Darpan letter · No. 2010 October 2026

Truth wins as a road, not as a prize

On a Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime spent building international law, sanctions on a court on the same day, a parliamentary panel that asks how to make a paper impossible to leak, the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad’s road of truth, and the Gītā’s two lessons for a shaken mind

प्रिय साथी,

Two stories in today’s magazine ask the same question from opposite ends of the world: does a rule still hold when someone strong pushes against it? On October 9 the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”. Hours later, the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court itself, not only 13 of its judges and prosecutors, in a way that could punish the banks and firms that serve the court. “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” the US Secretary of State said. The UN Secretary-General called it “a serious blow”. The second story is closer to your desk. Parliament’s Education committee presented its 382nd report on the National Testing Agency, and in Pune, MPSC aspirants are protesting three State paper leaks this year. One story is about law under pressure from power. The other is about a fair exam under pressure from people who would cheat.

Look first at the woman who won. Navi Pillay was born into an Indian Tamil family in Durban. She defended Nelson Mandela, judged at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and at the ICC, and served as the UN’s human rights chief. Today she sits as an ad hoc judge of the International Court of Justice in the genocide case against Myanmar. The Rwanda tribunal she served on ruled that rape can be a means of genocide, and that ruling changed how States define the crime. In 2023, The Indian Express recalls, she was asked when she would stop. Her answer: “As long as there are human rights violations and someone is suffering, why wouldn’t you care? We have to continually recite the principles… That’s what keeps me optimistic, that we have a duty.”

“Continually recite the principles.” Our own tradition did exactly that, and put one principle where every Indian sees it each day. The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad says: सत्यमेव जयते नानृतं सत्येन पन्था विततो देवयानः। — satyam eva jayate nānṛtaṃ, satyena panthā vitato devayānaḥ — “Truth alone wins, not falsehood; by truth is laid out the road that leads to the divine” (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.1.6). The first four words are written below the national emblem, on the currency notes in your pocket and on the seals of the offices where you hope to serve.

Read the verse slowly, because it is more honest than a slogan. It does not say that truth wins by tomorrow evening. Its second line says that truth is a road, a panthā, and that the road is vitata, stretched out, laid down. A road is not a prize handed over at the end; it is something people build and walk on, and it lasts longer than any one traveller. International law is that kind of road. The court that tried Rwanda’s crimes had no army of its own. Its judges had only evidence, procedure and the patience to write down what was true. Yet a ruling made there now shapes how countries define genocide. Today’s IR card says it plainly: international law has advanced through ideas that first lacked enforcement.

Be fair to the other side, because an examiner will want you to be. India stays outside the ICC, and the card calls that distance defensible: a court that the Security Council can steer and that exempts the powerful does not reassure a middle power. But India also gains from rules against coercion and itself rejects unilateral sanctions without UN backing. The sensible line, the card suggests, is to oppose sanctions on judges while keeping India’s reservations. That is a grown-up position, and worth learning as a habit of mind: you can disagree with an institution and still defend the rules that protect everyone, including you.

Now to your own fear. If you have ever sat an exam and later read that its paper had leaked, you know the feeling. Months of work suddenly seem to count for less than one stolen envelope. The parliamentary panel takes that fear seriously. It says a large, continuously updated question bank is “the most viable defence” against leaks, because a computer-based paper needs no printing or transport and can be set very close to the exam. It wants 1,000 secure government CBT centres, at least one per district, before NEET-UG shifts, since private centres are “a weak link”. It notes that only 23 of the NTA’s 39 posts are filled. Your anger at leaks is right. A citizen should demand exactly this kind of reform, and you will soon be the officer who has to carry it out.

But anger is one thing and a shaken mind is another. In the second chapter of the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna: मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदुःखदाः। आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत॥ — mātrā-sparśās tu kaunteya śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ, āgamāpāyino ’nityās tāṃs titikṣasva bhārata — “Contacts of the senses with their objects, O son of Kuntī, bring cold and heat, pleasure and pain; they come and go and do not last. Bear them patiently, O Bhārata” (Bhagavad Gītā 2.14). Titikṣā, patient endurance, is not the same as accepting injustice. It means you let the shock of the news come and go, like the cold of a winter morning, without letting it decide what you do with the rest of the day.

Notice what the verse does not ask. It does not ask you to pretend the cold is warm. A leak is real, and so is the delay in results, the cancelled exam and the extra year. What comes and goes is the storm in your own chest when you read about it. What stays is what you have actually learnt. No one can photocopy your understanding of Article 16(4), or carry away in a truck the habit of writing a balanced answer in seven minutes.

Four chapters later the Gītā gives the next step: उद्धरेदात्मनात्मानं नात्मानमवसादयेत्। आत्मैव ह्यात्मनो बन्धुरात्मैव रिपुरात्मनः॥ — uddhared ātmanātmānaṃ nātmānam avasādayet, ātmaiva hy ātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ — “Lift yourself by your own self; do not let yourself sink. For the self alone is the friend of the self, and the self alone is its enemy” (Bhagavad Gītā 6.5). After bad news there are always two voices inside an aspirant. One says, “Nothing is fair, so why try?” That is avasāda, sinking. The other says, “The system must be fixed, and I will be ready when it is.” That is uddhāra, lifting. Both voices are you. The verse asks you to choose which one is your friend.

Let this make you proud of where you come from. A woman born into an Indian Tamil family in Durban, in the country where Gandhi first shaped satyagraha, has spent her working life insisting that law must reach the powerful. A republic chose four words from an Upaniṣad as its motto, so that every official order would carry the claim that truth, not force, wins. And a committee of Parliament, faced with leaked papers, did not shrug; it worked out how to make leaks unprofitable. Your inheritance is not only old verses. It is the stubborn belief that rules are worth building even when they are being broken.

For your preparation. In GS2 international relations, keep the ICC and the ICJ apart: the ICC tries individuals and acts under complementarity, only when a State is unwilling or unable genuinely to prosecute; the ICJ decides disputes between States. Use today’s sanctions to discuss whether international institutions can survive the hostility of great powers. In GS2 governance, the NTA is a registered society, not a statutory body; the card’s case for a statutory NTA with a fixed-tenure head, an annual report to Parliament and CAG audit is “insulation for the paper, accountability for the result”. In GS4, Muṇḍaka 3.1.6 opens any answer on integrity, 2.14 explains resilience, and 6.5 explains self-motivation in a public servant. For the Essay paper, “Peace needs law more than law needs peace” is now a live topic.

And now about you. Tonight, take one topic you have truly understood this month and explain it aloud, in five minutes, as if to a younger brother or sister, without notes. Then write one line at the top of tomorrow’s page: “This cannot be leaked.” Keep that page. On the day the news is bad, read it before you read anything else.

Navi Pillay likes to recall how Nelson Mandela thanked the world for helping end apartheid: “Thank you, you chose to care.” Caring is also a choice an aspirant makes every morning: to care about the work even when the system disappoints. Satyam eva jayate. Truth wins, not as a prize that arrives on time, but as a road. Lift yourself, and keep walking on it.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.1.6 · Bhagavad Gītā 2.14 · Bhagavad Gītā 6.5