Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, dismissed a suggestion last week that Indian culture may be condoning corruption, or promoting the idea of shortcuts to achieve success.
Bharara was speaking Oct. 9, at the closing session of the three-day Indo-American Arts Council’s third annual Literary Festival. The Festival features works by authors whose heritage lies in the Indian subcontinent, as well as those who have written about a subject connected to any aspect of that part of the world. Veteran and emerging authors get to showcase their work, and speakers also include publishers and literary agents.
On the opening day Oct. 7, India’s Member of Parliament and former United Nations Undersecretary for Communications and Public Information, and renowned author Shashi Tharoor, spoke on a panel entitled “India Today, India Tomorrow” held at new York University School of Journalism. He was joined by New York Times award-winning author Shomini Sen Gupta in conversation with author Suketu Mehta, author of the acclaimed book, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. They tackled questions such as where India stands today in relation to where it should be, and what are the reasons driving it in a particular direction.
At Bharara’s talk held in NYU’s Kimmel Center, entitled “Is Corruption Endemic to Politics?” the ‘Sheriff of Wall Street,’ who has prosecuted several high profile New York City politicians, as well as several Indian-Americans in high places for white-collar crimes, was questioned by Seema Mody, a global markets reporter for CNBC, and members of the audience. Among the questions asked was whether Indian culture condones corruption.
“I do not think so,” Bharara responded. “I am part of Indian culture. I am from Ferozepur (in Punjab). I think (the question should be) if one has been raised with the proper education and right values, whether Indian or American. I do not think this has something to do with the Indian culture,” Bharara emphasized.
Bharara touched on a host of issues during the 50-minute conversation, including allegations in the Indian media that his office targeted only high-profile Indian-Americans when he prosecuted people like Rajat Gupta, Anil Kumar and others for insider trading, or people like former Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade.
“I think that is a stupid remark or suggestion,” Bharara retorted. “We never targeted anyone based on the person’s ethnicity. I don’t walk into my office and say ‘bring me the head of an Indian,’” Bharara said as the house burst into laughter.
He gave the audience some sense of how the prosecutor’s office works – as a place where professional prosecutors conduct their investigations and follow the money trail to where it takes them, before deciding to prosecute the suspects, according to the law. He indicated that some people suffer from a sense of hubris when they have money and power, which leads them to commit crimes, believe they were immune from prosecution.
Talking about politicians, some of whom have been prosecuted by his office, including the former speaker of the New York state Assembly Sheldon Silver, Bharara said that based on wiretapped conversations which were made possible with permission from judges, he noticed that a lot of people in power and with money are not able to resist the temptation to violate the law.
“One thing I can say about some politicians, who have been charged, is that at some point these people who take the oath to serve the public, feel they are not making as much money …Some people think like, ‘a lot of the folks are getting rich, when do I get my chance to do that!” Bharara observed.
Suketu Mehta asked Bharara if he planned to write a book given his access to so much interesting information. “The problem with writing a book is about saying things about people who are still alive!” Bharara said in a light vein.
During the first two days of the Lit Fest, numerous authors of Indian origin presented their works or discussed genres and trends in the global world of Indian literary fiction and non-fiction, as well as in publishing and art in 19 sessions. The scope and breadth of the discussions is evident from the subjects tackled in the sessions – conversations with authors including Duke University Professor Sumathi Ramaswamy’s book, “Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation; a discussion on Anglo-Indian literature led by theologian and clergyman Reginald Shires; Neelima Dalmia Adhar’s book, “The Secret Diary of Kasturba Gandhi”; India’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations Hardeep Singh Puri’s book, “Calling the Shots”; a session on “Young Adult Voyages – Spiritual and Historical” with Ram Sivasankaran and Rohit Gaur; prominent Indian journalist Barkha Dutt’s book, “The Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Faultlines” and several sessions on Indian politics and the post-9/11 world in the U.S.; “Understanding Mythology,” a discussion with author and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik; and a discussion on “Demystifying the digital universe: making literary work more accessible, led by Sree Sreenivasan, founder of the South Asian Journalists Association and currently New York City’s Chief Digital Officer.
On Oct. 9, a special session on poetry was held featuring Phinder Dulai, an Indo-Canadian poet from Surrey, British Columbia; African-American poet Neall Hall whose works have been translated into several Indian languages; architect, poet, and calligrapher H. Masud Taj; as well as New York’s own Meena Alexander, the Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center, Hunter College, City University of New York. |
