Darpan letter · No. 928 September 2026

The one fear worth keeping

On a former election commissioner who asks public servants to act “in fear of their conscience”, Arjuna’s honest confusion on the field, the Gītā’s list that begins with fearlessness, and the oath you will one day take

प्रिय साथी,

Today’s Indian Express carries an op-ed by Ashok Lavasa, a former election commissioner, and its headline is a sentence I would like you to copy into the front of your GS4 notebook: “Public servants must act in favour of the weak, and in fear of their conscience.” He opens with Hamlet’s line, “conscience doth make cowards of us all”, and then turns it around. He reminds us that everyone in public office swears to discharge their duties “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”, and he proposes that the oath be “turned on its head”: favour the weak and the vulnerable, and fear only your own conscience. I want to spend this letter on that one idea, because it sounds like a paradox and it isn’t.

Look first at what Lavasa says conscience actually needs. He calls it “a four-step process. Clarity of purpose, conviction that the purpose is right, courage to act, and the capacity to bear the consequences of one’s action.” Notice that the first step is not courage. It is clarity. Most of us picture a person of conscience as someone who always knows what is right and only has to be brave. Real dilemmas are not like that. As he writes, “things are difficult, confusing and contradictory”.

Our own tradition begins at exactly that point, and it does not hide it. The Gītā does not open with a hero who is sure of himself. It opens with one who is lost, and who says so: कार्पण्यदोषोपहतस्वभावः पृच्छामि त्वां धर्मसम्मूढचेताः। यच्छ्रेयः स्यान्निश्चितं ब्रूहि तन्मे शिष्यस्तेऽहं शाधि मां त्वां प्रपन्नम्॥ — kārpaṇyadoṣopahatasvabhāvaḥ pṛcchāmi tvāṃ dharmasaṃmūḍhacetāḥ, yac chreyaḥ syān niścitaṃ brūhi tan me śiṣyas te ’haṃ śādhi māṃ tvāṃ prapannam — my nature is overcome by weakness and pity; my mind is confused about what dharma is; I ask you, tell me for certain what is better; I am your student, teach me, I have come to you (2.7). Dharmasaṃmūḍhacetāḥ, a mind bewildered about duty, is not a failure to be ashamed of. It is the honest condition of anyone facing a real choice. The whole of the Gītā, all eighteen chapters of it, is what follows from one person admitting that he did not know, and asking. Lavasa’s first step, clarity, is where Arjuna begins too.

Then comes the second thing Kṛṣṇa does, and it is sharper. Before any philosophy, he tells Arjuna that part of what he is calling a moral scruple is simply fear: क्लैब्यं मा स्म गमः पार्थ नैतत्त्वय्युपपद्यते। क्षुद्रं हृदयदौर्बल्यं त्यक्त्वोत्तिष्ठ परन्तप॥ — klaibyaṃ mā sma gamaḥ pārtha naitat tvayy upapadyate, kṣudraṃ hṛdayadaurbalyaṃ tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa — do not give in to faint-heartedness, Pārtha, it does not become you; cast off this petty weakness of the heart and stand up (2.3). Hamlet’s line and this verse are describing the same trap from two sides. Sometimes what feels like conscience is only caution in a better coat. Lavasa names that coat too: the dictum that “discretion is the better part of valour”, which makes a person “timid”. The Gītā’s test is to ask of every hesitation: is this my conscience speaking, or my fear of what it will cost me?

Here is where the paradox dissolves. Kṛṣṇa, much later, lists the qualities of what he calls the divine nature, and the very first word of the list is fearlessness: अभयं सत्त्वसंशुद्धिर्ज्ञानयोगव्यवस्थितिः। दानं दमश्च यज्ञश्च स्वाध्यायस्तप आर्जवम्॥ — abhayaṃ sattvasaṃśuddhir jñānayogavyavasthitiḥ, dānaṃ damaś ca yajñaś ca svādhyāyas tapa ārjavam — fearlessness, purity of mind, steadiness in knowledge and discipline, generosity, self-control, sacrifice, study of oneself, austerity and straightforwardness (16.1). Abhaya and ārjava, fearlessness and straightness, stand in the same line. And yet the tradition never says to fear nothing. In the third chapter Kṛṣṇa says: श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुणः परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात्। स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः॥ — śreyān svadharmo viguṇaḥ paradharmāt svanuṣṭhitāt, svadharme nidhanaṃ śreyaḥ paradharmo bhayāvahaḥ — better one’s own duty, even imperfectly done, than another’s duty done well; better to fall in one’s own duty; another’s duty is full of fear (3.35). The word is bhayāvaha, fear-bearing. Commentators have read svadharma in many ways, some tied to the social order of their time; read it here in its plainest sense, the duty that is truly yours. The fear, the verse says, lives in the path that is not yours: saying what the boss wants to hear, signing what you do not believe, doing another person’s bidding in your own name. Walk that path and you will be afraid for the rest of your career. Walk your own and you may lose something, but you will not be afraid. That is Lavasa’s “fear of conscience” in the Gītā’s words. Fear it, and you need fear nothing else.

The op-ed has a small story that makes this concrete. At a race in Spain in 2012, the Kenyan runner Abel Mutai, who was leading, stopped a few metres before the finish because he could not read the Spanish signage and thought he had finished. The Spanish runner Ivan Fernandez, behind him, could have overtaken. Instead he nudged Mutai to the line. His coach criticised him for lacking the “killer’s instinct”. Asked why, Fernandez said: “How would I have faced my mother?” Lavasa draws the conclusion: “For public servants, that ‘mother’ is the public.” I would add only this. Fernandez did not deliberate for a week. The clarity came quickly because it had been built long before, at home, in small choices no one watched. That is the fourth step of the four, the capacity to bear consequences, and it is trained, not summoned.

Be fair to the difficulty, as the op-ed is. Lavasa himself notes that conscience is most tested not when something is illegal, since “the law is on your side” then, but when it is “legal but against the spirit of the law”. He also describes a system that has grown less tolerant of officers who record notes freely, and a 360-degree appraisal that he says rewards being a “trouble-free” cog. You should read that as one experienced view in a live controversy, not as settled fact; today’s Case 2 in this magazine asks you to work through a similar dilemma yourself. But the direction of his advice holds whatever you conclude about any one institution: put your dissent on record, give your reasons, and be ready to bear what follows.

For your preparation, three things. In GS4 answers on integrity and courage of conviction, use Lavasa’s four steps as a frame, and show that clarity comes first; examiners notice when a candidate knows that good intentions without clarity can do harm. In answers on the oath, quote the words exactly, “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”, and pair them with 16.1’s abhaya: the Constitution and the Gītā ask for the same thing. And in the essay paper, remember the order of the Gītā itself: it begins with confusion honestly admitted, and only then with courage. An essay that pretends every moral question is easy will read as a sermon; one that admits the difficulty and then chooses will read as a mind.

One more thing, and it is about you. You do not have to wait for the IAS to practise this. Tonight, when you check your own mock answer against the model answer, mark it as strictly as a stranger would. No one will know if you are generous with yourself. That is exactly why it counts. The officer who can one day write an honest dissent note is the aspirant who, today, can write an honest score.

Lavasa closes with a couplet by the Urdu poet Krishan Behari ‘Noor’: whatever you might say, the conscience does get shaken, whether before you commit a wrong or after it. Our tradition would agree, and add a word of comfort. The trembling is not weakness. It is the conscience still alive. What the Gītā asks is only that you not let it turn into hṛdayadaurbalya, and that you stand up. उत्तिष्ठ परन्तप — stand up. You have more strength for it than you think.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Bhagavad Gītā 2.7 · Bhagavad Gītā 2.3 · Bhagavad Gītā 3.35 · Bhagavad Gītā 16.1