Plato’s Beard » 2009

[Hampton Roads Bankshares][2] of Virginia, which received $80.3 million of TARP money last year,[announced][3] last week that its CEO was retiring. On Friday, the bank[disclosed][4] that in addition to a full slate of retirement benefits, the exec will be paid $1.3 million for “consulting duties.”Jack Gibson, the departing CEO, evidently doesn’t think he’ll be working too hard consulting. “I can think of no better time to fulfill my personal goal of early retirement,” he said in

[a press release][3] announcing his exit. “It is well known within the company that I would like to retire by age 60, and I’m almost there.” During the period of his three-year consulting gig, the bank has also agreed to cover his membership dues at a local country club.The $1.3 million that Gibson will receive roughly matches the total amount he received in salary over the last three years as CEO ($1.4 million).

So wherein lies Bilkis Bano’s achievement? If one is called to admire her sense of justice and ability to persevere in the face of nearly insurmountable odds, it should not merely be from some sentimental notion of the ‘power of the wretched’ or even from the idea, which has little basis in life as such, that justice always prevails. Indeed, though it was Mumbai Sessions Judge U.D. Salve who vindicated Bilkis, the victims of the Bombay riots of 1992 still await justice. Nevertheless, to gauge just how monumental is her achievement, we must weigh it against the fact that the middle class in Gujarat has yet again voted into power a man who must be viewed as one of the chief instigators of the killings of 2002 that took the lives of over 2000 Muslims and left tens of thousands more homeless. If Gujarat’s chilling endorsement of brute authoritarianism, and some will say fascism, puts India to eternal shame, Bilkis Bano’s courage, dedication to the truth, and faith in the judicial system offer a faint glimmer of hope that Indian democracy is not entirely moribund. Bilkis’s husband and lawyers stood by her through thick and thin, but the greater marvel is that she sustained her faith in the Constitution of India over six long years, and that too at a time when the middle class has all but jettisoned the document and its promises of equality and justice. The middle class endorsement of Rang de Basanti, a film that repudiates the political even as it celebrates a crude notion of vigilante justice, stands in stark contrast to Bilkis’s extraordinary embrace of the spirit of the Indian Constitution. The award of the Bharat Ratna to Bilkis Bano would not only honor her indomitable spirit and courage but may perhaps help to usher in a new era of political and ethical awareness.