moral dimensions of governance failures.
The book explores our private and public lives through the
lens of the Mahabharata and the focus shifts from
character to character — Bhishma, Yudhishthira, Arjuna,
Draupadi, Duryodhana, Karna, Aswatthama and Krishna. The
author examines key ethical problem of each character and
its significance for our lives. He makes the ancient epic
throb to the pulse of the modern world — equating Rahul
Gandhi’s remorse as the basis of democracy to Yudhishthira’s
remorse after the battle of Mahabharata/Kurukshetra,
relating Mahabharata’s middle path to India’s
pragmatic policy on Pakistan, Ramalinga Raju’s Satyam
scam to Dhritarashtra’s blind partiality for his sons,
and so on. The following is an exclusive article for The
Tribune by the author based on excerpts from his book:
After
spending six years continuously with the epic, I have
learned that the Mahabharata is about the way we
deceive ourselves, how we are false to others, how we
oppress fellow human beings, and how deeply unjust we are
in our day-to-day lives. But is this moral blindness an
intractable human condition, or can we change it? Some of
our misery is the result of the way the state also treats
us, and can we re-design our institutions to have a more
accountable government? I have sought answers to these
questions in the epic’s elusive concept of dharma, and
my own search for how we ought to live has been this book’s
motivating force.
The Mahabharata is
unique in engaging with the world of politics. India’s
philosophical traditions have tended to devalue the realm
of human action, but the epic is refreshing in this
respect and it offers insights into how to deal with our
world. Here are three examples from my book. |
Remorse, Rahul and Yudhishthira
Rahul Gandhi feels remorse comes when you are able to feel the suffering of fellow human beings as your own. Once you make this leap, democracy is the only system you can believe in
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When the
Kurukshetra war comes to an end, it becomes clear that the theme
of the Mahabharata is not war but peace. Yudhishthira is
left with a hollow sense of victory. It is for this reason that
Anandavardhana, the ninth century Kashmiri commentator,
concluded that the aesthetic mood evoked by the Mahabharata
is not ‘heroic’, as one would expect from a war epic, but
one of shanti — calm resignation, leading to nirveda,
the end of desire.
Revolted by the
violence against all human feeling, Yudhishthira becomes a
disillusioned pessimist and expresses remorse and he repents.
The irony is that many Indians have a low opinion of him. ‘Dharmaputra
Yudhishthira’ is a derogatory epithet. While Arjuna is a brave
and valiant warrior, remorseful Yudhishthira is considered weak
and indecisive. The contempt for Yudhishthira says something
about the contemporary society. What we need is more remorse,
not less, but it is somehow considered unmanly.
When Benazir
Bhutto was assassinated in December, 2007, what struck me most
was the singular lack of remorse in that country. There was
plenty of grief, even some regret, but no remorse. When I raised
the question of Pakistan’s lack of remorse in one of my
columns, Rahul Gandhi sent me an e-mail, which I think is worth
quoting, for he connects remorse with democracy: ‘Remorse
comes when you are able to feel the suffering of fellow human
beings to an extent where the suffering becomes your own. To
feel deeply human suffering you have to internally accept that
all humans are equal and see them as humans and not as a
particular group. Once you make this leap, democracy is the only
system you can believe in. [India’s] leaders in the freedom
struggle were able to look beyond divisions and see the human
being (including the British). Because of this, they were able
to feel the pain of people. The outcome was democracy and
remorse for your fellow human being. Pakistan’s founders were
unable to see beyond divisions, and hence, the outcome was an
unstable,`A0undemocratic remorseless system.’
Rahul Gandhi believes that
remorse is more likely to be expressed in democratic societies.
But even in democracies it is usually absent. It is
extraordinary -- there was no remorse among investment bankers
on the Wall Street after they had tipped the global economy into
a recession in 2008. They were not contrite that their actions
had resulted in millions of job losses around the world. They
still expected bonuses to be paid whether their company had lost
or made money. It is as if though they felt they had a God-given
right to earn more than ordinary human beings. The Economist, a
consistent supporter of the free market, asked, ‘What will it
take for bankers to show a little remorse?’
Mahabharata’s middle path and
how to cope with Pak
After the Mahabharata, Yudhishthira is left with a hollow sense of victory. He becomes disillusioned and expresses remorse
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After the
terrorist attack on Mumbai on 26/11, Indians were divided over
how to respond. The hawks wanted to attack the Lashkar-e-Toiba
camps in Pakistan. They modelled their strategy on Israel’s
retaliation for the attack on its athletes in Munich. But the
doves advocated ahimsa preferring to turn the other
cheek. The third position was more circumspect and lay between
these extremes. It is the policy, which the Indian Government
has patiently pursued — providing dossiers of evidence to
Pakistan, hoping that world pressure would force it to act
against the terrorists. Will this frustratingly slow middle path
reward us with lasting peace?
The Mahabharata
seems to think so. The epic also had to wrestle with the same
three positions. The first was the ‘amoral realism’ of
Duryodhana, who believed that ‘might is right’. At the other
extreme was the idealistic position of the early Yudhishthira,
who refused to follow Draupadi’s sensible advice, which was to
gather an army and win back their kingdom stolen by the Kauravas
in a rigged game of dice. The epic also adopted a pragmatic,
middle path of negotiation, but when Duryodhana refused to part
with the Pandavas’ rightful share, Yudhishthira had to declare
war.
Mahabharata
would thus reject the hawkish idea of a retaliatory strike
against the terrorist camps in Pakistan--not for ideological
reasons, but because it would only escalate the conflict. It
would also reject the dovish high moral ground of ahimsa
because ‘turning the other cheek’ sends wrong signals to
terrorists and the ISI. It would commend upright Manmohan Singh’s
middle path of negotiation. But if negotiations fail, the Indian
PM must be prepared to wield the danda, just as
Yudhishthira had to.
This
pragmatic middle path is akin to the evolutionary principle of
reciprocal altruism — smile at the world but do not allow
yourself to be exploited. Your first move should be of goodness,
but if you are slapped on your smiling face, then you have to
reciprocate and slap back. Many Indians believe that our
government is not following this sensible advice. We are either
too conciliatory or too scared of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Hence, people get the feeling that Pakistan thinks India to be
weak, and its secret service has no qualms in planning its next
terrorist strike.
I do not think
this is true. India may be unwilling to play ‘tit-for-tat’
according to the principle of reciprocal altruism but India has
never compromised on basic principles, say on Kashmir. Pakistan
believes that peace depends on settling the Kashmir dispute,
which is a doubtful proposition. India has held firmly that the
answer to Kashmir lies in getting everyone to accept the line of
control as the permanent border.
As the bigger and
more powerful nation, India has to be more conciliatory. Yes,
Pakistan does drag us into a pit of identity politics and
sidetracks us from our real destiny. Negotiating with a nation
whose secret service might be plotting the next terrorist attack
on you seems bizarre, but there is no alternative to the slow,
maddening grind towards peace. Both Bhishma and Yudhisthira
would have approved this middle path with Pakistan.
Satyam, Raju, and Dhritarashtra
Raju had two sons and a sense of filial duty drove him, perhaps, to commit fraud
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 I
was angered and troubled in early 2009 by a scandal that posed a
challenge to our post-reform conception of worldly success. B.
Ramalingam Raju had built through talent, skill and dedication
an outstanding and respected software company, and then
committed the greatest fraud in Indian corporate history by
swindling his company of Rs 7136 crores.
I had met Raju 10
years earlier and had seen sincerity, competence, and great
purpose in his eyes. Soon after, I met one of his customers in
the US, who spoke glowingly about Satyam’s dedication to
quality, reliability, and integrity. There is no tribute greater
than a satisfied, passionate customer. Why should a person of
such palpable achievement turn to crime? He had everything going
for him—success, money, fame and power. Why did a person of
such extraordinary achievement commit fraud?
Even as the story
was unfolding, it seemed clear to me that the moral failing was
not greed as everyone thought. Was it, perhaps, that Raju’s
stake in Satyam had dwindled to 8.6 per cent, and the company
was in danger of slipping out of the family’s control? Raju
had two sons and a sense of filial duty drove him, perhaps, to
create companies in real estate and infrastructure two sectors
of the Indian economy that had not been reformed, and where
politicians insisted on bribes to be paid up-front for favours
delivered. Since revenues from the new companies were far away,
Raju dipped into Satyam to pay the politicians. It might have
worked if the price of real estate had continued to rise. But no
one counted on a downturn and a liquidity crisis. Desperately,
Raju tried to restore the stolen assets of Satyam by merging it
with his son’s companies but that did not work.
Raju was ruined by
his Dhritarashtra-like weakness for his sons. The Mahabharata
seems to be saying that one ought to nurture one’s children,
but one does not have to indulge them like Duryodhana.
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