IMy father was an honest cop. The dyed-in-the-wool incorrupt type. He wore his honesty like a medal, like an invisible cape which always fluttered in my conscience if I ever contemplated doing a wrong when I was growing up. There was no room in his professional life for any kind of compromise or corruption. When he retired from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 1988 as a Superintendent of Police, there perhaps wasn’t a more straightforward and honest officer. My father is now no more, but his legacy of honesty lives on.
To my father, who was also in the Anti-Corruption Unit of the CBI, honesty was not just about doing his job well. It was a total package of almost rigid adherence to principles which he believed in. There was no room for any compromise. His family paid a price for it too as he was frequently ‘rewarded’ with transfers. My childhood was spent between the cities of Chennai and New Delhi. In the coldest days of Delhi’s winters, my mom was often left to struggle with three young children in musty, draughty Central government quarters, while my father would be away in Amritsar (at the height of the Sikh troubles in the early 1980s) or Calcutta, for months.
All this translates into legacy, a very difficult one, which he has passed on to his children. I have had my fair share of transgressions, been sheepishly party to petty bribes. I know for a fact that he would never have condoned it. Many called my father arrogant. It was the arrogance of an iron will which will not compromise.
Often I have tried to analyse; what made him such an infallibly incorrupt officer and human being?
He came from a landed Nair family in Kerala. But instead of falling back on his family’s wealth (which was also badly mismanaged by his family), he chose to work away from Kerala and made his way up the police force. Right from the time he was a Sub-Inspector and then an Inspector in the Tamil hinterland, he was a terror of wrongdoers. He became known for being a cop who brooked no corruption and wrongdoing. The same continued when he went on deputation to the CBI.
Handling sensitive cases, he was offered bribes. In those days of low governmental salaries, any extra income would have made a huge difference to our lives. But not for a moment did he contemplate accepting anything but what was due to him, and sometimes not even that. We grew up on a steady diet of these kinds of stories. There is an oft-repeated story in the family about how my father held the collar of a prominent senior officer who wanted him to toe the line. He refused to submit paeans to himself, which was a necessity to be awarded service medals. He maintained that doing his job to the best of his abilities was his duty, and there it ended, police medal or not! I was wonderstruck by him.
It’s only after I grew up that I realised how subtly his personality had come to shape mine. Neither he nor my mother, who was herself a very straightforward person, ever lectured us about honesty. All they did was live their lives as they knew best, and the rest followed.
I chose to become a journalist. And being my father’s daughter I took it on with missionary zeal. Journalists in Tamil Nadu, especially the vernacular press, were notoriously underpaid two decades ago. Maybe the situation has changed today. But most scribes were expected to ‘make their own way’. This meant that reporters haunted press conferences in the hope that they would be ‘rewarded’. And they were. It was very common for organisers to hand out little gifts at the end – in cash sometimes, otherwise in kind. These ‘gifts’ were eagerly taken. I would often be the only journalist who refused these gifts. The organisers would get affronted, they would insist. I would firmly refuse. You see, my father’s legacy was making itself known!
What is honesty?
What makes a person honest? What contributes to a person’s integrity? After some time spent on analysing this trait, here is what I think. Being honest is being honest even when you know that no one will ever know if you were dishonest. It’s about being honest in your own head first. It’s about being honest for yourself, first and last. Is one born with this kind of integrity embedded in the DNA, or can one be taught it? Is it nature or is it nurture? I believe that nurture does play a huge role in the person you shape up to be. Yet, often, children born of the same parents end up having differing moral compass. Doesn’t it then mean that one is born with certain things already coded into the genes?
Now, how does all this impact, for instance, our police force? We know that corruption is endemic in the force. It has become a part of the system so much that we don’t even notice it anymore. How does one address it? Increasing the salary scale, providing better infrastructure and facilities to the force will indeed go a long way in addressing some of the corruption issues. But it won’t address all the issues. The entire force is not corrupt. But the bad apples will not stop being bad just because they get a better salary. Systemic flaws don’t go away with small gestures.
Then how does one alter a well-entrenched mindset? At the time of Independence, for instance, I am certain there was a lot of honesty and transparency among both politicians and bureaucracy. Why is it any different seven decades hence? Does the flaw lie in the way we train our people, be it in the police force or other government departments? Or is it that as a society we don’t have a common cause anymore and it’s each to his own?
My father sometimes used to talk about corrupt colleagues and officers. His tone was always matter of fact, never holier-than-thou. To my regret, I never asked him why he was this incorrupt or what made him eschew the endemic corruption. Born as he was, in pre-Independence India, perhaps service to the nation was coded into him. The cause of the nation rated far above everything else.
Perhaps, after the euphoria of Independence, as a nation we no longer had a cause to rally around. Materialism became the order of the day and money became of paramount importance. Somehow, there was no one in public life who could moderate and temper our surge towards materialism. The changes in society will always be reflected in its people and services they offer. As we are finding out today.
I worry about the next generation. They are a generation driven by material goals. Will this make them even more easygoing about values and integrity? I once described Gandhiji to my then 7-year-old, who listened open-mouthed. After the story, he wanted me to rewind to the part about Gandhiji eschewing even his clothes in favour of a loin cloth! He made me repeat many times how Gandhiji went striding up to meet the King of England who was “wearing clothes enough for both of us”, as Gandhiji later described. My son was and is truly intrigued about how one can give up all material things!
The time has come to teach our youngsters that money has its uses, but peace of mind can be achieved only by living a blameless, honest life, with integrity and fairness. This basically means, we ourselves try and live a life where material pursuits don’t overwhelmingly consume us. A tall feat? But a worthy one, you will agree.
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E. Vijayalakshmi Rajan
E. Vijayalakshmi Rajan is Assistant Editor, One India One People.[/column]
E. Vijayalakshmi Rajan is Assistant Editor, One India One People.