India — A Society of Slaves?

Neemuch based roadside welder, Jagdish Mistry donated his only source of livelihood — an oxygen cylinder, to a local hospital, when Covid hit Madhya Pradesh and patients were struggling to breathe…and dying like fleas. The news appeared in a vernacular daily that few people read. When asked how he would survive without work and income he replied, he was not thinking that far. He wanted lives saved.

That same night major television channels showed bull-necked Salman Khan, in his kitchen, supervising the packing of hot meals meant for supplies to Covid patients in Mumbai hospitals — publicising his generosity and support to the society.

Navin Jindal, Congress politician and steel magnate, who inherited a fortune, his family acquired by extracting iron ore and coal from government owned mines cheaply and underpaying workers, appeared immediately afterward, scoring brownie points telling the public about the great work his industry was doing in diverting their oxygen production towards medical use.

Only if it was not a tragedy, it would be a fucking joke?

Mukesh Ambani — India’s richest man, a ticker read, had donated Rs 1500 Crores and another one whose name I cannot recall, had donated 100 Crores.

Yet, when you do the mathematics, you discover that the princely sum of Rs 1500 crores represented 0.001% of Ambani’s wealth. This is the equivalent of a millionaire handing over a 10 rupee coin and passing it as a donation of significant size. Even lesser in value were Salman Khan’s publicised meal give-aways. In contrast, the 6000 rupee oxygen cylinder that Jagdish Mistry sacrificed was the only valuable asset and the entire wealth he possessed.

Why are India’s rich so insensitive towards a society from which they benefit so much?

Is it our interpretation of the principle of ‘karma’ according to which Ambani, Jindal and Khan are simply enjoying the fruits of good deeds in a previous life? And Jagdish Mistry desperately trying to pay for previous-birth misdeeds and improving his ‘karma’ for a new life after death?

India is a “stoic society” that has internalised the idea of fate. Even a slave can justify his own slavery. And a master his cruelty.

A poor his crippling poverty and rich his undeserved wealth!

Corruption, bribery, exploitation, misdeeds — everything can not only be explained — but sanctified under a moral and ethical arrangement that provides unparalleled flexibility and where the idea of “wrong” and “right” and “good” and “bad” itself is inextricably confused.

This is why perhaps, in India’s civilisational history, there has never been an outrage — a revolution — a disruptive social or economic change? No demand for equality or fairness or justice? No public beheadings of kings and lords. No turning of tables.

Only an everlasting and eternal status-quo?

A status quo in which Jagdish Mistry will remain unrecognised for an act of extreme generosity even as Mukesh Ambani is marked off as a great philanthrope