Corruption in India has never been a sin, when the very gods of the rulers are not above board how can their mortal followers be an exception? No better proof is needed to reaffirm this statement than the Karnataka Janata Dal finally accepting Ramakrishna as its helmsman to lead the party in the coming elections. That means all the sins committed by this Hayak Brahmin including the famous telephone tapping (the DV editor’s telephone stood first in the list of the tapped phones), which brought down the Hegde Government, are no sins at all. Because to the upper caste rulers of Karnataka (Brahmins, Lingayats and Vokkaligas), Hegde has done no wrong. If he is involved in several corruption cases including a conviction in the famous “arrack bottling case”, and currently facing a probe by a sitting Supreme Court Judge that is no sin. The word “corruption” has No place in India’s ruling class dictionary.

Why the upper-caste rulers do not “believe” that there is anything wrong with people like Hegde? There must be

“Something” extraordinary in Hegde. What is this “something”? The answer to this question is to be found painstakingly built by the State’s greatest leader, Devaraj Urs. Hegde destroyed the leadership of over 85% of the State population and strengthened the muscles of the upper castes. Is this not “something” unprecedented in Karnataka? On the top of that he is accused of amassing an astronomical amount of Rs. 1,200 corers. If he has hit such glorious in heights, historians will certainly hail it as the “golden age of the extraordinary rule of Hegde which destroyed Karnataka” (upper castes). That is why Hegde has become the darling of the upper castes and a Nazi journalist has even proposed his name for the prime minister ship. How do you like this?

Know the “Hindu mind”: If this it and Muslim is the stand of the upper castes regarding “corruption”, why are they shouting about corruption, day in and day out? Why 

“Bofors” is worrying the ruling so much?

That is the real paradox. To understand this paradox, we must first analyses the wonder called the “Hindu mind.

Go to any place where you meet the upper castes, the talk invariably tums to “corruption’. It is a subject on which every upper caste man goes into raptures. There is no subject on which he is so much exercised as corruption. He says with a sigh “nothing moves in India without giving bribes”, Our Ministers are corrupt, police, judiciary, bankers, journalists, lawyers, all professionals are corrupt. Daily newspapers publish “letters to editor” of upper castes themselves complaining against corruption by priests of Tirupati, Kashi and other “holy” temples. These priests are such pests that they squeeze life out of you when you visit these “holy” centers. That means top to bottom everything is corrupt in India. The very Prime Minister of India is drowned in “Bofor” corruption. And the Indian Express, the country’s chief Nazi spokesman, has its daily quota of front-page write ups on Rajiv Gandhi’s corruption.

The “Hindu” stage-managed drama: N. Ram, the associate editor of the Hindu, India’s chief brahminical daily, held a press conference in Delhi on Oct. 12 to make the sensational charge that his own Editor and a close relative, G. Kasturi, was not allowing him: to publish the second installment of his “disclosures” on the Bofors bribe charges against Rajiv Gandhi. G. Kasturi promptly denied the charge. Both statements are published side by side. Can there be a bigger drama than this? The Hindu owned by the House of Kasturis is an Iyengar family concern whose sole motto is to propagate and uphold Brahmanism. Such a Jati company can never have any complaint against corruption because corruption is the” other-side of the brahminical coin. Ram promptly got the second installment of the Bofors charges. Published in the Indian Express, and other national napkin papers. Express editor Arun Shourie, who has no complaints against the mountain of corruption on which his ‘own boss’s Marwari enterprise is built, published the story under the banner headline: “The documents the government won’t let the Hindu print”. Together with the Statesman, owned by the House of Tata’s, another big business house, all the English dailies are having a running battle with Rajiv Gandhi for over two years and Bofors is used to gun down the Prime Minister. So far they must have wasted hundreds of pages on Bofors stories “exposing” Rajiv Gandhi’s corruption” but the PM washes all these corruption by visiting the Shankaracharyas. Ram, Shourie, Kasturi and Rajiv Gandhi together sit at the feet of these Shankaracharyas whose dharma they are upholding. That means on the brahminical ideology, they have no difference of opinion.

On Dharma, they all agree: In other words, on the social exploitation of SC/ST/BCs and Muslims/Christians/Sikhs plus women all of them are unanimous. When they all swear by the same dharma, why they beat each other with corruption charges? We have

Different forms of Corruption:” Corruption” is a part and parcel of the life of India’s ruling class. It cannot live without corruption. The very social system is based on corruption. Corruption has several faces. “Money corruption” is a small part of it. The more serious form of corruption is “caste corruption” and much more serious one is the “intellectual corruption.” The ruling class has no complaints against these more serious forms of corand “intellectual corruption”. It only talks of the “money corruption”, which is small part of ruling class corrupt world, its own creation.

Our point is that the Indian ruling class has nothing against Hegde who is the most famous example for India’s stinking corruption. Rather it wants; it desires to have him as the next PM.

All this gives lie to the charge that the upper castes are worried about corruption. There cannot be a blacker lie than this. Hegde has proved beyond every iota of doubt that the rulers are worried about “corruption”, When an upper caste individual talks about corruption and complains about corruption, what he means is that the other man, against whom he is complaining, has the scope (or powers) to make say Rs. 500 a day. His grouse is that he can make only Rs. 100 a day. His complaint is only to the extent that the other (upper caste) man makes more money than him. The one who is complaining is also corrupt. That means when the upper castes talk of corruption, it means one corrupt man is complaining against another corrupt person. So this “corruption” is eating the ruling class itself more than the SC/ST/BCs and minorities who are victims of social exploitation-a philosophy to which every member of the ruling classes subscribes.

Who Produces Wealth? If this is so, why the members of the ruling class who are drowned in all varieties of corruption, are making “corruption” as the gravest problem confronting the country? To answer this question, we have to first understand the working of this amazing “Hindu mind”,

India’s ruling class lives by exploiting the rest of the society. This tiny tot 15% of the upper caste rulers are not toilers. They produce nothing. They live on others blood. Whose blood? The blood of the indigenous population the Scheduled Castes (20%), tribal (10%), Backward Castes (40%) a total of 70% and Muslims/Christians/Sikhs in all forming about 85% of the India’s 800-million population who are the producers of all wealth. To live on the blood of this population, the ruling class has devised a philosophy of exploitation and called it “dharma” to which every member of the ruling class subscribes. As regards the sucking the blood of the 85% population, not one has any difference of opinion this is called the philosophy of exploitation or the dharma which derives strong sustenance and sanction from the brahminical religion.

What we should do: As long as they don’t give up this philosophy of exploitation, meaning the dharma, they can’t get rid of “corruption”. And Hegde being the arch propagator of this social philosophy of dharma, the ruling class naturally wants him as the next PM. That means the rulers are sinking deeper and deeper into “corruption” in which they will finally get drowned. As days pass you can see one member of the ruling class accusing the other, going to court. The Ram-Kasturi fight in the Hindu is the latest example. Character assassination in the press and platforms has become a daily affair. Finally they will come to blows unable to bear the brunt of this corruption. The only care that we have to take is that we SC/ST/BCs and minorities should not take sides in this ruling class quarrel and fight their battle. Rather, we should encourage them to fight each other and if possible finish each other. The creators of this social exploitation philosophy should be allowed to be downed in the stinking pond of corruption. This is called “converting every problem into an opportunity.” Since we are not the creators of this dharma called social exploitation, we cannot end it. What we can do is to push the rulers deeper and deeper into this pond of corruption so that they will get drowned early.

(DALIT VOICE)

Article extracted from this publication >> January 12, 1990