The Hindu Business Line : Keeping one's word

WHEN I read the news item about the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, explaining why he had not kept his word about contesting another election after 1999, I recalled an excellent anecdote from one of Bernard Levin's short treatises on being honourable and moral.

The story was about an honest policeman who kept his word when he could have easily justified his change of mind with several plausible explanations. The policeman in the story was completing a lottery entry in a restaurant and, on a superstitious instinct, asked the waitress there to guess the numbers, which he filled in. He told her that if he won anything with his lottery ticket, he would give her half.

His entry won the first prize of six million dollars and, the next day, he handed over to the waitress exactly half that amount. Chided by his friends for such "wanton generosity" he said that a promise was a promise. He could have easily talked his way out of the promise — there was no enforceable contract — the offer was not serious one as the whole thing involved after all a lottery, a game and a trifle. Even had he given her a small present of a brooch, the girl would have been delighted. Yet he kept his word.

Imagine how easily King Dasaratha could have breached the promise he gave his Queen Kaikeyi citing a hundred and one reasons of statecraft, including the potential threat of anarchy, as Mr Vajpayee reportedly did, and carried on with the coronation of Prince Rama. The force of such arguments was in his favour as the people of Ayodhya wanted Rama as their King. Obviously, King Dasaratha was honourable as he did not invoke higher principles of governance to avert imminent disaster to the prince regent. Only, despite being devastated and shattered beyond consoling, he would have had no quarrels with his conscience.

However, there are others who despite possible pricks from their conscience, by reference to a higher morality, a loftier purpose or a greater good, are able to breach their promises.

The action of these men can never be free from doubt. For instance, practical politics being what it is, even the conscientious among its constituents can never be expected to say, to quote Levin: "I would rather lose the election than deceive the people".

It would be subject to a higher truth: "I must deceive the people because otherwise the safety of regime would be endangered." "I will deceive the people when, but only when, the people will benefit more from being deceived than they would from not being deceived." The policeman kept his faith with the waitress and with his own soul. The politician does not feel compelled to do so.

Even ordinary mortals like us often confront this dilemma, torn between conscience and doing greater good when breaking our own promise. Our course of action depends on whether we want to be remembered as the ones who kept our word or the ones who acted with the best of motives.

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