Of corrupt parliamentarians, thugs and jokers..

Thanks, Shantanu. I also sent that blog post to Arvind Kejriwal (I have his email ID since I last met him in February). I hope he reads. He has not responded. I’m trying to send a message clearly to these otherwise good people: Please let’s stop wasting our time criticising these thugs.

If we are so good and so smart, surely we have it in us to come together and show the people of India a better way forward.

And if we can’t do it then why complain? Why criticise? If we don’t exercise and we become obese and sick, we can’t complain about those who exercised and are fit? Can we?

INDIA has voted for these thugs. Because we left the field and sat at home watching TV. Who should be blamed for this mess?

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Making Voting mandatory should be the need of the hour which will surely clean up the rot, for which I doubt any of the present politicians will agree.

“My view is very clear – that India SURVIVES as a single nation purely because of our democracy, and because our parliamentarians, despite their weaknesses, are committed to peaceful change. These parliamentarians need not be worshipped. They can be criticised and should be. But at all times it must be acknowledged that it is these people who have held India together and taken it this far. Give credit where it is due”.

I respectfully but totally disgree. India’s core strength is not is faulty democracy or the “thugs” who are “committed to its peaceful change”. India’s core strength is its historical (and perhaps “mythological” for left leaning scholars) social-cultural-spiritual legacy which binds it together and had bound it even during the most trying times, India’s core strength is depicted at all critical points in its history, – whenever the country faced any crisis, leaders and good citizens came up from somewhere, most often from the educated class and most definitely from middle class. When the country was in most despicable cicumstance under British rule there came up leaders like Swami Vivekananda, Tilak, Aurobindo, Tagore, C.R Das, Subhas Bose and others to follow their footsteps – selfless soldiers who inspired various sections of the society in various spheres for a complete rejuvenation. Even when Islamic rule was at its height and Hinduism and the associated plurality was threatened, there arose from somewhere saints and social leaders from Sri Chaitanya to Kabir, Guru Nanak to Ramdas and Tuka, who inspired kings and masses to fight with determination the menace of brutal fundamentalism and intolerance.

The point is, India always found people to fight for the cause of righteousness through self sacrifice and by leading the masses from front when the country needed them and I am sure the same is going to happen when there is a pressing need (a crisis, nation or religion in major trouble etc.) in future.

Come to think of it, educated Indians did try their hand in politics in India after independence, but the result was disastrous. I am talking about the Naxalite movement which at least plunged Bengal into complete darkness from where it is still struggling to come out, which was led by educated and learned. So the so called politics with a borrowed and failed idea of democracy or its counterpart in autocratic world as was the case for Naxalism, and sans the socio-cultural-spiritual core of India is never going to succeed. One politician who realized this early in his career was Mahatma Gandhi, thats why he could strike a cord with common people. His sacrifice and his message was based on spiritual tenets, not merely ideological or political.

So India does not survive on account of a failed model of democracy or its parliament, it survives on account of the resilience (or enormous forbearance, or simply inertia from another standpoint) its people who is the epitome of the core strength, who comes out in large number to vote these “thugs” and go on with their business despite the many failings of the system, who helps in perpetuating the system through honest means of work. All politicians are not thugs, all IPS, IAS are not thugs, and certainly all common men are not dishonest. Those who provide that honest work through the strength bestowed upon them by the legacy of India described above, is helping in taking the country forward despite all obstacles, not the “thugs”. Most of the politicians are not committed to “peaceful change”. If that was so, there would not have been the need for an election commission for ensuring free and fair elections. We have not forgotten the riggings and booth capturings in Mulayam’s UP, or in Lalu’s Bihar or in CPM’s Bengal.

Point is, the system is such that educated Indians may not be inclined towards participation because of the insurmountable entry barriers posed by it. You would realize this when you start to float a new political outfit. A case in point is J.P’s Loksatta in AP which has found very few takers. So we all agree that the system must change, till then participation is difficult. Question is how? I’ll try answering that first. A system change is possible either through mass pressure, or through the good intentions of an incumbent, or through a major crisis that roars for a change. The first two are impossible in Indian context. Mass pressure is not there from middle class simply because there are diverse view points and there is no leader to provide a direction and guidance. Remember Sepoy mutiny! There was no mass leader and India (common masses) was not prepared for a change and there were many different opinions on how change can be brought, without anyone to integrate them. The same is the situation today. Everybody is fighting everybody on the ways and means. The freedom team may be a good idea but not all educated Indians can agree with the team’s viewpoint on critical issues or its advocated ways of bringing about a change (probably that is a reason for the lack of enthusiasm in becoming its member, simply (please, no offense meant to any person, this is a general comment!) probably because there is no inspiring leadership, which people, esp. the masses can trust! Mere ideas cannot bring about change, you need a role model who would sacrifice everything to implement that idea and show case it to the people. Again refer to 19th century – there came into forefront people who became social leaders and change agents simply because they practised what they preached, even at an enormous personal cost (like Vidyasagar, Rammohan Roy and others). That’s why they led to that important social foundation on which the later movements could be built, even against a mighty Government which was even more hostile than it is today.

The second idea – the incumbents driving a change is ruled out. It is in the interest of today’s incumbents – Sanjeev’s parliamentarians, who “despite their weaknesses, are committed to peaceful change”, to continue with the present system, to raise the entry barrier for educated middle class to enter politics unless they subscribe to one of the existing “ideologies”. We can forget about electoral reforms because none of the political parties would want a reform strong enough to bar the entry of criminals and corrupts into politics. These latter people are the lifeline of today’s politics as they provide the much needed money and muscle power to win elections and to survive on the floor.
So we need some body or bodies who would sacrifice everything and who would themselves show the way. If we have that kind of leaders they would not remain hidden for long. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry can become like that, because it would mean three preconditions – subscribing to a core ideology based on the core strength of India, sacrificing everything and demonstrating the same, and ability to inspire people on a grand scale and integrate many divergent viewpoints into one common thread, always based on that same core strength – India’s historical legacy.
So we do not see how we can come out of this mess easily, because leaders are not made, not definitely through marketing gimmick of a leading newspaper.
That takes me to the third option. We most certainly need a crisis for the emergence of that kind of leaders because a crisis is the trigger point for their emergence. When the crisis fades, they probably go away but in the process they change the system and pave the ground for the emergence of new leaders who would be able to provide the much needed stability. That’s the lesson of history.
Swami V. incidentally predicated this more than a 100 years back. He warned against borrowing ideas from Western democracy for India because he felt that those ideas had themselves failed for Europe, that’s why Europe was sitting on a volcano (which incidentally erupted just 17 years down the line from when he sounded this warning). He also said that India will have to come up with its own model based on its historical legacy, which probably can become a role model for the whole world. He said that Western concept of democracy cannot work in an Indian context because the apathetic bureaucracy driving the system cannot even understand the problems of the masses, let alone alleviate them. He also said that Indian masses always look to a strong ruler whom they can approach for any grievance redressal, not to a servile policy dependent bureaucrat who cannot go beyond routine policies and who can obfuscate those policies to make the life of ordinary people much more miserable. (vide Complete works of S.V). That’s why probably there is always a touch of respect of Indian masses for political figures who are strong and who can take decisions and who can empathize with them, atleast outwardly – like Mrs Gandhi senior.

My apologies for a long long post.