Put On Your Thinking Cap

Do We need a Moral Right to Question Others???


Often in discussions and arguments, one most interesting piece of defence that people use is to question the moral right of the person questioning them. I will illustrate this with a simple example. Ram is a college student who was found using unfair means in is semester exam. His friend Chandran confronted him after the exam and asks him as to why he did that. Ram’s counter question is almost instantaneous. He asks, “Chandru, what right do you have to question me? You also used the same means last semester to pass!!.”


I have come across this form of defence in many other areas. In politics, Congress party says BJP has no moral authority to charge Congress with corruption as they themselves are corrupt. At home, often younger siblings cite incidents of some nature to question the moral authority of parents/elders to enforce discipline, like if the father is a smoker, the son believes that the father has no right to question his own smoking habits. Alternatively, parents retort when pointed out mistakes by their young children, with a typical answer “You are a kid born yesterday. And you are questioning me???”


To cut the long story short, I would simply put it like this.

Mahatma Gandhi says Don’t Cheat.


A convicted thief says Don’t Cheat.


Is the value of the statement Don’t Cheat, a function of the person saying it? Does the same statement when said by Gandhi, more valuable than the other? I don’t think so. The value of the statement Don’t Cheat is indestructible. Its relevance, importance and significance remain the same regardless of who is saying it. Often, when confronted with situations and arguments which highlight our own incompetence and inadequacies, we tend to take refuge in the fact that the other person has no moral authority to question us and infact, take that as green signal to continue with our vices.


If it requires a person of complete character to question any one’s vices, then I don’t think any one of us can point out mistakes or provide guidance in any one else. We all are imperfect in some form or the other, at different points of time in life. It will do us more good to look at WHAT is being said, rather than WHO is saying it. Even if the greatest of advices are coming from the hardest of the criminals, it is worth absolutely the same as Krishna’s BhagavadGita to Arjun.


But yes, it would do us, others and the situation better, if we lead by personal example and then start dishing out advices. People unconsciously tend to blindly listen to so called good people, in the belief that all that they are saying is good. It makes me laugh though. Perceptions!! Oh, didn’t I tell you that we are all a part of an Imperfect World?