Dear Shri Harish Salve Ji,

I usually do not watch television interviews. What prompted me to watch the interview you gave Arnab Goswami of Republic TV was a video clip from it that a friend sent me. I was shocked by some of your observations and decided to watch the full interview on YouTube. I was testing my own patience.

As I watched, I could not help remembering the interview I did with your father, N.K.P. Salve, for Jain TV in the 1990s. Goswami, I presume, was then still “studying for some time in a Jesuit-run school”, as he said in an apparent disclaimer about his educational background.

Goswami seemed particularly keen to impress viewers by showing the size and luxury of the five-star hotel suite in which your interview took place. I know four lawyers in Delhi and have observed their lives from reasonably close quarters. Two of them support 20-25 NGOs with contributions running into crores. Both earn mainly through international arbitration. One has instituted a chair in memory of his father, himself a distinguished lawyer, at a law university to promote the study of arbitration.

When floods devastated Kerala in 2018, one of them gave an organisation I headed Rs 35 lakh to revive two government schools. We completed the work in about a month and a half, spending Rs 27 lakh. When I offered to return the rest, he asked me to spend it. We used it to provide heavily subsidised winter uniforms to our students.

This brings me to your statement that you cannot understand the concept of ‘donation’. Perhaps that is because you have not experienced the satisfaction of giving.

Also Read: The wonder that is India

For 23 years, I headed an NGO founded in 1979 by seven members of a church in Delhi. Over the years, more than four lakh poor students have received quality education through its programmes. Initially, 90 per cent of our money came from abroad. Today, less than five per cent........

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