Ashis Nandy is not simplistic with his words. His way of presenting his thoughts and ideas is rather overloaded with symbolism. He has a way with using paradoxes, aphorisms, riddles, ironies, metaphors, imagery, and personifications to take his readers by surprise. He makes demands on his readers and provokes them to think. He stings! Precisely, this is why he got himself landed in a tragic-comic situation in the Jaipur Literature Festival. He bit himself with his own stings.

Anyone who was present in the panel discussion called “The Republic of Ideas” at the JLF with Nandy, Urvashi Butalia, a writer and publisher, Tarun Tejpal, a magazine editor and novelist; and a few others could only be baffled at the turn of events that emanated from the rather heartening, and perhaps a trifle provocative, albeit intentionally so, discussion that took place. What actually happened was this: The thread of ‘corruption as a leveling force’ started when Tejpal, and not Nandy, first came up with the suggestion and commented that in a country like India, where entrenched systems of self-aggrandizement are well in place for those with the means, mostly along caste lines, corruption could also be seen as a method of subversion by the poor and the historically disenfranchised, so as to gain access to the very entitlements that are guaranteed by the Constitution.

Ashis Nandy, a gruff and bespectacled seventy-five year old man with a balding head, a wispy beard, and a ready laugh, who has throughout his long and illustrious academic career as a social psychologist championed the cause of the ‘others’ within India whether religious minorities, SC/ST and OBCs, or the rural and urban poor had an unorthodox take on corruption. “I do wish there remains some degree of corruption in India because I would also suggest that it humanizes our society.”  Nandy spoke about lower-caste politicians, and argued that because they have only recently gained access to the spoils of power, they didn’t yet have the sophisticated social networks that allow India’s upper-caste élite to hide their corruption. Indicating his fellow panelist Richard Sorabji, an Oxford scholar, Nandy said, “If I do a good turn to Richard Sorabji, he can return the favor by accommodating my nephew at Oxford; if it were in the United States, it would be a substantial fellowship.” He mentioned Mayawati, a Dalit politician and president of the BSP-the largest lower-caste political party. Like a vast number of Indian politicians, she has faced charges of corruption (which have since been dismissed). “If she has to oblige somebody or have somebody in the family absorb the money, she will probably have to take the bribe of having a hundred petrol pumps, and that is very conspicuous, very corrupt indeed. Our corruption doesn’t look that corrupt, theirs does.” Nandy simply showed how corruption was indicative of a social churn and a republic at work, because corruption need not be the domain of the elites only.

Tejpal, a magazine editor from Delhi, followed Nandy’s thought and described corruption in India being a class equalizer, as the only chance for the people on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ to make it in a highly stratified and unequal society.  Then came the part which caused the furore when Nandy responded, “It will be a very undignified and—how should I put it—almost vulgar statement on my part. It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the O.B.C.s and the scheduled caste and now increasingly the scheduled tribes. And as long as this is the case, the Indian republic will survive.”

What Ashis Nandy actually meant was that the corruption of the SC/STs and the OBCs are visible because they have not yet developed the mechanisms of effective social camouflage, which the elites are adept at, of course. Such mechanisms of hiding and masking self-serving systems turn deep-rooted corruption into accepted techniques of socialization and social engineering. Because the Dalits, the OBCs and other historically disenfranchised lack the finesse, their corruption remains crude and visible to the general eye. Their bonds and affiliations still tend to be dynastic or familial, instead of global or transnational class patterns, which keep the status quo of contemporary capital flows intact and when the marginalized start subverting the system by using the very tools of the system, we call it corruption.

Ashis actually reasoned out why an educated, urban and media-consuming Indian tends to think of only a Mayawati or a Mulayam Singh as ‘corrupt’ as against an upper caste, urban, English speaking  leader or a bureaucrats indulging in the worst form of corruption in innumerable ways, and having an equally dubious record escape this image-through distributive justice of corruption.   

On hearing Nandy’s statement, a populist television journalist, who was also on the panel, promptly called Nandy’s remarks a ‘casteist slur’. Within moments, the TRP driven media distorted Nandy’s words and kept playing that one line uttered by him. What kind of media is hungry enough to pounce on the crumbs of an intellectual and fearless debate, taking place at a platform like the Jaipur Literature Festival, tosses it over, denuded out of context, to the boiling matrix of the Indian public sphere at large? As if it was waiting breathlessly to have one ‘breaking news’ from the Literature Festival.   

Like me, you can choose not to agree with Ashis Nandy and yes, there are legitimate grounds for disagreeing. But to say that he is anti-SC/ST/OBC or worse, that it is a ‘casteist slur’ on the disadvantaged sections is a formidable misreading of his position. To determine that his statement causes ‘threat to public order’ is a dreadful interpretation of Article 19(2). Should there be no space for irony in public life? Is this practice followed by the contemporary media of picking one sentence up out of a complex argument and turning it into a public statement of mass consumption acceptable? I think not. If you disagree with me on this, you can say that Nandy’s statement called for it. I agree that the country has not reached a stage where freedom of speech should include the right to offend, but we as a society should find a right balance which leans more towards freedom and not pointless repression.

That Nandy, one of the finest scholars we have is caught in a mistaken identity of argument is not the real tragedy. What is more tragic is to find that SC/ST and OBC are reacting to Nandy’s statement with such murderousness and vehemence. They can’t distinguish between their friends and foes. Being competitively intolerant is one thing, but showing such indignation without distinguishing between what works for and against them is another.