From Illusion to disillusionment
The BJP’s extraordinary win is creating news all over the world. This win has been given special consideration because BJP is the only non-Congress party ever to win a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. Many attribute this success to BJP’s brilliant and well-financed campaign in India delivering a message of hope and pitching it loud and clear to the Indian youth, who is nationalistic, but frustrated with corruption, inequality and poverty, and who wants a chance to win their dream life style.
Some of the factors behind the victory, such as design of the political campaign, are of relatively little long-term political significance, but few others are meaningful to set future trends in Indian politics, i.e. the political agenda of the government and the implementation of the agenda. This includes promotion of capitalism at the risk of ecology and sustainability. At this stage of development Indians want progress at any cost, and they see it feasible in the fearless and fearsome leader Narendra Modi, fearless in his ambition for growth, and fearsome because of his explicit aggressiveness to smaller neighborhoods especially as recorded against Pakistan and Bangladesh. According to Times of India,
PM Modi, in a recent speech, has strongly disagreed with Ram Vilas Paswan’s proposition that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who have been a source of friction in Assam, be granted Indian citizenship and given a vote in Indian elections, and added ‘Assam is bordered by Bangladesh, Gujarat by Pakistan – difference is, Assam is disturbed by Bangladesh, Pakistan by Gujarat’.
Modi’s non-socialist trends and capitalist favoring mindset will explore limitlessly all resources, natural and human. Sound strategic thinking and the unapologetic use of force could replace limitless restraint, idealistic rhetoric, and the Cold War hangover of Nehruvian nonalignment. Similar is the present government of PML(N) in Pakistan, which is seeking the remedy in structural growth of all ills in Pakistan. Such governments will help the Western economies to thrive, whose internal markets have almost been saturated. What cost India will pay in the long run for opting for such a bottom line approach will become obvious in next 25-50 years. It is for sure that the time for the rightist and elitist sustained politics is endangered; so is the moral based principled leadership in the region.
The scarcity of something creates its demand; so can we say that demand for ethical leadership is rising and moral leadership may create its niche in the future political market…? Witness the popularity of Imran Khan; he holds the sacred trust of people because of his honesty, straight-forwardness and truthfulness, the traits even his severest opponents cannot deny in him. On the other hand, in spite of the hard core efforts of world democracies, the states have been unable to get turnaround leadership at the top. Unfortunately, the world’s largest democracies are run by mediocre persons, Modi & Obama.
Obama is mediocre because of his social background and ethnicity and also because he is unable to take any intelligent action to solve economic and political problems of USA. Poverty is increasing; apathy is increasing with increasing inequality in social and economic dispositions in the society. There is no job security, no long-term benefits of sustained jobs; careers are dying like shooting stars. There are too many debts, personal and national, and there is no real time development as obvious in the yellow race. Day by day the gap of economic prosperity is shrinking between the yellow and the white race regarding growth and development, if we benchmark, China Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. Moreover, the US government has failed to provide any constructive solution for the Middle East crisis. We see no end of the War on Terror. What we feel is that the monster is stepping back in the silent retreat after creating havoc in the world.
Modi’s aggressiveness and his narcissistic lopsided world view makes him mediocre, his common earthly background may not help him to reach divinity. He declares that he is not a demagogue, but he may prove himself to be a demon for everyone who opposes him. No doubt he has reached the height of career after a hard struggle, but what profit he would like to secure from the world around for his celibate subjugation to his rightist politics, soon it will be unfolding itself to the whole world. He has not shown the habit of sacrifice like Gandhi; instead he can sacrifice others at the altar of his political career – the Gujrat massacre and other relevant incidents provide enough evidence.
Winning of BJP is not simply the rise of a common man; it is the tilting of the sun of India, shifting from the long held ideals of social democracy to embrace the capitalist democracy. Although the end-word (democracy) is the same in both, the means and the ends and the goals are not the same. We cannot reap mangoes if we are sowing guavas. The capitalism has masked its ugly face under the cover of a middle class man. The middle class man is not here to serve the poor and the common, but to leave them behind in his solo flight. India has retrieved to low road instead of taking a high one.
Unfortunately, the public is always simple minded and short sighted; therefore, first of all, they get illusioned by demagogues and then disillusioned by civil dictatorships. It is bound to happen because people see dictatorship in uniform, not in attitude; we seek morals in words not actions. We do not see right because we do not see with both eyes. Distorted vision creates its own demons and demagogues. In the end it is all maya and all zahir; sooner Indians will be calling Lord Krishna with his divine chakarview to help them see the truth.
The caricatures of democracy will make people oblivious of its true form and nature. People will loathe democracy as much as they loathe feudalism and dictatorship now. I do not see democracy prospering or its bright future in any corner of the world; the nations assuming power today, who will rule in future, are not bred and fed on democracy. I wonder how they would like to quote and pronounce the future taboo – demoncracy …?
Seema Arif
Associate Professor
School of Social Sciences & Humanities
University of Management & Technology
Lahore. Pakistan.
