We all have our own memories of such stories—from school and college, institutes of performing arts, commerce or science and technology. The moral authority accorded to the teacher enables this revered figure to get away with a lot of dubious action. It is necessary then to see that this authority, as a source of the teacher’s social/moral capital, does not disturb the sense of equality that should exist between teacher and student in a democracy. As the perfect archetype of the ills of a guru, the Drona figure is precisely what a teacher or guru cannot be in today’s time. Drona believed in a world of violently fixed hierarchies, between student and teacher, upper caste and untouchables, men and women. A teacher exhibiting signs of the Drona syndrome, someone who follows strictly hierarchical values, practising exclusivism on caste lines and favouritism on the lines of kinship and family, would be a retrogressive and dangerous figure, detrimental to the values of democracy and social equality. Even Ustad Zakir Hussain, himself the beneficiary of a filial line, once aired his disgust with gurus of Indian classical music who unequally divide the fruits of their craft, promoting their sons and daughters to the detriment of other students. But an almost religiously driven ‘bad faith’ drives students and parents alike to accept these exploitative ways.