GUEST COLUMN : A jealousy-hatred-animosity wave in the ‘Festival of Democracy’
Monday, 28 February 2022 | Vir Singh | Dehradun
The country is intoxicated by elections. Even those states of the country where elections are not being held are immersed in doubts and apprehensions. In the election process, voting is given a sacred meaning with three words- “festival of democracy”. Democracy itself seems like a holy cow. So sacred that it has been considered by far the best governance system in the world. Countries that follow democracy and democracy-based political systems are considered the best. The simple meaning of democracy which pervades our psyche is the formation of government by voting, that is, the strategy of the vote system to attain democracy. If a political system is created without votes, it is directly assumed to be a totalitarian system and it is often thought that human rights are being violated there.
Analysts in their analyses of democracy by means of elections have never caught on to one of the most toxic facts—that each election scenario is becoming more toxic than the previous one. In other words, democracy is paying a heavy price for its continuous journey. Do you remember the West Bengal election? After winning the election, how the workers of the majority party burnt the houses of ordinary people who voted for the opposition party, killed and forced many people to take refuge in neighboring states. And the political system kept watching this gruesome scene with shame. Democracy in West Bengal paid its taxes! The government increased its vote bank for the upcoming elections.
Now the means and resources of the propaganda system have all changed. Decades ago, “booth capture” contracts were in the news. Now the contractors have changed. In the age of information, managers are being hired to devise winning strategies. These skilled players teach new tricks of saam-daam-dand-bhed with the aim of making the contesting party victorious, create new slogans, new cravings for the conscience of the voters. The results of elections to the Delhi and Bengal Legislative Assemblies are the recent examples of such flamboyance. These election managers have no ideas of their own. Whichever party feeds them, they get engrossed in their thoughts. In politics ‘defection’ is a slur. But the new contractors have so far not ‘earned’ this abuse.
The only difference between a democracy election and a war is that the language of election days is more toxic than the language of war times. In the elections of five states this time, from many politicians to many general public campaigners, the kind of toxic words and threatening language used by them has rarely happened before. Uttar Pradesh has crossed all limits. One party has even fielded notorious criminals and has promised to equip the criminals with government facilities if they win elections. The leaders and workers of the same party are creating unprecedented records of indecency, hatred, malice and animosity. The climax of political immorality has engulfed national values in this election like never before. But this is not the last scene. The future of democracy is sure to be shrouded in a haze of political immorality.
The establishment of a democratic political system through voting is certainly the best philosophy of politics. But when the vote system dominates the democracy so much that even the systems start looking dwarf in front of it, the toxic winds of jealousy-hatred-animosity start polluting the civilization-culture and cracks start appearing in the geography of the nation, then it becomes absolutely necessary to protect the integrity of the nation. It becomes imperative to create alternative strategies for this. Any sensitive person who believes in democracy and accepts it as the best system will not accept that the vote system becomes an eclipse on the integrity of the nation. Matdaan is no longer a sacred word like Bhoodan, Godan or Kanyadaan. In the ‘vote’ of the voting system, there is also an intention to divide the country and society; there is also an urge to obliterate the symbols of the nation. Yes, in the ‘vote’ of many people, who may be a majority, there are also imaginations of a beautiful future for the country and in this spirit they exercise their votes. But in a democracy, the echo of negativity is more and more and more and more it goes on trampling the national boundaries election after election.
Just as in some societies, women are kept locked in a veil by being deprived of education, then they become accustomed to living in the same way considering it as a destiny. Similarly, the countrymen have also started feeling the vote system as inevitable, even knowing that it is carrying them into a dark future. From intellectuals to politicians and from the elite to the general, everyone seems to have fallen prey to a kind of ‘votaryism’.
Change is the law of creation. Everything in the universe is subject to change. Civilizations that remained victims of status quoism were wiped out from the earth. The Sanatan Hindu culture has flourished for millennia, because our ancestors kept adapting themselves according to the time and circumstances like the rhythmic development of the universe and with the progressive development of knowledge, they kept on giving new dimensions to the socio-cultural-economic-political development. But here we have a faltering democratic system on the foundation of our rusted vote system (if it is called democratic!), which is pushing the country-society-culture on the pegs of status quo to the darkness of irrelevance.
In my lecture at an international conference in Bhutan a few years ago, I included democracy in the Seven Principles of Human Happiness. It is to be known that Bhutan is the only country in the world that considers Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an indicator of national growth instead of Gross National Product (GNP). Bhutan is not a democracy, and is one of the few countries that still have a monarchy. This is the monarchy which considers the happiness of its subjects as its greatest success. After the last West Bengal elections and the current elections, I have come to the conclusion that the so-called democracy, let alone the happiness of the people, is troubling the integrity of the country, and it is the cause of national unhappiness. Relevant India is being left far behind in this democracy. If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he would be ashamed of his definition of ‘government of the people for the people by the people’.
Democracy through ballot, in essence, is not as great as it was hoped. Name it democracy or something else, the time has come to develop an alternative strategy for polity creation. To keep the future of the country safe and intact and to keep it progressively infused with human values and to rebuild relevant India is the real dharma of the present governance system.
(The author is an ex-professor at GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology. Views expressed are personal)
