Hindutva Hindus, They claim India is not a pseudo- democracy, they say it is a 'maturing democracy'.
However, what is the evidence ? Maturing implies things are getting better - as a child matures, it stops putting things in its mouth, it stops crawling, and it learns to stand up. However, it is the reverse that we see with Indian democracy.
By common consensus, Nehru was India's greatest PM, and he set us on the 'tryst with destiny'. But it has been a progressive decline ever since.
We saw the Congres turn into a semi-dynastic party. Its national presence has declined and the slack has been taken up by regional parties, and by even worse, the Hindu communalist parties.
The Hindu communal parties have leaders who are members of paramilitary organisations like the RSS. The RSS ideology is based on Hitlerism, and they do not accept the constitution of India.
Sixty years after independence, the concept of the 'Indian' has not materialised, and in fact has weakened.
Normally, it is minorities who need to be integrated, but now it is the Hindus who think as Hindus and not as Indians.
The Hindutva Hindus, whose instincts are fascist, have launched an assault on the institutions of the state, communalising the media, the police, and the judiciary.
The liberals have not been strong enough. The Congress also has communal riots and massacres of the Sikhs on its hands.
In Kashmir, democracy was subverted, and the elections of 1989 were rigged by Rajiv Gandhi. That was the last straw that led to the rebellion. Now, the Indian army rules Kashmir.
What democracy ? There is no evidence that education has produced an informed electorate that will vote for performance.
In advanced democracies, people vote for those who perform on economy.
Gujarat is the prime example of the low quality of the electorate.
The media claim Modi brought a lot of investments. But if this is true, all the communities of Gujarat will vote for him. But Modi's last resort is always Hindu communalism - it is because he knows he cannot win on performance. His latest is to say the fake encounter killing of a Muslim citizen was good. That appeals even to educated Hindus.
The election commision made a weak reprimand, but one gets the impression that they do not have the teeth.
Which Indian politician with blood on his hands has been gaoled ? So where is the evidence that Indian democracy is maturing ? Thus, chaddhiwala term 'maturing democracy' is too optimistic.
Even pseudo-democracy may not be the most accurate description.
When you do a chronological analysis, 'Degenerating democracy' is a more correct description.
The Hindutva assault on democracy in turn comes from a lingering Hindu inferiority complex.
regards.
sunny.
This piece, by Samina Mishra, has been much forwarded over the last few days. I reproduce it here, along with her introductory note. You can find the edited version at the India Today site
This is a piece I wrote for India Today but the version that has appeared in the magazine is an edit that I did not agree to. It’s not clear to me how that happened since I edited the longer article down to this final version and sent it in to them. But the magazine is out and I am both angry and saddened at their careless editing of ideas that are particularly under siege at this point of time.
So, here is my edit and I would be glad if it was circulated widely on the net - more widely than the magazine!
Samina Mishra
Not far from L18, in the posh part of Jamia Nagar, is a house on a tree-lined avenue that will always be home to me. But my life, with all its easy privileges, could not be more different from Atif and Sajid’s, the two young men shot as alleged terrorists at L18. I contain multitudes, Whitman so eloquently said. But we live in a time when even multitudes are forced to lay claim to a singular label. And so by writing this, perhaps, I will forever be labelled the voice of the liberal secular Muslim. A voice that is accused of not speaking up. Ironically, it is this very tyranny of labels that grants me this space in a mainstream national magazine.
As someone with a Muslim first name and a Hindu surname, I suppose I have always swung between labels - a poster girl for communal harmony or a confused, rootless individual, depending on who was doing the labelling. I went to a public school and have never worn a burkha. I might escape being thrown in the big cauldron with “Islamic Terrorists” but I will certainly be added to the one for “misguided intellectuals”. While there is no mistaking that it is zealous nationalists who seek to light the fire under the first cauldron, the other is a bone of contention between those who seek to define for me how to be Indian and those who seek to define for me how to be Muslim. My condemnation of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Imrana’s rape or the media circus around Gudiya will always be seen in the context of my privileged background, my gender, my religious identity. Perhaps, it can be no other way.
In this rhetoric of binaries of “us and them”, it is difficult to find the space to create a new paradigm of discussion. And so, in conversations that throw up Islamic terrorists, rigid religious beliefs, Pakistan and madrasas, the response is inevitably another set of questions - why is the Bajrang Dal not labelled a terrorist outfit, why is the growing public display of Hindu festivals like Navratras and Karva Chauth not considered rigid religious beliefs, why should Muslims in India be answerable for what goes on in Pakistan, what spaces other than madrasas are available for thousands of believing Muslims who choose to get educated and still retain their Muslim-ness. As a Muslim in India today, not only are you fighting to shrug off the label of fundamentalist — if not terrorist — but you are also succumbing to a paradigm of dialogue which has been set for homogeneous communities with clear markers of identities.
But how does one fight that when shared cultural spaces, other than those created by the market, shrink? How does one speak of the diversity of being Indian when Diwali is celebrated in schools and Eid just in Muslim homes? How does one avoid a singular label for experiences that are diverse and yet have a common thread running through them — the experience of a tailor in Ahmedabad whose Hindu patrons have stopped giving work to, the butcher in Batla House who couldn’t get a bank loan, the software professional who will now have to watch every single byte that leaves his computer.
Being Muslim in India today means many things to many people. But how easy it is to forget that one fundamental reality. How easy it is to say, as someone said to me after the Delhi blasts - “These are all educated Muslims. Don’t they know that their bombs can also kill their own?” As if everyone with a Muslim name is a terrorist’s very “own.”
regards.
sunny.
Going by d present scenario of my country 1 question that keep on
creeping in my mind is --"when we will b able 2 understand??"
come-on india!!we r more than 60 years old now,old enough 2
understand the rights and wrongs.but what is making us potray a image
of civilization which seems of a distinct past.
Indian educated youth is non communal no doubt about it nad
majority of india is young ie. in a age band of25-45 years.but the
major hurdle here is illiteracy.indian economy might have gone places
but on education front we r still lagging far behind.
Vote bank politics is another set back for india.political
parties continue to florish in the name of religion.they r least
bothered about the consequences.be it Ayodhya or Gujrat the turmoil was
created politically.but people dont get it right in their brains.they
follow their so called political leaders and burn each other with whom
they wine and dine for years.they are ready to take and give lives in
the name of religion and in the end it is they who r at loss.
Take the recent havoic created in jammu.a land transfer of 40
some hectares to the Amarnath shrine board created such a chaos as if
the whole state was under natural calamity.people were down to the
streets shouting anti goverment slogans,burning public vehicles,gutting
down shops etc..the loss on economic front was of more than 100
crores.but a loss of far greater dimension was loss of communal
harmony.a thing which takes decades to build up and a brisk second to
end.I came to know thru the newspapers that in the year 1860 the holy
shivling of Amarnath was discovered by a muslim shepherd and from then
on muslims residing in the nearby area continue to take care of
pilgrims who visit Amarnath like a true host.
But the irony of the sitution is that the people who from ages
continued to be a supporting pillar for the Amarnath yatra are now down
to the streets protesting..the question to be asked is--"what have made
them do so??"are the political parties to be blamed??the illiteracy??or
we oursevles??the reason for the above may be one or all of them but
one thing speaks out loud---"We are not sending positive signals to the
civilized world."
We take about permanent United council berth,Dream India 2025 but
the ground reality is that we dont deserve all this..we are still
barbaric.and I fear we are heading towards a second partition!! a
partition not of the soil but of the soul.
regards.
sunny.
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