‘I’ am truly democratic. Are ‘You’?

The way certain words and actions of some are interpreted, distorted and misrepresented to mislead people and carve out alternate realities in India political arena, it is important to establish certain definitions of those words which represents its acceptable usage elsewhere in the world. Those that depart from these agreed usages of terms, using them to mean something other than what they are intended to represent, therefore stand guilty of being fomenters of social mistrust and hatred. Such people often come in the garb of the ‘educated’ or ‘expert’ voice, belong to certain political backgrounds and entertain personal and political ambitions that go beyond their stated purpose in life.

In the age of social media driven politics and campaigns, where episodes like an Arab spring or a Muzzafarnagar riots are created with rapid-fire speed, it is imperative that such words that have the power to singe, scald and burn, be clarified. Readers can then ‘interpret’ the ‘codes’ that are used to keep the nation divided and suspicious of one group or another. ‘I’ represents all those who are feeling oppressed and marginalized by how words have been hijacked and used as throw-away ‘labels’, lapped up by others who have little or no inclination to make their own minds up based on evidence available. ‘I’ tries to turn sheeple – people who behave like sheep - to people with an independent mind and thought. 'I' also tries to identify those individuals who pretend to be sheep in wolves' clothing; those that use words wrongly to mislead 'sheeple'.

First, ‘I’ am no supporter of religion in politics for I believe religion is a personal matter and should never enter public life of people, which is what politics deals with. I reject the type of 'Hindutva' that involves building temples where mosques used to be or insist that Hinduism has answers to all of Indian society's modern day problems and needs. Religion has no place in public policies other than as a right that needs to be safeguarded in a secular democracy. Whoever uses religion for any point-scoring exercise is guilty of the same charge they make on the other side. To say that terrorism where the culprits are Hindus is ‘saffron-terror’ is as terrible as calling all terrorism carried out by Muslims as ‘Islamic terror’. Terrorists have no religion and whoever makes such statements is not secular but is using the word to hide his/her inherent bigoted nature.

Second, ‘I’ don’t buy the rhetoric of all those opposed to 'Hindutva' that anyone who is a Hindu and supports a person or party automatically becomes a right-wing nationalist. That is stereotyping and social hatred at its worst. Bush's doctrine of 'You are either with us or with the terrorists' is an example of such warped thinking. All those who abuse and misuse this term are guilty of a social crime - that of fragmenting the society on religious lines - crimes that they allege right-wingers engage in. Why? Because ‘Hindutva’ according to a 1995 Supreme Court of India judgement, means "the way of life of the Indian people and the Indian culture or ethos". There is nothing religious about it. Those living in India as its citizens live the Hindutva way of life - Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and of course Hindus. Much like those who live in the west live predominantly a western form of life, which you may as well call a ‘Christian’ way of life.

Third, ‘I’ also dont believe that people should be allowed to use double standards for all those who are considered 'communal' in India. For those who continue to hold Modi for Gujarat riots should also open their mouths about the Congress role in Sikh genocide. Such folks will run to Supreme Court for the slightest affront to their sense of right, but refuse to accept court's verdict when it suits them. These same people are the ones that either support explicitly or keep quiet when a political party overturns the judgement of the Supreme Court in India that grants women the right to receive alimony from their husbands after divorce for their maintenance and that of their dependent children. ‘You’ are appalled? Well, you should be. For these folks who claim to be ‘secular’ and not ‘communal’ did this to Muslims. No other religious group in India is subjected to this social abuse and destitution that the divorced Muslim women undergo. This is the worst form of hypocrisy and double-standards. Who are these people? Supporters on the largest party that calls itself ‘secular’ and is in power in India today.

‘I’ am democratic for ‘I’ don’t misuse words to justify my beliefs, distorting the words to pretend I am something that I am not. ‘I’ also have the courage to say what I believe in rather than being a coward that hides behind distortions. ‘I’ am a truly democratic for I say what I believe in, rather than whisper or say something that I don’t. Do ‘you’ consider yourself to be entirely democratic after reading this?

The recipe for democracy

India is the largest practising democracy in the world. In terms of sheer numbers, the stats are mind-boggling enough not to require repetition here. But are people there really living in a liberal democracy? Most who live and follow the process and concept called India would disagree. So why has it been so hard for the fruits of individual human rights, rule of law that’s free and fair, policies that benefit people in reality, not just in some ideological sense that party manifestos require them to, and elected leaders who are transparent in their dealing, been so hard to achieve? After all the nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote that being the ‘Argumentative Indian’ had given the citizens a natural edge over other nascent and evolving democracies. The answer lies in how democracy arrived in India. To understand the process, comparison with how democratic principles entered western (rather the European) societies in the latter stages of last millennia is well worth the time.

Democracy evolved over a period of over 400 years in western Europe. It was the culmination of a long process of churning and evolution. The western nations’ reliance on a mode of analytical and logical thinking, the bedrock of rational decision-making based upon freedom of speech that is an essential pre-requisite of democratic thinking, is as much a product of what preceded this way of thinking. What preceded was of course the excesses of the Church with its abuse of authority, suppression of scientific and rational though linked with denial of individuality. India has not yet been able to, or rather its political leaders have not allowed the nation to lift itself above the regressive and emotive pull of religion, the use and abuse of caste and religious background for vote-bank politics and the overbearing reliance on populist and quick-fix measures as opposed to logical and analytical approach to managing governance. It needs to traverse a similar process of self-reflection as a nation that many western European nations did in the 13th to 17th centuries which led to emergence of the philosophy of science and the age of industrial revolution to really accelerate the process of democracy.

This process in Europe involved sequentially the ages of renaissance, reformation, rationalism and revolution. These stages ultimately broke the stranglehold that ancient and regressive religious thoughts had over people as the predominant mode of determining social realities and manage societies. The change in mindsets was not limited just to enlightened leaders but their subjects too. The period of renaissance was the first stage of breaking this stranglehold. It involved a critical analysis of the religious scriptures and a retelling of the natural order, a viewing of ‘reality’ through the prism of logic; a renaissance of thought. Indeed Nico Machiavelli, the Italian Chanakya, who was credited with writing probably the first treatise on politicking, reportedly said that all his wisdom was a retelling of old knowledge and wisdom contained within the Greek classics.

Renaissance was followed by reformation of the church. Those choked by the puritanical and abusive control of the church broke free and various movements facilitated this, leading ultimately a separation of spiritual realm from political field. Religion became more a personal matter and not an over-riding gear on matters of governance of states.

This era was in turn was followed by an era of rationalism. The freedom from a state of lack of querulousness about matters of nature and the visible world and rejection of superstition and dogma led to the use of reason and logic to explain the mysteries of the universe rather than invoking supernatural forces. This led to the age of industrial revolution in the 17th century in England and the arrival of mechanical aids into the life of people with a value on material wealth and diminution of the spiritual.

The last stage in this process was revolution in many European states as a means of violently purging the society of religious hegemony and monarchic excesses which the previous stages of change had not succeeded in eradicating. There was a violent flux that cleansed many European communities of the royalties and gentry that exploited the common man using religion to attribute motives to man's actions. These four stages spanning a period of nearly 500 years were the precursor to individual rights and use of reason as the primary means of organising societies and decision-making on a daily basis. These precursor stages heralded the arrival of democracy. Development of bureaucratic institutions, and laws of tort: hallmarks of democracy, allowed groups of people to participate in the process of governance, had been evolving through the previous four stages of change.

For the individual, s/he had been a witness and a participant of a huge cathartic process whereby dark forces of superstition, feudalism and internecine medieval warfare that involved the suppression of one group by another had been, in a piece-meal manner, smashed beyond recognition. His own intellectual evolution and emancipation was as much the stuff of democracy as the Magna Carta, that first piece of document penned in Lincolnshire and now preserved in the small town of Runnymede by the Thames. In other words, democracy did not evolve overnight like a magical solution to centuries of autocracy, despotism, nepotism and malevolent monarchy alongside parasitic spirituality/religiosity. It took centuries of development which formed the bedrock of civil society in Europe and the Caucasian world.

Is it any wonder why democracy in India still resembles a myriad forms of religious states, dynastic monarchies, feudal states and despotic authoritariansm? In the next part, we will explore what needs to happen for India to start becoming truly democratic - in practice rather than simply in principle. We shall ask whether the recent liberalisation of economy, the advent of free media, and a more open society has changed a people that are still in many ways ancient.