The IPL scandal has raised questions over the way we view betting itself. Betting falls into a grey area of morality, which leaves much in the eyes of the beholder and paves the way for it to become a convenient target in the wake of such controversies.
The simple fact is this – betting is not illegal in India. With respect to some forms of betting, like horse races, the turf club administering the betting takes a cut for itself and the government. The problem arises when betting is perceived as gambling. This is a question that has been through various rounds of litigation over the years. The courts have even recognised some forms of betting as involving a certain amount of skill, automatically bringing them outside the realm of gambling.
In a recent policy document brought out by The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy in the form of an issue brief, research scholars delved into the reasons why betting falls into a grey area over its morality. Rajgopal Saikumar, co-author of the brief, notes that the reliance of modernity of the concepts of logic and reasoning, and the fact that they cannot be reconciled with chance and uncertainty are behind gambling being perceived in a negative light. “If, in the pre-modern, chance had a certain imagination of the divine attached to it, in the modern ‘man’ of science, the rational need for control of the unpredictable becomes more important. Chance then becomes ignorance and irrational. The ‘modern’ is about control; it represents a scientific temperament that believes in ‘certain’ knowledge about the universe, a violent domination of nature,” reads the section of the issue brief titled ‘The Moral Greyness of Gambling’.
“Certainty and Predictability is connected to terms such as rational, universal, reasoned, truth, god, knowledge, west, man, god, knowledge, west, man, mathematical etc. Concepts of chance and uncertainty get connected with ignorance, luck, mystical, irrational, emotive, feminine, non-west, religious, unscientific, barbaric, uncivilized, and artistic,” the issue brief continues.
It is in the gap between these two worlds of ideas that betting falls. While to some it is a game of probabilities, to others it is a blind gamble.
The issue brief also notes that it would become difficult for a legal system to understand and regulate betting if it perception remains in a moral grey area. It is necessary to see a particular activity as amoral instead of immoral. Only then can it be acknowledged and regulated. But that seems a pipe dream at the moment, thanks to the “moral paternalism” adopted by India’s judiciary towards betting.