First of all I apologize for being away for so long. There have been multiple problems pertaining to various members of my family and the extended family and they have kept me totally occupied. There were a couple of times when I thought I should post something but did not have the concentration to do that. One of the times when I thought I should let the world know about what I think was when the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen announced to the Sri Krishna Committee (which is looking into the arguments for and against a separate Telangana), that it wants a separate state that clubs Telangana and Rayalseema together. This was more or less a tacit support for the idea floated by JC Diwaker Reddy. When one is faced with such situations one has two options. The first would be to laugh at the complete ridiculousness of the situation. The second is to see what democracy is coming to. Or one can do both. I belong to that generation which believes in the sanctity of democracy. But increasingly over the years democracy in India is appearing less and less sacred. When the system is taken over by thugs and goons the right to vote is rendered meaningless. What is the big point in choosing one criminal over another? The other day I was in a seminar. It had people from the hallowed Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Hyderabad among others, presenting papers. The theme was about the ways in which people could be empowered. And the literati rejected all steps that have been taken so far by Indian democracy in the last sixty years as being meaningless. This was done with the seriousness and self important demeanour of academicians who think that they have said the next most irrefutable thing after all the things that have been said in various sacred texts of different religions. As is now the trend, well known names such as Ambedkar, Gandhi and Nehru were dropped with astounding alacrity and vandalized to whatever extent they could be without too much compunction. Academicians made arguments for their own religion, caste and occupation with such great stupidity that even seasoned politicians would be compelled to feel embarrassed by the idiocy of it all. I am not being a harbinger of doom, but I do not feel comfortable at all seeing that the fate of the future generations is in the hands of these vile and selfish people. In the past I was told that all it takes for all things undesirable to flourish was for a few good men to remain silent in the face of badness. However I feel that if good men do not choose to remain silent, there maybe none left Indian society. Such is the level of intolerance that one sees in Indian society today and with politics of identities coming to the forefront it seems that things can only get worse. This particular rant is not arbitrary and a way of externalizing. In the last post that I made a few months ago, I had said that there are some characteristics of liberal democracy that allow for the development of tendencies that I have talked about so far in this post.
Liberal democracy is an off shoot of developments peculiar to European society that have been seen as the result of the protestant ethic that Max Weber and Emile Durkheim spoke about. In the post renaissance and reformation period, due to the existence of the protestant ethic work became worship. Owing to the rejection of the church as a certifying agency of the integrity of individuals, the worth of people in society was determined by the amount of diligent work that they put in and the consequent amassing of private property. In India however, liberal democracy became an import that came in through the means of British colonialism. All institutions such as the parliament came into being essentially because of the Colonial State that came into existence for the support of the British administrative machinery. The legitimate quandary that confronted the people of India pertained to the choice of the the mode of self governance. India had to empower all its people, otherwise the whole fight for independence would have been meaningless. All other systems of governance that had existed in India prior to British colonialism and concurrently with it, were either monarchical or based in feudalism or both. The only choice that existed at that time was between liberal democracy and communist democracy. Communism was unfortunately but thoroughly discredited by Stalinist Russia and any indigenous interpretation of it seemed impossible in the face of the Communist Party of India being doctrinaire. The incorporation of socialism into the ideology of the Congress party and its success in building a veritable mass base meant that only liberal democracy was the realistic option. One of the striking features of early Indian democracy was the patriotism and idealism of the people. My father who was a Block Development Officer at the time of the Chinese war tells me that when there was a crunch of finances in the country during the war and the Indian government had called for donations, people simply gave cash and gold with the conviction that they would be utilized properly. And they were not wrong since every government servant from the humble peon to the District Collector spent every little paisa in the way in which they were meant to be spent. Sadly, that is inconceivable today, only fifty years later. The question then is what went wrong? The answer in the next post. Hopefully the circumstances in my life have stabilized and I can get on with regular posting.
