As I begin to write this dispatch on a Thursday morning, journalist Rana Ayyub’s self-published book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up has shot up the bestseller list on Amazon India. I’m still to complete it. All I can say is that it is a compelling read. And you got to give it to Ayyub for guts, as Salil Tripathi wrote in his review of the book in Mint.
That said, my mind is grappling with a problem nobody seems to have conclusive answers to.
1. I do something wrong right now.
2. I am convinced in the long run that wrong is for the greater good.
3. Did I do the right thing then?
This question has haunted humans forever. I tried to address it as part of this series in the past as well. It forms one of the central themes in the discourse between Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahabharata.
The immediate provocation to ask this question to myself yet again is Ayyub’s book. The sum and substance of which are the findings from a sting conducted by her in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots. In trying to do that, she went undercover as an Indo-American filmmaker making a film on “Vibrant Gujarat”.
She gained access to people in all the right places through subterfuge to get them on tape, the outcome of which is the book. The consequences for those implicated in the book, which includes the current ruling elite, can be disastrous in the long run.
When she was done with her research, writing and ready to publish, nobody was willing to touch it. Ayyub ended up a nervous wreck, and took the self-publishing route. Sans any publicity, either in the news or by way of advertising, that the book is on the best-seller list in India and that it has overtaken fixtures there such as Chetan Bhagat, Robin Sharma and Paulo Coelho is, to put it mildly, amazing.
I listened in to the conversation at the book launch in New Delhi in two parts, with Ayyub anchored by the political editor of Caravan magazine, Hartosh Singh Bal, noted human rights lawyer Indira Jaisingh and Rajdeep Sardesai, now consulting editor at the India Today group.
It was an interesting one and at various points, the question was asked of Ayyub: “The means that you deployed to accomplish your ends, did you not betray the faith of those who placed their trust in you?”
She was unambiguous in that when all other means to get to the truth had failed, she was left with nothing but subterfuge to get to it. That is one among the many reasons, she says, she ended a nervous wreck. But it had to be done in the interests of the greater common good. Now, what is the “greater common good”?
This is a question all of us humans face in our lives. By way of personal example, I can think of a choice I was compelled to make in an earlier assignment, the details of which I do not intend to get into. I faced a choice. Either I toe a line that I disagree with, or get the boot.
If I toe the line, I continue to live the good life. If I don’t, the boot follows—the consequences of which would be felt not just by me, but my family as well. By that yardstick, in my world, following “the greater common good” would mean I toe the line. But if I did, when it is time to die, I know deep down that I will not forgive myself for giving in to the “greater common good”. What am I to do?
When extrapolated into the Bhagavad Gita, in some way, this is the kind of dilemma that stared the great warrior Arjuna of the Pandava clan as he got ready for battle against his cousins on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu and mentor to the Pandavas, argues with Arjuna and tells him his duty is to fight, irrespective of the consequences.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen thinks Arjuna’s refusal to take a consequence-independent position is an admirable one. He discusses why in much detail in his book The Argumentative Indian. It earned him the title of a peacenik and his theories around the discourse have been the subject of much discourse—with the more popular being one penned by R. Jagannathan, the editorial director at Swarjaya magazine.
In an earlier avatar at Firstpost, Jagannathan posited his understanding of Krishna’s message to Arjuna: “When you have decided on war after all options for peace ended, you have a duty to fight. That is your dharma.”
In trying to gain some more perspective, I thought it only appropriate then I call Sardesai. We spoke briefly over the phone. What did he think of Ayyub’s operation?
As Bal describes it, when invited to be a panellist, most people chickened out at the last minute because they “developed sudden travel plans” or “something urgent just came up”. But Sardesai turned up.
He is so often at the receiving end of trolls on social media as well that it took a personal toll on him. It compelled him to get off Twitter for a brief while because he couldn’t handle the abuse any more. “For every 10 people who abuse me, there is that one person wants to engage with me. I cannot let them down or be seen as running away,” he said. And he got back.
I asked him where he stands on Ayyub’s operation.
“In my experience, there is a thin line between what constitutes a sting and what comprises an entrapment. So, I am wary of sting operations. Also, it must be done only when the public interest is overwhelming and there is absolutely no other way of getting to the truth. What you eventually want is justice. That is what has driven me through all of these years. You have to constantly push the system. The ends versus means arguments does not stand to scrutiny if you cannot provide justice eventually,” he argued.
“But who is to decide what is justice? What is justice to you may not be justice to somebody else,” I said.
“Yes, there is an element of subjectivity in what is justice. There is no denying that. But we must look at the context,” he said. “The reason Gujarat continues to remain in the minds of people is because the media hasn’t let go of the case. But what about the 3,000 Sikhs who got killed in Delhi during the 1984 riots when the Congress was ruling? Why are so few of the killers and those who instigated them behind bars yet? In Mumbai, hundreds of people were butchered in 1992. How many were convicted? You start out thinking during the normal course of things, justice will get done. But it doesn’t work that way in our country.”
I thought he sounded cynical.
“Yes, I have become cynical. But cynicism cannot become your way of life, nor should it stop you from shaking up the system every once a while,” he said, I suspect, a tad pensively. To that extent, he said he is philosophically on Krishna’s side—in that you have to do what is your duty because that is the right thing to do.
While on duty and the right thing to do, I was almost tempted to probe him on why he didn’t run the tapes on the cash-for-votes scandal in 2008 when he was the editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN. Siddharth Varadarajan, now editor of The Wire, had then written in The Hindu, of which he was the editor at the time, that “five days before the Manmohan Singh government faced a crucial vote of confidence on the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008, a political aide to Congress leader Satish Sharma showed a US Embassy employee ‘two chests containing cash’ he said was part of a bigger fund of Rs50 crore to Rs60 crore that the party had assembled to purchase the support of MPs”.
The tapes that allegedly contained evidence of the wrongdoing were with Sardesai, who had gone on air to announce a coup that these tapes would be telecast later in the evening. But it was pulled out and for inexplicable reasons wasn’t broadcast until 20 days later.
Various accounts exist on why Sardesai didn’t, including that he copped out. But because he has explained his position clearly in his book 2014: The Elections That Changed India, I thought asking him why wouldn’t add any more value to the debate than what he had already written about.
In a separate email though, he wrote to me, “It was aired after due diligence and legal scrutiny. We did not chicken out. When to air is a matter of editorial judgement, not for a political party to decide.”
Now, if I were to coalesce all of these and argue from Krishna’s position that I ought to take a consequence-independent position and simply stick to my dharma, or duty, I am not sure the “greater common good” theory will hold good for me. But then, to a layperson like me, neither does Sen’s argument that Arjuna’s position is an admirable one.
To my mind, on the one hand, if I accept Krishna’s position, then I ought to be plain dumb and incapable of independent thought. I refuse to accept that. On the other hand, if I accept Sen’s argument, it leaves me in a position of tamas (lethargy or darkness, as the Gita calls it, and one when a human needs informed and wise counsel of the kind Krishna offered Arjuna). The problem is, as humans, all of us are susceptible to foibles and may not always have access to wise counsel—or perhaps may choose not to seek it for whatever reason.
If it may interest you, may I point you towards a very nuanced paper on the theme that I stumbled across recently titled Consequentialism and the Gita (read here).
So, where does that leave simpletons like me who do not have much bandwidth left after the exigencies of life are done with? Much thought later, I have arrived at a position for my personal life. This is not to suggest it is not amenable to change.
But as things are, if money be the only variable by which the greater common good is going to be measured, count me out. My family and I need only so much and we are pretty damn happy with it. Everything else is a bonus.
I have read, re-read, and heard Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? Though I do no subscribe to his Christian doctrine, my family does. But that’s okay with me and I’m not going to try to change them. If their faith makes them happy, then so be it. Every place else, what Christensen stands for resonates with me.
As for Rana Ayyub, I do not know her nor did I attempt to reach out to her for this piece. All I can say is: You’ve got guts girl.
(This piece was originally published in Mint on Sunday & all copy rights vest with the publishers of Mint)
