God is associated with good and the Devil with evil. Various religious texts have dealt with these entities, and if we look at the world today, it appears the Devil is winning the battle! Mankind has developed great power to do good or evil. Strangely religion has become one of the most divisive forces on earth.
Neitzche asks “Is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s blunders”. George Bernard Shaw describes it thus “Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied: The one I feed the most.” Are we losing our humanity? Time is flying too fast and in these days of instant noodles and I me and mine, we have no time to ponder whether the end justifies the means! We have seen the phenomena of Brexit and Donald Trump where the attitude is if we have to go to the Devil to force change, so be it?
We the people of India have given ourselves a Constitution that acknowledges the majesty of the law with incorporated checks and balances. There is a dangerous trend these days of politicising majority public sentiments and traditions to challenge the Constitution and uproot democracy and public order in the nation. In any democracy law and order has to be paramount. A lawful court order may be challenged as a review petition or by a Law/Bill passed in Parliament. Certainly not as routine Ordinances and definitely not in disobeying the Supreme Court orders by popular local sponsored violence, which route seems to be gaining ground these days! We have to bring back civilized debate, democratic values and behavior if we do not want to see the unity in our nation disintegrating with misplaced priorities and lawlessness.
Take the case of Pongal and “bull taming” sport which is a traditional part of this festival. The pros and cons were argued by PETA and others in courts, permitted with checks and balances, then not implemented, and finally the Supreme Court banned it as a cruel sport. The people of Tamil Nadu disobeyed the court’s orders and surprisingly thousands of people came out in favor (including students, famous Tamil sports persons, film stars and even respected Godmen) as a must-have sport involving Tamil pride and a call to ban PETA. Tamilians went berserk with sympathetic demonstrations not only in other States but also wherever they were abroad to somehow preserve this sport. Popular sentiment is built.
To quote Jiddu Krishnamurthy “Tradition becomes our security when the mind is secure in its decay!” When Chief Minister Lalu Prasad was jailed, his inexperienced wife replaced him legally. Sasikala was sought to be installed as CM on Jayalithaa’s demise by the Legislature just because she was her longtime companion. Fifteen thousand frenzied people throng a station resulting in one dead just to view Shah Rukh Khan passing through in a train! A dangerous precedent has been set by the central government capitulating and bulldozing the State’s ordinance in a hurry denotifying the bull from list of performing animals thus removing it from The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (akin to coconut tree Goa government expediently notifed almost as grass). This has opened a Pandora’s Box for nullifying court orders. It is the job of the Supreme Court to finally settle contentious disputes, be it water sharing by States or laws enacted by Parliament which are not in conformity with the Constitution! Not respecting courts/Institutions, there will be anarchy and violence. Might/ organised mob power (called people’s power), vigilante groups, moral policing rendering the majesty of the law redundant will turn us into a banana republic! Sanjay Leela Bhansali making a movie was manhandled by some goons of a fringe group with impunity claiming RSS approval, stating he is distorting history. A fictional movie, not documentary, cleared by The Central Film Certification Board is objected to by a lawyer in court as showing disrespect to judges and lawyers. Ramchandra Guha rightly opines “Nationalism allied with emotion can make people do strange and sometimes stupid things!”
After demonetisation despite all the media coverage, inner exposure of RBI loss of autonomy and professional’s analytical writing, besides warnings by Professor Amartya Sen and Manmohan Singh, we have not made it harder for the government to take high handed decisions. The budget has not compensated the millions of farmers, workers and many small scale industries closed down or lives completely ruined/disrupted. We have been rendered inadequate and disempowered to fight the onslaught on our freedom and human rights. The last bastion the Supreme Court is under attack. We can see new nationalistic fanatic tendencies responding to populism, disregarding reason and rationality. Dissent is discouraged and suppressed. This will eventually destroy our unity in diversity and our self sustaining constitutional democracy where evil will dominate over what is right! Martin Luther King gives us hope “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” Inscribed in our national emblem is “Satye Mayve jayathe”. Although we live in hope, we need to remember that God helps those who help themselves!
(The author is a retired naval officer and Freelance writer.)
