We are witnessing a curious inversion of the old Roman virtue of pietas. In the ancient world, a father’s duty was to the state, to the stern laws of the Republic, even if it meant condemning his own son to death. Today, in the grim aftermath of the Air India crash, we see a father who has chosen to defend his son’s reputation against the howling mob of social media and a rapacious legal system. This is not pietas. This is something more modern, more decadent: the stubborn, almost tragic, insistence on personal honour in an age that has forgotten what the word means.
The incident, as you know, is a disaster. A plane falls from the sky. Lives are lost. The public demands a scapegoat. And the pilot, a man who cannot speak for himself, is tried and convicted in the court of public opinion before any evidence is presented. His father, however, has decided to fight. He vows to defend his son’s reputation. He hires lawyers. He issues statements. He does what any decent father might do. But in our current intellectual climate, this is seen as an act of defiance, a challenge to the established narrative of blame.
What is striking is the sheer velocity of the moral judgement. We have become a society of instantaneous conviction. The crash site is still smouldering, and already the pundits are parsing the pilot’s training records, his mental state, his last known words. We have forgotten the basic legal principle that a man is innocent until proven guilty. But then, we have forgotten many things. We live in an era of intellectual decadence, where emotion trumps reason, and where the desire for a swift, satisfying conclusion overrides the tedious work of fact-finding.
The father’s stand is a throwback to a Victorian sense of family honour. It is almost quaint. But it is also a necessary corrective to the hysterical tone of modern discourse. We must ask ourselves: why are we so eager to find a single villain? Is it because a complex, systemic failure is too frightening to contemplate? The fall of Rome was not due to one man’s error. It was the slow decay of institutions, the erosion of civic virtue, the triumph of barbarism from within. Similarly, an air crash is rarely the fault of one pilot. It is a chain of errors, a cascade of missed signals, a failure of the entire system. But we do not want to hear that. We want a face. We want a name. We want to crucify someone.
The father, by defending his son, is forcing us to slow down. He is reminding us that behind every headline is a human being, a family, a lifetime of service. This is uncomfortable for the mob. It is inconvenient for the news cycle. But it is necessary. We must resist the temptation to rush to judgement. We must hold our tongues until the evidence is in. This is the mark of a civilised society. And if the father’s stubborn defence of his son’s name seems anachronistic, then perhaps it is we who have lost our way.
Let us watch this legal battle with a cold eye. Let us not be swayed by sentiment or outrage. Let us demand facts, not feelings. And let us remember that honour, true honour, is not about winning the court of public opinion. It is about doing what is right, even when the world is screaming for blood. The father may lose. His son’s reputation may be tarnished beyond repair. But in his stand, he has given us a lesson in dignity. We would do well to learn it.
