A person who always tells the truth will always be honest but a person who tells lies or is deceitful in important matters will always be dishonest and will be fertile ground for giving and taking bribes

What is truth, asked jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer.—Sir Francis Bacon (circa Shakespeare) “Essay on Truth”

“White Man speak with forked tongue”. A classic sentence, one I always loved, in the fiction genre called “Westerns” which documented the Americans’ savage conquest of their Wild West. The “forked tongue” is a metaphor for the white man’s perennial habit of saying one thing to the Red Indians and meaning exactly the opposite. The credulous Red Indians believed what the white man said and were destroyed by the while man’s deceit, dishonesty and treachery.

Come to India, there are lakhs of people who “speak with forked tongue”—mostly the politicians, the bureaucrats, the petty babus in the taluka offices, businessmen and their “corporate communications” people, traders, etc. I will give two examples of “forked tongues” and go on to show that truth and honesty are indivisible and the obverse that lying and deceit are inseparable from dishonesty and crimes like graft, bribery, under-the-table payments, etc.

I do not know the technical aspects of the philosophical logic that proves these statements. But these are observable facts which the philosophers will confirm in their own way. 

In sum, a person who always (or 99% of the time, for perfection is impossible) tells the truth will always be honest. He will be incorruptible and blow the whistle when he comes across bribery or graft. A person who tells lies or is deceitful in important matters will always be dishonest and will be fertile ground for giving and taking bribes.

Now, the examples. Many months ago, Salman Khurshid told the world with utmost conviction that Loop Telecom had no connection with the Essar group of the Ruias, though the whole world knew otherwise. Mr Khurshid was proved wrong the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which has filed a case that establishes that Loop Telecom is a creation of the Ruias. (Please see 2gscam.co.in, a website that has been around since the news of the scam first broke and gives us the “A to Z’ of the scam).

Why did Salman Khurshid say something which he knew was patently a lie? Who knows? But whatever the reason, his statement raises suspicions.

Now, we come to Kapil Sibal. A second lead report in the Times of India of about three weeks ago reads thus:

“Mumbai: A telecom company can be penalized anything between nil (sic) and Rs50 crore for violating rules. But bureaucrats are so worried of being accused of corruption that they are levying the maximum amount, almost as a rule. Nor is there any chance of the fine being lowered by the minister, who is equally reluctant to invite charges of graft.”

“The pervasive fear of being persecuted for decisions, even those intended in the right spirit, is preventing many top officials and Ministers from taking much-needed steps, said Mr Sibal, Union minister for communications and human resource development. He was speaking at the discussion on the “Agenda for Reform” at the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence.”

Not only is Mr Sibal deceitful and intellectually dishonest, he is excruciatingly and outrageously funny, like something out of “Monty Python”, the great satire on British TV.  And it is a short step, as we have shown, from dishonesty to something far more damaging to the country and the people.

I am not saying that Mr Khurshid and Mr Sibal are crooks. I am saying that lies and dishonesty are the basis for all the scams—2G (second generation), illegal iron ore mining, the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) system of settlements to let off proven offenders, even criminals, with a financial rap on the knuckles, etc.

To be fair to Mr Khurshid and Mr Sibal, one could say that, as lawyers, they are so habituated to defending the indefensible that they are unable to keep that compulsion out of public life.

So, here is a tip for the Lokpal-to-be, the Lokayuktas and the crime busters like the CBI: if you find that a guy is lying, be sure that he is basically dishonest and his psyche definitely tends towards crime.