Jawaharlal Nehru has off late got into very bad trouble for his disdain for profit and profit makers. This was apparently over and above his natural arrogance. But his disdain was not just his alone and came from a long line of human thought which put money and money makers in their place – on the fringes of polite society. Off late, of course, they are polite society. It is mandatory in India today to worship, say one or the other of the Ambani brothers, or perhaps Narayan Murthy of Infosys or definitely Ratan Tata. Industrialists, businessmen, entrepreneurs – everything they do is right, nothing that they do is open to question. They are in themselves inviolate.

We have made them like that. They did not necessarily ask for it. Let us absolve them of pretensions to perfection, although they may quite like the hype.

But as Byraju Ramalinga Raju has showed us – and not for the first time has a god whose only claim to fame is money-making revealed to us his feet of clay – we are the fools. It was greed of course that did him in and greed that we bought into. Let’s hold the outrage for now and instead use a little more scepticism when the next profiteering godling comes along.

And give polite society back to power and art? (Just send the bills to the money-wallahs, who should be honoured to be so privileged.)