“Are the heartless but those who’ve lost their hearts?”

From Lajawaab by Bachchoo 
 
April.03 : My granduncle Rustomji Dhondy was a determined and unforgiving Gandhian with what I came to learn were the eccentricities of that persuasion. He would wear only khadi and shoes of non-animal fabric — jute or plastic — and, though brought up an omnivorous Parsi had turned strict vegetarian.

 He also indulged in more uncomfortably outrageous, yogic practices such as swallowing rolls of tape and pulling them out of his throat to clean out the oesophagus and stomach. He spoke reverentially of other powers that he wasn’t about to demonstrate — the ability to ingest mercury through the penis and more lurid and unnecessary disciplines.
He had great charitable impulses which led him every monsoon to walk through the alleys of slums with servants carrying a few hundred umbrellas which he would distribute to the wet and the poor. I couldn’t persuade him that the poor startled slum dwellers would immediately sell them on cheap to touts who followed Rustomji’s charitable entourage and collected the give-away umbrellas for resale. He said he was content that the recipients of the umbrellas probably needed money more than shelter and it was their prerogative. He couldn’t see my argument for giving them money in the first place. It was un-Gandhian to encourage begging. Umbrellas were the thing.       
Such lines of argument didn’t inspire much confidence in his other pronouncements. His friends, codgers all, would gather in the evening and over their lassi and fruit juices in the cooling Mumbai twilight, sitting on cane chairs on the balcony overlooking the busy street, argue about politics, religion and the morality or otherwise of the generations of young Indians and of the neighbours. I didn’t participate in the arguments but would note that my granduncle, whenever confronted with the question of the increasing and increasingly-exposed corruption of the government, bureaucracies, officials, police and civil servants of the our great and Independent India, would contend that corruption was a disease that we had inherited from the Raj. At least one of his old friends was consistently vociferous in denouncing the greed of “Congress” officials and supposed Gandhians. He was probably not a Rajist or Royalist but then, in the late Fifties and early Sixties, was firmly of the opinion that the democracy and liberation for which they had all fought had turned out to be the wrong sort of government in the wrong sort of hands because it was riddled through with corruption from top to bottom. 
Rustomji Dhondy was staunchly of the belief that the bad habit of demanding and taking bribes was not only something that British bureaucrats of the Raj had taught Indians, but that the complicated systems of law and administration that the Raj had deliberately contrived before they granted us Independence were a dastardly scheme to tempt the hapless Indians who would succeed them into corrupt ways.
I didn’t agree with my granduncle, evaluating his argument as a wilful blindness to India’s growing and threateningly fatal democratic disease.
There was enough history about the corruption of the early East India Company and of the practices of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings who were both impeached for enriching themselves through illegitimate means. Clive even said that he was merely and continuously astounded at his restraint when faced with the loot he could have had from Hindustan.
The histories of corruption in our text books didn’t follow through to later eras. In fact it was assumed, in the history we were taught or with which we came into contact, that by the Victorian age the Company Bahadur and then the Raj were the enemies of corruption. Yes, the British in India had many faults and colonialism was devilishly unfair, but the idea of taking backhanders to get forms filled or to influence a judgement in a court was not the routine which became a scandal in Independent India.
When I came to Britain I assumed that British capitalism, bureaucracy and, indeed, Western democracy and law and order had reached a stage and state of maturity such that the capitalist wanting to start an enterprise didn’t have to bribe the ruling party, three ministers of the Cabinet, five civil servants, 200 petty officials, tax inspectors etc. I took it for granted that passing £20 to some government official to jump a queue, sell me a ticket or stamp a piece of paper would find me rapidly in jail rather than in favour. Neither could I pay the copper who stopped me for going through a red light a tenner or fiver to look the other way and speed me on my way.
Of course there was corruption in the system, but I took it for granted that it was a high and mighty corruption whereby those in power, the “establishment”, whatever that mysterious body was, influenced and determined events, got their way and were materially rewarded through institutional means rather than by means of used bank notes slipped under the table.
How naive, how mistaken! This last week a national newspaper and Channel 4 joined forces and pulled a sting operation on five ex-ministers of the New Labour government. The reporters pretended they were an American firm looking for people who could corruptly influence British government policy in the granting of licences, in the formulation of regulations etc. The sting lured the five ex-ministers into secretly recorded conferences in which these hapless sitting MPs, all Tony Blair protégés, agreed that for fees ranging from £3,000 to £5,000 a day they would speak to their friends in government and in Parliament and to the civil servants with whom they retained good and influential contact, to ensure that government policy served the needs of and enriched their clients.
One ex-minister, Stephen Byers, was even recorded saying that he was like a taxi for hire. He could have mentioned an older profession offering the punter a ride.
It could and did happen in India when leaders and others were stung by Tehelka while allegedly accepting money in connection with defence deals. The difference? The exposure in the UK will see that bribery and influence-peddling of this sort come to an end. Did Tehelka’s exposure make sure that it was the end of all that in India? Really?
 
Farrukh Dhondy