You switch on your television, called ‘idiot box’ by those who know what it actually is, after or before dinner just to know what’s happening and you see what you saw yesterday and day before yesterday: an anchor and three or four intellectuals in absolutely heated discussion foaming at mouth on the plight of the country that, they believe, has gone totally corrupt.

First they blame all the political parties, civic institutions and the establishment. Then, in a fit of self-righteous rage, they blame one another because of slight differences in their worldview. Finally, they take a moral high ground; this country must be rid of corruption. How? Hang the corrupt in public squares. One wonders why corruption has not been eliminated in China where they hang the corrupt. Strange, the more they hang the corrupt, the more they add to the list of world’s billionaires every year. Their capital-laced spigot spews the rich faster than they produce babies. Is there any connection between the two? Do the riches have an umbilical link with foul play?

The talk show intellectuals rant and rave over the ill-health of the nation that has unblemished past. It’s the leaders who are responsible for the unmanageable mess in our Augean stables. If you happen to know a little bit of history you squirm in your seat.

Almost all the Muslim rulers in India, their cohorts, nobles, administrators, military commanders, police officials and revenue collectors had been so fond of accepting gifts. Gifts by the way were not offered voluntarily in most cases. Those on the higher rungs subtly and at times not so subtly coerced the ones on the lower to make the offerings. ‘Dali’ was the word for such gifts.

Now the colonialism! The Raj is generally thought to be relatively clean. It wasn’t clean either. It exploited the massive resources of the subcontinent at macro level and its officials and employees plundered though discretely at micro level. District administration, police, irrigation and revenue departments all used to get from the people what was called ‘Kharcha Pani’ (service charges, a euphemism for bribe).You can still find in the custody of the descendants of the colonial officials, high and low, the treasure pieces declared as gifts which in fact were looted from the ‘Lahore Darbar’ immediately after the annexation of the Punjab or bought at throwaway price in mid-19th century.

Majeed Sheikh, writing on the Great London exhibition of 1851, which had a special corner for the ‘Exhibits of Lahore Darbar’, quotes a British newspaper that said ‘visitors were stunned when they saw the immense wealth the British had acquired from the Punjab’. That was the way ‘honestly is the best policy’ was upheld by the British colonialists. How can our ruling elite, a protégé of the colonialists, be expected to do any better.

Having harangued the viewers, our intellectuals wrap up their ‘talk show’ by appealing to the conscience of the powerful not to indulge in corrupt practices for sake of the nation’s health. They have nothing to offer except pontificating on the virtue of honesty and spewing generalities on morality. No one seems to have interest or capacity to dissect the innards of the system; how corruption is an inbuilt component of power. Wherever there is power, there is unavoidable tendency of it being misused. Just look at the history. All forms of governments, including theocracy, monarchy, fascism, capitalist democracy, socialism and communism stand tainted.

So the question is not that of having a dreamworld free of corruption. Corruption-free power structure is a historical impossibility at this point of time.

Cultural superstructure bequeathed by the past which conditions the mind of the living cannot be wished away. It no way however implies that corruption is acceptable but the realm of necessity must not be lost to the sight. By the way, there is no strong correlation between corruption and development as there is no significant organic link between democracy and development. Japan, the USA, France and the UK are good examples of the former as Russia, China, South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia are of the latter.

No talking head realises that we must go for what we can realistically achieve; bringing corruption down to a tolerable level. But sadly realism has never been a part of intellectual tradition in our part of the world. Who is going to give our TV screen ‘Aflatuns (Plato is called Aflatun. A philosophising moron is also called Aflatun) a lesson or two in the art of realism? Our village elders may help us to find such a person. They narrate a small anecdote with insouciant joy: “Once an intellectual came to a village and noticed something unusual that agitated his philosophic mind. He saw a wall that had cow dung on the top of it. The whole thing raised a complex logical question in his mind. How could a cow, he pondered, go to the top of the wall and come down after having relieved itself there. He stood there long with his nerve-racking question unable to find the answer till a village idiot came to his help and solved the great riddle. It was a human hand that slapped the cow dung on the wall, the idiot told him”.

May we find such an idiot to talk to the lords of our TV talk shows. Amen! — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2015

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