Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I Speaking Tree Website I Monday, February 10, 2014

International Anti-Corruption Day is observed every year on 9 December, since the passage of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption on October 31, 2003. The slogan for this day is "no to corruption". In terms of celebration it is successful, but in terms of result this campaign is a total failure.

Now time has come to reassess this high project. Objective assessment will tell us that this failure is due to wrong diagnosis. Corruption is not an independent feature, it is the result of materialism. People want to acquire more and more material goods, so they adopt corrupt practices.

The root cause of this evil is materialism. Materialism has led to unchecked greed. But this kind of greed is not workable in this world. Man is subject to the natural law. And according to the natural law, every man and woman has a very short period of their life to live in this world. According to survey, the average age of man is sixty years. It is the fate of every human being that he is born as a child, then enjoys youth age and at last comes old age. Finally, he faces death. In such a situation, no one is able to utilize the wealth he tried to amass through corrupt practices.

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If you live on need, it is good. But if you try to fulfil your greed, then that is not achievable for anyone. Greed is against the law of nature.

This state of affairs tells us that on this planet earth, only controlled materialism is feasible. Uncontrolled materialism or absolute materialism simply cannot work on this planet. One who follows his greed and tries to amass wealth through corrupt practices, will finally get nothing except tension and soon thereafter death.

You have to accept this reality. We have to adopt the culture that is workable. Keeping this fact into consideration, one can say that the call for 'no to corruption' is not going to yield any result. It is better to adopt the call: 'no to materialism'.