As an Indian Air Force officer, posted at Embarkation Headquarters, Mumbai, India in 1978, I was a member of the United Services Club, a very exclusive club for defense services officers. The club also allowed a limited number of civilian membership which was considered a privilege by those allowed to join.

I used to go for an early morning run at the club’s beautiful golf course which overlooked the Arabian sea. During these runs I met and became friendly with Mr. M K Rustomji, a renowned Indian author and management consultant. One of his many books reportedly had a forward by HRH Prince Philip!!! As a young 28-year-old, I enjoyed the company of this wise old man, perhaps in his late 50’s, and used to look forward to our chats after completing our jog and walk respectively (he used to walk).  I am sure he saw me as a useful foil for his knowledge, wisdom and management concepts.

One day after a passionate debate about Mahatma Gandhi’s role in the fight for Indian independence, he asked me about the books I had read which informed my opinion.  The question stopped me dead in my tracks when I found myself acknowledging that all my knowledge and beliefs were based on media reports and anecdotes picked up during casual conversations with people.

He said “Why don’t you research the topic and discuss the matter again in a couple of weeks”.

Feeling humiliated at my ignorance, I read all the books on Gandhiji I could lay my hands on, including some original reference material at the Public Library, with an overwhelming desire to find useful material to validate my arguments about Gandhiji’s failures.  In hindsight, I can see my research goal at the time was not so much to find the truth but to redeem my bruised ego.  To my amazement I found that my extensive research and reading resulted in my becoming a great fan of the Mahatma.  I found his life joyous and inspirational.  I am sure Mr Rustomji was not too surprised to find me singing a different tune when I next brought up the topic for discussion after a few weeks and apologised for my ignorant remarks on a topic I had little knowledge of.

This experience was a valuable lifelong lesson for me “NOT to have blind beliefs which invariably lead to an unexamined life ”. For the first time I became acutely aware of the need for effective gate keeping of all the information being consumed by me consciously or unconsciously. The ease with which unexamined information had influenced and perhaps corrupted my beliefs was a chilling realisation.  I now found myself on notice for the need to critically re-evaluate all my beliefs.

This incident also made me aware of the palpable media and intellectuals bias against almost everything which was traditional, popular, good or noble.  By sheer coincidence, about this time I had also read extensively about the Kim Philby espionage case making me very curious about the reasons as to why Cambridge University culture should have served as the breeding ground for such radical, extreme and unpatriotic views.  Both these factors combined to embark me on an unwitting 20 year quest for discovering the reasons for this media and academia bias. However, more on this interesting story in another blog!

The change of my belief about Mahatma Gandhi due to an innocent enquiry backed by unbiased research was an abject lesson for me.  It taught me the dangers of unexamined beliefs defended by an ego driven attitude.  It is perhaps for this reason why I consider the following Socratic quote, from Plato’s Apology, as one of the greatest piece of wisdom available to us:

Muse

• Assumptions based on unexamined information or knowledge run the risk of creating false beliefs
• Unless researched and critically evaluated our beliefs are not our own but somebody else’s.
• Living life through somebody else’s beliefs makes us easy targets for propaganda, misinformation and exploitation.
• Information only becomes knowledge when it is logically organised and its veracity critically evaluated.
• Knowledge, not information, is power.

Next Week – Brexit