Election banners and speeches once again! As civilization progresses, so does the business of the politicians conducted more and more by means of meetings.
All those noisy and incoherent promises, the impossible demands, the hotchpotch of unfounded ideas and impractical plans, opportunism that cares neither for truth nor justice, the inglorious chase after unmerited fame, the unleashing of uncontrollable passions, the exploitation of the lowest instincts, the distortion of facts and all that feverish and sterile fuse.
The national motto of India after its independence has been “Satyamev Jayate” or ‘Truth shall prevail”. Democracy and truth go hand in hand and truth is important in modern democracies. Truth is crucial in order to ensure the ethos of transparency and openness in the way of functioning of democracy. Truth is also important to instill a sense of public trust in democracies, so that the officials in charge are committed to finding the truth and acting in accordance with it.
Sadly today, democracy, which depends on shared truths is in retreat.
Many many years have elapsed since independence but we have not yet succeeded in attaining a truly genuine peace. Popular hopes have turned into disappointment, with millions still lacking what for me would seem the essentials for a life worthy of human beings.
Today, India bristles with problems which assuming alarming proportions and implications have grown into intractable challenges to the polity. The thirst for power has become totally inimical to the Republic. Communalism, corruption, religious fundamentalism, and fanaticism, Centre-State relations, border disputes, river water disputes; deaths due to starvation; lack of elementary facilities, like drinking water, housing, elementary education, etc. The list is unending.
What a travesty!
May be, at the time of framing and drafting our Constitution we had not bargained for the kind of politicians India has been suffering from or did our founding fathers place a lot of faith in Constitutional ideals and processes? Or did they fail to anticipate the many social, political and cultural tensions that were ultimately to break out once the dynamo of adult franchise was activated. Or did the founding fathers fail to anticipate the probability of fouling of the democratic game through electoral process or due to structural faults of the party system?
The dynamics of a democratic polity today stands distorted by the process of acquisition, exercise and retention of power and the constitutional ethos and processes which were aimed at facilitating social changes have themselves got distorted in the process.
In the face of growing measure of dissatisfaction amongst the people with the performance of systems, how do we look at its efficacy, more so in the background of quality of leadership manning the 3 instrumentalities of State viz the Legislature, the Executive and the Judicial Branches having badly deteriorated.
Many of us in this country have become, uneasily aware of failure in our national life. In the last few years some of us have felt ashamed. But then none of us can rightly disclaim responsibility for the evils that beset us. The country today is in discordance with our desires.
It calls for us to think and think deep.
We have become onlookers for too long.
Many prefer to leave politics aloof and keep out of politics feeling that it is a dirty game. People hate politics, they despise politicians, in fact when politics is exposed to all its ugliness – people want none of it. Nations where illiteracy is high and where democratic traditions are only budding these are miserable merchants of unwanted ideas. Politics, after all has become muddled, contradictory, self defeatingly recurrent, unprogressive, unpatriotic, inefficient, mere compromise, or even a sham or conspiracy by which political parties seek to preserve some particular and peculiar social systems against the challenge of the inevitable future.
People need the courage to enter into politics, because politics is not only activism. It’s awareness. It’s keeping ourselves informed. It’s caring for the facts. Politics is the tool through which we structure ourselves as groups and societies. Politics governs and affects every aspect of our life.
Since time immemorial, Indians have stirred the human imagination. In India you meet the opposites. The abstract and the all too-elemental. This country once gave to the world that revolutionary symbol, the zero.
The tempo of history is constantly growing swifter. The greatest sin would be to fail to grasp the dream that is within our reach. We cannot afford to wait for a concurrence of favorable circumstances to transform dreams into reality. Such a concurrence always seems to elude us. This is the age of national freedom and the present stage of history is as favourable as any to a coalescence of humanity. Public intellectuals have a duty to expose the lies of the State as in a democratic country it is important to hold governments in check and guard against falsehoods, false narratives and fake news.
Democracy needs the power of truth to survive, and as such one can consider speaking ‘truth’ as a right as well as the duty of every citizen in a democracy.
We have been so much preoccupied with human suffering, so conscious of our blindness and stupidity, that it may well seem that the outcome is a pessimistic despair. Among the ruins it is still possible to preach the ideal of freedom, truth and happiness. This is the choice before us now; it is conflict of ideals.
The way before us is hard, but it is not impossible to make it lead towards a world where men can be free and happy because they are not afraid of the truth, however uncomforting.
(The author is an advocate, international law consultant and Human Rights activist)