An Examination of the Question of Modi’s Personal Gain

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An Examination of the Question of Modi’s Personal Gain

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- Socrates

A question frequently asked in defence of Narendra Modi goes something like this:

What does Modi personally gain from corruption?
He lives simply. He does not flaunt wealth. So how can he be blamed?\

At first glance, the question appears reasonable-even fair. But it rests on a serious misunderstanding of how power, systems, and institutional failure actually work. As long as we keep asking this question, we will remain unable to see what is happening in front of us.

To understand why, it helps to turn to our epics-not for moral preaching, but for clarity of reasoning.

The Bhishma Instinct

Many people instinctively reach for the Mahabharata.

They ask, implicitly or explicitly:

What did Bhishma personally gain from the disrobing of Draupadi?

The answer is obvious: nothing.

Bhishma did not profit. He did not desire the outcome. He did not orchestrate the crime. And yet, his silence mattered. It legitimised injustice, normalised adharma, and hollowed out the moral authority of the court.

As Vidura warns in the Mahabharata:

“Silence in the face of adharma is itself adharma.”

At this stage, many readers feel validated. Exactly, they think. Personal gain is not necessary for responsibility.

But this is precisely where we must pause-because even this comparison is flawed.

Bhishma was ethically conflicted, painfully aware of the wrong unfolding before him, and tragically constrained by vows and loyalty. He was virtuous, not instrumental. Using Bhishma as an analogy unintentionally ennobles the very phenomenon we are trying to examine. It reframes systemic failure as tragic morality.

If our aim is to understand why the question itself is wrong, Bhishma is the wrong example.

A Cleaner Question: Marīcha and the Golden Deer

Now consider a different figure.

Ask instead:

What did Maricha gain by assuming the form of the golden deer?

Marīcha knew exactly what he was doing. He knew he would be hunted. He knew he would die. He knew there was no reward waiting for him at the end of the plan. Survival was unlikely; benefit was nonexistent.

And yet he still played his role-because the strategy required distraction.

The question “What did Marīcha gain?” collapses immediately, because gain was never the point. Function was.

Marīcha was not motivated by profit. He was a component in a larger design. His personal outcome was irrelevant once the role was fulfilled.

This is the distinction most contemporary political debates fail to grasp.

Why the Question About Modi Is Misconceived

When supporters ask,

What does Modi personally gain from corruption?

they are committing the same category error as asking,

What did Marīcha gain from becoming the golden deer?

Both questions assume that:

• wrongdoing must be driven by personal greed,
• responsibility requires visible enrichment, and
• absence of gain implies absence of culpability.
• This is how systemic corruption hides in plain sight.

Modern institutional failure does not require leaders to steal money. It requires leaders to play a role:

• normalising opacity,
• insulating power from scrutiny,
• allowing procedure to replace accountability, and
• training institutions to stop correcting themselves.

The leader need not profit.
The system does.

From Personal Purity to Structural Damage

This is why “personal integrity” is the wrong lens.

A leader may live simply and still preside over:

• opaque funding mechanisms,
• selective enforcement of law,
• captured institutions, and
• the quiet erosion of oversight.

As Hannah Arendt observed in her work on modern power, the gravest harms often arise not from monstrous intent but from thoughtlessness -from people performing roles without examining what those roles make possible.

Corruption today is not primarily about envelopes of cash. It is about what becomes normal, what questions stop being asked, and what silence comes to signify.

Just as Marīcha’s personal fate was irrelevant once distraction was achieved, a leader’s personal lifestyle tells us very little about the role they perform within a system.

Asking Better Questions

So the real question is not:

What does Modi gain personally?

It is:

What kind of conduct becomes acceptable under his leadership?
What institutions lose their ability to self-correct?
What forms of opacity become routine?

As long as we keep asking childish questions about personal gain, we will remain blind to adult failures of governance.

Some of the most consequential actions in history have been carried out by people who knew they would gain nothing and lose everything. This alone should warn us that “personal benefit” is a poor explanatory tool for understanding systemic harm.

Which brings us, finally, to the question that exposes the flaw most clearly-one we rarely allow ourselves to ask, because it ends the argument rather than advancing it:

What do suicide bombers gain?

A final note on clarity, not hatred

“We must look the world in the face with calm and clear eyes, even though the eyes of the world are bloodshot today.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

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AI Assistance Acknowledgement

This essay was developed with the assistance of an AI language model, used as a tool for dialogue, clarification, and refinement of arguments. The AI helped surface counter-arguments, test analogies, improve structure, and suggest quotations, but it did not supply the convictions, judgments, or final positions expressed here.

All interpretations, analogies, conclusions, and responsibility for errors remain entirely my own.

Originally published at https://opensaurabh.blogspot.com on February 4, 2026.