COME ELCETIONS AND THE DEADLY JOKERS ARE ON THE PRAWL AGAIN.
Posted by bmhegde on 1
“Common be your aim, and your hearts united,
Your mind be one so that all may happily live together.”
(Rg. Veda X. 191. 2-4; A.)
Bad things happen in society because of good people who do not act to prevent them happening. Come elections, anywhere in the world, the bad guys, pretending to do good in the name of politics, become very active. We are witnessing one such drama at the moment in our country. The common man is at the receiving end. While the honest tax payers’ money is being misused to conduct elections now and then, the black money power of the politicians and the business world that have a stake in the elections, bares its canine teeth at the poor man. Most of these man eaters masquerade as do-gooders and hide their true colours under well pressed khadi or Mahadeva and Akbar suits.
Every politician derives his/her inspiration from his/her ancestors. While a few of them belong to well entrenched dynasties in India, others work overtime to create their own dynasty for the future. Ironically all of them claim that their ancestors sacrificed for the country. The true sacrifice comes from those hapless javans who guard our borders at great risk to their lives day in and day out, sometimes laying down their lives to allow us (and the politicians) to sleep in peace in our houses. These javans meet their maker many a time unsung and unwept in very tragic circumstances. Even their kith and kin find it hard to make both ends meet. Some of them live in abject poverty. Refined youngsters of the dynasties become seasoned vote pullers overnight having had the advantage of western education but, alas, having no clue to the appalling conditions in which the poor of India live.
The Westminster model of democracy that our “great” netas agreed to adopt here speaks volumes about the crafty British trying to keep the masses in this country in perpetual poverty, and, if possible, divide this country further through factional fights. Come to think of it poverty is the real wealth of the politicians who, before every election, could easily promise the poor the moon. Many of these leaders boast that the country is poised to land man on the moon and the mars soon while, down here, most of us find it hard to land in our neighbour’s drawing room with a genuine smile on our faces. The latter would be real progress and not landing on the moon. Clean drinking water for the masses, three meals a day uncontaminated by human and/or animal excreta, a roof over their heads in place of the sky and some empowerment of village women should take precedence over all else if India has to move forward.
In fact, it was this drama of a debased democracy in action that gave Plato, the great Greek philosopher, the impetus to his conception of the ideal state in The Republic. Plato perceived that the material greed of the politicians is one of the greatest curses of any democracy. He, therefore, argued that economic power must be divorced from political power. This bitter experience filled Plato with the hatred of the mob. He resolved in The Republic that democracy must be replaced by the government of the wisest and the best men in any country: for Plato knowledge is not separate from virtue; the good is also true. Plato’s academy, the first University in the west around 365 B.C, was famous for its discourses and dialogue that were the core of learning and an animate pathway to wisdom. Plato would be turning in his grave thinking about the present democracies.
After well over half a century of political independence our leaders have successfully managed to make man as the greatest enemy of man in the name of religion, caste, creed, colour, race and what have you. While most politicians cry hoarse about religion being (mis) used in politics, in real practice they use the worst in organized religions to raise passions during election times. The one word that Indian politicians misuse the most is “secularism.” While the real meaning of the word should be to respect all religions in this world, Indian politicians use it exclusively to hate one another and keep their minority vote banks intact. They only pay lip service to the poor conditions in which the minorities live.
Despite our having had independence for half a century only a very small segment of the minorities had the privilege of decent education to forge ahead in the competitive world. Good education and equal opportunities would have made the minorities join the main stream long back. That vision requires a great statesman to act boldly to lift the poor minorities from their present conditions. Almost all politicians claim that they would like India to be a casteless society but they take care to keep the caste divide very much alive to cash in during the election times. Caste of the candidate takes precedence over merit, the latter being the last priority. Politics is the only area where qualification of any kind is not a pre-requisite. In addition, criminalization of politics has reached a level where the demarcation between politics and crime gets totally blurred in many cases.
If anyone talks about India’s greatness and Indian ness these devil’s advocates cry hoarse in the name of saffronization. They are to be pitied as they have not even understood the meaning of the world saffron. Late Dr. Sarvapally Radhakrishnan had to remind the warring groups of the forefathers of the present jokers in our Constituent Assembly, where a war broke out against having the top saffron edge for our flag. Radhakrishnan reminded the house that saffron denotes renunciation-thyaaga-sacrifice in the true sense of the word and does not represent any party or group. Paropakaaraartham idam shareeram. He also told the other group which was objecting to the green at the bottom as the colour of Islam. Radhakrishnan had to remind them that green in the flag represents Nature at its best. The green leaf is the sole manufacturer of the base of all our energy, the chlorophyll, from the carbon dioxide that we breathe out and the water vapour in the air, using the sun’s energy. Even the most arrogant scientist to date has not been able to replicate this process in any laboratory. That much for the pride of modern science! The white in the middle denotes the river of truth, the most important strength of India. The wheel in the middle shows the need for progress-the change for better and decries status quoist attitude. Later the house voted with one voice the choice of the Indian tri-colour. Indian ness, therefore, means only the good things for mankind for all times to come.
Religion of the true variety-spirituality-is only sharing and caring. While God, the omnipotent, is only pure love. today’s politicians have invented a new God-Money, and are preaching a new religion for politics, making money. Every religion in the world, except the one invented by politicians mentioned earlier, preach the same spirituality of sharing and caring. If every one in power were to swear by this God of love the world would be a better place to live and let others live. Politics, devoid of this God concept, by any name and in any place or in any ism will never succeed in the end. The true futuristic order would not be socialism, communism, leftism or rightism but humanism. Humanism, although a neo-logism, simply means the primacy of man and the welfare of man as our goal along with all other sentient beings on the planet. If we follow this religion one need not go to Moon or Mars but could enjoy life on this planet itself while practising the religion of our choice at home.
The biggest mistake that we have done after becoming politically independent is not forgetting our intellectual dependence on the British. We have inherited all our institutions from the British-Westminster style parliament, the adversarial justice system, the ICS model of bureaucracy, and the western concept of journalism. All these could have been Indianized (saffronised in the true sense of the word) immediately after independence but alas, that was not to be, thanks to our powers-that-be at that time. Sanity could not prevail as the advisers were still British, led by Lord and Lady Mountbatten. Thinkers like Chakravarthi Rajgopalachari, RajenBabu and Sardar Patel were quickly marginalized. The Indian remnants of the ICS were calling the shots. To be considered an intellectual in that situation one had to be Oxford, Cambridge educated or taught by Harold Laski. People like Voltaire, the great French philosopher, and his ideas never impressed our netas. “All that we know today-our astronomy, our astrology, our sciences, and even our metempsychosis-has flowed to us from the Banks of the Ganges. While we were still hunter-gatherers roaming the forests these Indians had Universities of excellence that attracted students from all over,” wrote Voltaire. Post-independent India was an appendage of the colonial British ideas.
Western ideas seem to work wonders even today. Smart and handsome young men with American accent and a dynastic background seem to capture the imagination of our bankrupt leaders to be in charge of the fate of 1.2 billion poor Indians! This brings to mind an old saying: “While the old accept everything, the middle age doubts everything, but the youth know everything.” This may be the reason why they put these raw youngsters who have no idea of India and its people in charge of their fate. Our present netas have forgotten the Biblical saying: “To whom much is given, much is required.”
Our media, the watchdog of any democracy goes to town with tall stories of these bad people day in and day out. Good altruistic things have no place in our media. The country had a lot of faith in the media which could have done a lot. All that they seem to do is to dance to the tune of the rich and the powerful in addition to highlighting the worst in society that helps to make man hate another man. The media talks hard, walks with the rich to talk to them but rarely does the media walk its talk. The judiciary is another sad story. While there are very good people in the bench and the bar, but it is the crafty lawyers that run the justice system with the judges in the system being only umpires unlike in the inquisitorial justice system. Of course corruption is in the judiciary almost to the same extent in other wings of society since society itself is corrupt one can not expect the judiciary to be free from it. Less said about the bureaucracy the better. It is they that get bad name for the poor politicians sometimes. These raw politicians might not understand the mechanizations of governance while the bureaucrats take them for a ride and make hey when the sun shines. They also see that they are comfortably parked after retirement as well. That again does not mean that all of them are bad. There are and there have been some of the best minds in all four sections of our society mentioned earlier. The numbers of good politicians, media men men, jurists and bureaucrats have been going down steadily lately though.
Time has come for the discerning Indian voter to show our jokers their rightful place and if we do not do that now, we will be totally, irrevocably, and unequivocally responsible for all the sins they commit on the gullible people of this great country. Indian common man can not be fooled that easily although the crafty politicians know how to hoodwink them during election times using alcohol, money, and other unmentionable goodies. Election time criminals, inside and outwith the political set up, rule the roost. Most politicians are addicted to opium (OPM-Other Peoples’ Money) not the type derived from the poppy seeds. Their greater addiction is to power-absolute power. Saving grace is that wisdom seems to have dawned on a few statesmen still alive in this country. The early signs are that they might life this country from the bottomless pit into which it has sunk lately. The responsibility now rests with the good people in society to distinguish the wheat from the chaff and vote carefully choosing the best men and women disregarding their clichés, heredity, and promises.
The future of this country depends on our having our own brand (Indian brand of Raja dharma) of good governance starting from the grass roots. Most responsibility should rest with the party less village panchayaths where there is rule of law and not of men. India lives in its villages and until and unless our villagers, especially the village women, get empowered there will be no salvation. Governments could only look after foreign affairs and defense.
Each one of us has a responsibility to study the background of every candidate, disregarding his/her tall claims and then judge him/her correctly. Many of them have been in this profession for a long time and made their millions for several generations to come. Such people could be shown the door to make way for better people. The next important thing we have to do is to keep that day, the voting day, free for voting as responsible citizens of this country. The whole exercise at an enormous cost would be futile if every one of us who has a vote does not cast his/her vote in favour of the best candidate in the fray. Let us also not let them have an opportunity to do horse trading by creating a hung parliament or assembly. The refined crooks among them will stop at nothing to get power, having tasted blood in the past. Long live India.
“Who’s in or out, who moves the grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity, or spleen,
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than the secret movement of the puppet-show;
Let but the puppets move, I’ve my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire.”
Winston Churchill.