A poster which read, “Shhh…! Please be quiet. Democracy is asleep” caught my attention and drove my thoughts to the political situation in my country at this moment.
A poster which read, “Shhh…! Please be quiet. Democracy is asleep” caught my attention and drove my thoughts to the political situation in my country at this moment. This was at a time when the Union Government got off without any backlash from citizens for its most brazen and atrocious declaration in court that, ‘citizens do not enjoy the fundamental right to privacy under the Constitution’. Had it been the Congress party in power, we can well imagine what would have been the consequences of such a claim. Mobs would have descended onto the streets beating their breasts, grinding their teeth and clenching their fists to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister. So, the nation now knows from where the mobs were set free to vitiate the atmosphere on the streets during the UPA rule, be it the anti-corruption movement or justice for Nirbhaya.
On hardly seeing any reaction from my countrymen and women, my ‘mann ki baat’ taunts me that democracy in my country is not just asleep but, the very conscience of my nation appears to be tottering, the mind flirting and confused and the speech simply deceptive, vicious and toxic. The right-wing fanatical outfits yet do not have a majority of citizens under their wings. But where are the voices of the remainder 70% of citizens in the country? Have we as a nation succumbed to a mob psychosis? If one chooses to exercise his/her right to not think with the mob, to restrain oneself from crying for the blood of the perceived enemy and to refuse to respect the word of the Prime Minister as being sacrosanct, then one is dubbed an anti-national and unpatriotic. The basic tenets of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in the constitution are practically non-functional under this government which dictates what is appropriate to eat, dress, speak, read and hear. While its foot soldiers run rampage on streets and conduct Kangaroo courts, the government pretends to see no violence, hear no cries of distress and speak no words of condemnation against its street ‘rakshaks’.
The very instruments that are meant to educate, inform and drive free thinking among citizens in a democracy, are now preoccupying the public mind with Triple Talaq, Kashmir and Pakistan. To obtain quality news one has to access the foreign print and electronic media. Almost one day was recently lost with hardly any news from around the country due to the live broadcast on TV screens about the legal depositions before the International Court of Justice at Hague. At other times the nation is kept distracted with issues of liberating Muslim women from the scourge of triple talaq or it is about stone pelting of armed forces by Kashmiri youth and Army martyrs. On reflection one will observe that whether it is protection of the cow, triple talaq, Kashmir, terrorism, Pakistan, population census and the rest, the political noises are focussed against one community. Quite curiously, a movement for rights of women to enter the sacred spaces in Temples started by a crusader Trupti Desai in Maharashtra some months ago seems to have just vanished from the news screens no sooner the entry for muslim women into the Haji Ali Dargah was accomplished. Are all these reformist campaigns part of a well-designed communal agenda being laced with noble and secular claims of liberating women and the oppressed from the crutches of unjust religious structures and select political parties? In reality, is the triple talaq issue which is blown up by otherwise anti-Muslim ideological forces, not ultimately about causing unrest and division amongst the Muslim community?
With every passing day the writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Jayprakash Narayan are increasingly sounding relevant and prophetic. In one of his writings, Vinoba Bhave had actually challenged the government to take a two years holiday and that they would only realise that life went on as normal and people would not want the government back. We are in times when the Prime Minister is being marketed as being omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and omni competent. The face of a PM splashed around town and on TV screens and with instant digital connectivity with citizens for every problem, the spokespersons of the government appearing almost every minute on news channels and government agencies hounding the opposition and NGOs on the pretext of curtailing black money and terrorism gets digested by citizens as being progressive governance. If the PM is a superman then why do we need the bureaucracy? The hazard of right-wing trolls and rakshakshas become a part of democratic life. For every undemocratic action of the government and its non-State actors there is a historical or legal justification. When the government fails to deliver what it has promised the blame gets dumped onto the Congress for the irreparable situation. If the Congress story is not convincing then it has to be the British who are the rascals. And if even this does not hold then the LoC is always there to provide the necessary distraction from the governance failures or excesses.
In reality, the citizens of this country are victims of ‘silent abuse’ by the government of the day. Besides, the stray incidents of physical harm there is a widespread subjection of minorities and the lower castes to an unseen mental and emotional trauma. This divisive mentality which pervades governance is revealed in the Union Law Minster’s remark about his government giving sanctity to Muslims even though they do not vote for his party. This abuse aims at generating a paralysis of free speech, thought and action and a feeling that the aggressor is just unstoppable. The verdict about persons being guilty gets pronounced in TV studios even before the trial begins. Raids and charge sheets against political opponents by the tax authorities, besides being aimed at throwing muck on the faces of opposition leaders, is the latest tool to drain the finances of the opposition and occupy them with defending themselves in court. We should not be surprised if the main opposition leaders are put behind bars some months before the general elections in 2019. To call this bluff about the government tackling corruption could attract an accusation of siding with the corrupt. But, it is time that we as a nation should be ask ourselves the question, who next after this government has finished with targeting the opposition party leaders?
https://www.heraldgoa.in/Review/Voice-Of-Opinion/Delinquency-is-the-%E2%80%98order-of-the-Day%E2%80%99/115392.html
Published in OHerald Review on 21st May 2017
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