B. Baksheesh and Corruption

Baksheesh is a salutation, not a potlatch, a way of acknowledging and rewarding strangers simply for their company, not a demonstration of power. But it is also a bribe, in that it obliges reciprocity, for to refuse is rude. If baksheesh promotes solidarity, it is not corrupting of society at least in one dimension. What then is bribery?

Milind Wakankar, wow

"One could argue that moral techniques are fine-tuned at the threshold of their future incorporation into religion, or prior to their "ethicization" in religious prescription. The anthropologist and philosopher of religion, Gananath Obeyesekere, follows Weber in defining "ethicization" a.s the point at which "a morally right or wrong action becomes a religiously right or wrong action" (2002: 75). Here is one account of the institution of religion. This happens when moral art is retroactively rendered as "religious," overlooking the very relation established in earlier traditions between life as lived toward-death and the act of dying for another."
P14 Milind Wakankar Subalternity and Religion