Supreme Court on arrogance

As widely reported in the media, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A.K.Patnaik of the Supreme Court has spoken against arrogance in official duty. The Court said, "People in power and authority should not easily lose equanimity, composure and appreciation of the problems of the lesser mortals."

Every culture of every age condemns arrogance. An Arabian proverb says, "Arrogance diminishes wisdom." Mark Twain calls arrogance, pride, vanity and ostentation as the offspring of riches.

Nietzsche was his usual enigmatic self when he opined that "arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without nerit as merit itself is offensive". Frank Lloyd Wright had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility and he chose the former.

Bhagavad Gita enumerates in Chapter XII, slokas 13 to 19 the qualities necessary for practitioners of Karma Yoga. They are : absence of hatred, freedom from egotism, even-mindedness towards pleasures and pain, contentment, mind-control, freedom from exultation, intolerance, consternation and repulsion, non-abhorrence of people, purity and efficiency, absence of grief and longings, desirelessness for home and lands, equanimity of mind etc.

If only we were able to follow such noble ideas !