Daily Human – The Indian curse of too much Forgiveness

I just read the biography of India’s greatest revolutionary during the freedom struggle – Chandrashekhar Azad. He was an amazing man with a whole bunch of positive adjectives – Brave, strong, intelligent, resilient, indefatigable, great planner, cunning , awesome leader and lots more.

His eventual downfall and death was caused by the betrayal of his long term comrade.

Contrary to popular belief, this betrayal wasn’t a surprise. This person had shown himself to be a traitor multiple times previously and Azad was very well aware of it. But inspite of being so sharp and alert and cunning when it came to evading the British ( and the Indians employed by them ), Azad seemed to have a fatal flaw in his judgement and his character when it came to comrades who betrayed him or the revolutionary organisation.

There were multiple people who committed treason multiple times. Azad would get mad but he would eventually end up forgiving them. Fed up with Virbhadra Tiwari’s betrayal and the wastage of valuable funds, he decided to get him killed. But he chose another traitor to do the job. A person who had been a fellow offender with Tiwari. Not surprisingly, this plan to kill Tiwari failed multiple times.

This is only my humble opinion based on reading one book ( and I can’t find any analysis on this subject ). But most likely Azad’s compassion or humanity prevented him from being ruthless with comrades who betrayed him. For a revolutionary it was fatal flaw. His delegation of killing the traitor can be interpreted in two ways. One, he was plain stupid and didn’t realise it was a terrible idea. This is highly unlikely. More likely he struggled to rationalise the killing idea in his head. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. As if it was sinful. Delegating it to another sinner ( read traitor) must have been more palatable. Unfortunately, it lead to his death and the end of the revolutionary movement.

I see lots of similar acts of fatal forgiveness in Indian history. I read a whole bunch of books on Maratha history last years. You see a regular pattern of forgiveness and betrayal. Time and time again.People defecting to the enemy. People not turning up in support during an important battle. Corrupt nobleman keeping all the taxes for themselves and not giving it to the Royal treasury. And yet never getting punished sufficiently. Across generations. Always forgiveness and pardon. Malhar Rao Scindia committed the unpardonable sin of abandoning his commander – Sadashiv Rau Bhau and the rest of the Maratha forces in the Third battle of Panipat. The Peshwa was angry for a bit but he was pardoned eventually.

Same with the Rajputs. The Rana of Mewar, Hammir Singh defeated and captured the Delhi Sultan, Mohammed Bin Tughlaq in the battle of Singoli. But instead of having him killed, he released him with a monetary penalty. Or his great grandson, Rana Kumbha. He kept defeating the Nawab of Malwa and letting him off the hook. Despite the Nawab being a regular nuisance who kept attacking him.

Such fatal forgiveness actually encourages people to commit more acts of treason and betrayal. When they know that the penalty isn’t going to be very harsh, they will keep taking their chances.

This habit of forgiving a colleague or family member or sometimes even an enemy seems to be deeply ingrained in our social consciousness and coded in our DNA.

As compared to this, you look at the invaders like the Mughals or you consider great rulers like Chenghiz Khan or the ancient Greeks or Romans. They were always ruthless in such situations.

I don’t have hard data to back this up. I am saying this basis the 20 odd history books that I have read. But I feel reasonably sure that we’ve had more traitors in our history. And more instances of defeated enemies being pardoned and given more chances to come and attack you again. It’s been spawned by our general inability to be ruthless in punishing them and destroying them once and for all. We let defectors and defeated enemies hang around. And this forgiveness has proven to be very expensive.

And the worst part is that it’s a history lesson that we don’t learn.

While there is no research and data on forgiveness. We can look at a similar virtue – cooperation.

Cooperation is great. Yuvan Noah Harrison says that cooperation resulting from our ability to communicate is the single biggest reason that the Homo Sapiens dominate this Planet.

Research, historical evidence and simulation exercises have proven a couple of things about cooperation.

Cooperation is a winning formula. Whether it is two people or a hundred.

Blind cooperation doesn’t work though. If your policy is to keep cooperating even though the other person doesnt, then you are set up for disaster. People will keep taking advantage of you.

However, showing strong resentment for the non cooperating party is very effective.

One, they don’t teach this history in school. So most people are not aware. But more significantly, forgiveness is considered a great Indian virtue and it’s hard coded into us. We hear stories of great acts of forgiveness all the time. It’s a label most of us like to give ourselves. We take pride in it.

There is nothing wrong with forgiveness per se. But it’s a big problem when you become blind about being forgiving. You lose objectivity and think it’s ok to be forgiving all the time and in all scenarios. You can’t see and realise when it starts to become a problem. You lose your judgement of good and bad.

I see it in the workplace. Most managers have a problem letting go of people. They keep “forgiving” them with fines or average ratings. They think of themselves as compassionate and forgiving. Given that these are considered great Indian virtues and being ruthless is considered bad, it’s not hard for these managers to rationalise their behaviours.

Unlike, Chandrashekhar Azad, these managers don’t have to pay with their lives. But they cause a lot of harm to the organisation.

This plays out in other walks of life also. And it’s always damaging.

I wish a famous writer, historian or social scientist could do the research, get hard data and write a best selling book about this. So that more Indians can learn this history lesson.

Blind forgiveness can be fatal.