A Question of Ethics

All over the world unethical practices are now considered to be a serious problem. Earlier there was collective responsibility: more reliance on norms laid down by religion, laws and codes of conduct.

Principles of ethics lay down norms for good behaviour by distinguishing between virtues and vices. Values and ethics are closely related. Without values, ethics have no base to stand on.

But, distinction between principles and practices in ethics is vital. To be ethical in one’s life when it’s accepted that all ethical tenets are relative and all ethical practices are situational, one has to learn to take ethical decisions with full awareness.

Ethical problems present themselves as conflicts, dilemmas and paradoxes. The need is to realise that principles may lay down “right” and “wrong”; practice distinguishes between “good” and “bad”.

Moreover, it’s not always choice between good and bad, it can be between more good and less good, or between more bad and less bad.

The old approach was essentially regulatory in nature: religious, legal and political, based on ideas of sin, crime, and corruption. We are now more interested in positive ideas such as courage and trust.

The best type of courage is moral courage. One who has it can take more risk and act boldly with a high degree of confidence. Further, our acceptability in our own organisations and in our own societies depends on trust others have in us.

The emphasis now is shifting towards individual responsibility: ethical choices, good compromises, moral courage, right to information, transparency, and accountability. They haven’t produced satisfactory results, mainly because the process of implementation is dominated more by avoidance than by compliance.

To bring home these points in the classroom, we have used “Satyadas,” a very interesting story written by Bimal Kar and published in Katha Prize Stories — 2.

In it, a character named Raghunath, running a small shop in a small town, is content with earning his frugal living.

He is religious in outlook and compassionate towards others. One afternoon, when it’s raining, an old man, a poor vendor of herbs named Satyadas comes to his shop. He’s running a high temperature.

Raghunath provides him food and shelter. In the morning, the visitor is again provided hospitality. He then leaves for another destination leaving behind a pouch containing six gold coins and a ring studded with gems.

Raghunath waits for him for several months to return and then on the persuasion of his wife Jamuna, he sells the contents of the pouch one by one, sets up a bigger shop, and, builds a comfortable house for himself to live in. He starts life with dignity in society.

But one fine day, suddenly Satyadas makes his appearance. Raghunath is shocked. He’s not as hospitable as before.

On the contrary, he thinks as if a devil has turned up and wishes he leaves quickly. As Satyadas is about to leave, conscientious Raghunath asks: “Did you leave behind something here when you visited last time?” Satyadas says: “I don’t know. God knows everything.”

The story ends here leaving Raghunath with deep sense of guilt and remorse. The sense of guilt is one interpretation.

Another is: Satyadas, Raghunath and Jamuna are all three purely imaginary characters created by the author to portray the three conflicting aspects of a single mind: morality, guilt and greed.

Another interpretation: why could Raghunath not have the moral courage to practice transparency and tell Satyadas: “On your previous visit you left behind some gold coins and a ring. I waited a long time for you to return.

Only then I sold them to invest in my business and in building a house. I want to repay you. Let us work out a repayment schedule?” Feeling of guilt and remorse are psychologically paralytic.

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “Interpreter of Maladies”, the main character is Mina. She, her husband and three children, an expatriate family, visit India as tourists.

They go to the Konark temple and the nearby caves with a driver-cum-guide who also serves a doctor as an interpreter of what patients say in their language. As her husband and three children go up the hill to visit the caves, Mina stays behind, sitting in a car.

Talking to the interpreter she shares a secret of her life. The second child, a son, is her son, not her husband’s son. Neither her husband nor the child and his father know this fact. She feels uncomfortable to see her husband treat the child in ignorance as his son and continues to behave as usual.

She asks the interpreter to interpret (the hidden meaning of) her ethical “malady”. He asks her: “Is it really pain you feel, or, is it guilt?

Mina’s case can be compared to that of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Anna had thought and with a conscious mind violated marriage. Mina’s act of violating marriage was because of absence of “self-awareness”.

Anna could later say: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay”. She hadn’t foreseen the eternal error people make imagining that happiness lies in the realisation of desires.

Mina has suffered the “pain” for eight years and may continue to suffer. She is morally weak: her lapse was impulsive, not intentional. She isn’t prepared to reason: “It happened”, free herself from the “false life” she is living, and have courage to make a new beginning.