Dr. KPS Kamath from Nirmukta commented thus on the call to nationalize the ill-gotten assets of ISSO:
"No doubt Sai Baba amassed enormous wealth by deluding people by his magic show. However, he did not rob them like all India’s politicians and bureaucrats did and still do. His deluded followers voluntarily gave him their wealth. The wealth he amassed is miniscule compared to the wealth looted by our “leaders.” Compared to these Robber-Sultans, Sai Baba comes across like a manipulative petty house-servant who became rich by deluding his employer. Are we not barking at the wrong tree?"
To which I chose to respond on these lines:
To put it in another way, Satya Sai is not the disease or malaise, but a symptom or symbol of it.
The true malaise is the lack of ethical values and intellectual integrity co-existing with an ideology that is indifferent to social justice and egalitarianism.
And tragically it is almost the identity of our national character and ethos. Besides it is culturally pervasive and socially endemic in the sense that it has existed with us for centuries.
This is where the lamentations and outcries of Ambedkar against Hinduism still ring loud and clear in one's ears. Though Ambedkar's giving up on Hinduism and denunciation of its character may sound extreme and pessimistic to some, he was right and prophetic in writing off Hindus as a nation and culture.
Though ostensibly we now have a republican and democratic national form, a culture with its religious and social aspects, but the intrinsic qualities essential to a functioning society and culture represented by a sense of fraternity and liberality joined with a reasonable idea of equity and fairness, just does not exist.
Maybe this is too much to expect from our people and culture and is to be confined to the fancies of arm-chair intellectualism.
But it may be instructive to note that many Anglo-Saxon and European cultures seem to have reached a level of maturity in their social and political organization, after intense turmoil and massacres of the middle ages.
We survived through such ages surely, but learned nothing from it.
The adage of Hinduism is that if we can live through and thrive amidst conquests, pillages, slavery and colonialism, we can peacefully co-exist with corruption and venality as well.
Even in the morally unacceptable state of the bondage of British rule, we were debating the means of liberation struggle between non-voilent and revolutionary (Gandhi vs Tilak, Gandhi vs Bhagat Singh). No wonder we took 150 years to be a free state!.
Though it is debatable and hypothetical now, I continue to wonder if our freedom was really the culmination of a peaceful struggle or a gift from providence in the form of historical tumults of the 2 world wars that destroyed Britain's power and political pre-eminence.
Coming to the present, we have a Prime Minister that presides over a cabinet that has more than 50% members either corrupt or with doubtful integrity and public record. The cabinet has such glittering stars as Sharad Pawar, Veerapa Moily and Jaipal Reddy.
His mentor family (a.k.a. Gandhi family) is among the most corrupt political families of the country. This de facto first or royal family does a lot of sloganeering about the poor and amenities for all, while having close to $10 billion of personal fortunes stashed away in Swiss and other off-shore accounts.
How does Dr. Singh reconcile all this with his public pronouncements of the need for probity in public life and good governance. You do this by cultivating a thick skin that makes you impervious to the call of conscience and helps you nagivate though the moral crisis and contradictions by making sympathetic noises and sanctimonious speeches.
This is what all our God-men and religious celebrities keep doing. The only difference with Dr. Singh is that he does this in the political domain.
If ever there is a living national embodiment of the travesty of justice and morality, it has to be Indian politics and society.
If Anna Hazare's Lok Pal jaggernaut is really earnest in its mission, it first target should be the Gandhi family
For want of something better right now, we must soldier on as Dr. Nayak does with the calls and the protests, which may at times seem misdirected. If history is truly the great teacher that it probably is, these social stresses and contradictions can only be purged by violent means and overthrows.
The problem with peaceful mechanisms of effecting radical change and transformation in society is that they leave the dominant and entrenched elite of the time largely unscathed and free to slip into the mask or cloak of a new ideological fashion.
In India's case how can you remedy the morass of corruption without sending the guilty behind bars? If this is taken to its logical conclusion, more than 90% of our polity will be in jail. One cannot imagine that this can ever happen (if at all it happens) against a background of peace and passive capitulation by thousands of elite offenders to the process of enforcement.
The inherent contradiction between our ideal of peace and the punitive requirement of justice seems quite hopelessly irreconcilable.
To usher in a radical change, calls for the dismantling of the favored structures and mouthpieces of the dominant political elite like the press, electronic media, bureaucracy and organized corporate business.
While the relative peace of the post WW-II eras may have broadened the romantic and idealistic appeal of peaceful methods of social change, the message from the French Revolution and other violent uprisings in history that have effected enduring social transformation, is unmistakable.
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