When there is power imbalance…..

Dr. Gurpur was talking in a seminar dated 10 December 2019. Dr. Shashikala Gurpur is Dean of faculty of law at Symbiosis International (Deemed University). She is also an ethics committee member of ethics committee of Symbiosis. In her talk she made a statement. The statement was - “When there is power imbalance, the truth goes for a toss!” It is a topic of multiple books and articles and blog posts.

How great a person she is and what great work she is doing and in which context this sentence was used, all these questions needs separate blog posts, but I will restrict this post related to this one thought.  

We should try to understand how power imbalance affects the search of truth and then what can be done to avoid the negative effect of power imbalance. Before that we will need to understand what, a power imbalance is. We will try to see the corollary of this sentence too.

Power imbalance as I understand in this context is when one is at powerful position and another person is at receiving end. One may say that power is needed for search of truth itself. It is true too partially. But there is no objection being taken at power itself, but it is about power imbalance.

I was watching Upanishad Ganga some days back on DD National and the beginning of that serial there is following shloka from Ishavasya Upanishad.

हिरण्मयेन पात्रेण सत्यस्यापिहितं मुखम्‌।

तत् त्वं पूषन्नपावृणु सत्यधर्माय दृष्टये ॥

Its meaning is as follows. “The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight.” (Reference - https://upanishads.org.in/upanishads/1/15)

I found lot of similarity between what Gurpur madam said and this Shloka from Ishavasya Upanishad.

The gold represents power. To see the truth, one must remove the lid of gold!

It can mean many things. It means that gold (power) and truth live very near to each other. But power clouds our understanding of truth to such an extent that it almost becomes a barrier to know the truth.

After listening that sentence that day, I got answer to a very important question in my life. The answer is in the corollary of the principle which is stated above.  If we consider the sentence of  “When there is a power imbalance, the truth goes for a toss” as a law (of nature), we can say the corollary of this law as “One will not get to see the truth who indulges in excessive power and allows the power imbalance in the situation.” This is answer to the question in my mind which was there, but I was not able to articulate it properly till I got this answer.

The question was – “What punishment is there available in nature for those who indulge in excessive power and power imbalance?” The answer is – “He will not get to see the truth!”

This understanding is very much satisfying.

The relation between a doctor and a patient changes when some medical research is going on. Both of them are at equal level when research is going on. Otherwise in a normal relation, the patient is at receiving end and the doctor is having decision making authority. Maybe this happens because in research, the aim is to find the truth.

Mahatma Gandhi has said that a lie is the biggest injustice and when there is injustice, there is anger and the anger leads to violence. So, removing power imbalance is a way of nonviolence or in other sense a way to reach truth. Hence nonviolence and reaching truth is the same thing in my opinion.

The above discussion has triggered some more questions in my mind to which I am finding answers. They are as follows.

·       How to deal when there will be power imbalance present and its visible clearly. How to diagnose power imbalance and what is the treatment?

·       Under the name of what power imbalance is created? Like freedom is taken away in the name of help, by showing which (logical and apparently ethical) reason power imbalance is created?

Prof. Richard Dawkins has very beautifully shown the relation between science and politics. He said “Science is about finding the truth. Truth is power and politics is all about power.”

But in my opinion, researchers / scientists cannot blame politicians entirely if truth goes for a toss. It is researchers who should remain away from excessive power if they want to search the truth. Prasoon Joshi explains that in India politicians do not trouble people if people will not trouble them. He says that people think that they can use politicians, so they go close to them to use politicians and cry foul when they are used by politicians.

I want to thank Gurpur madam for creating this chain of though in my mind by her one sentence. I am very happy to find a similar verse from Ishavasya Upanishad.

Thanks for reading.

- Dr. Abhijeet Safai