That we practice an incorrect comprehension of democracy in India is underlined by our politicians and the bureaucracy time and again. Almost a year since the 26/11 incident, Ajmal Kasab is still alive and our democratic system upholds his rights as a prisoner and treats him as any other. Nobody even thinks that he is no ordinary criminal but a terrorist who waged a war against innocent and helpless citizens of India and mowed them down mercilessly. We should have ensured that a fast-track court takes up his case, convict him for his crime and hangs him to death. But because we are democratic – or we think we are – we treat him as an equal, consider the option of offering him a lawyer from Pakistan to defend him and feel sympathetic for him because he now has to adapt to the Indian way for diet. Democracy, indeed.
But this is nothing compared to what our elected representatives did in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly today. One political party proclaims that they are fighting for the dignity and pride of Marathi ‘bhasha’ and Marathi ‘manoos’. The leaders of this party do not care what the Indian constitution has to say on this, because they believe in their own commandment – those who do not agree with them should be beaten up and public property should be destroyed to demonstrate and highlight any attack on the dignity of Marathi. And so, their mercurial leader insists that all newly elected representatives should take their oath of office in Marathi. Another political party, poles apart in ideology, and its obnoxious leader refuses the decree and insists on taking his oath in Hindi. As he tries to do so, the Marathi clique, forgetting where they are and what they have been elected to do, start beating him up in plain view of the honorable speaker of the assembly and other elected representatives.
The heartbreak is less about what happened, but more of the fact that we fail to read the nefarious designs of such contemptible and selfish politicians and we elect them to represent us. Any wise person would know that there is hardly anything ‘Marathi’ about this political party; and anything nationalistic about the other. Yet, everyone involved in the episode has been sent to the legislature through a popular franchise. Their conduct challenges the foundations of democracy – that as elected representatives, they should be providing the voice for people’s issues on the platform they have been sent to. They end up doing everything else but that. How many people, who voted for these scoundrels, would have wished their representatives to do this? And yet, this is not the first time this has happened in India; and clearly not the last time. We are a democratic nation; and we must respect all views and all rogue elements in the society should be treated with due dignity. Maybe the world would challenge our democratic ideology if we admonish them? Or maybe we are either not mature as a democracy, or appreciate it to be something else than what it really is?
Both these events would ensure that the month of November is remembered for all the wrong reasons, at least in the state of Maharashtra. This month also brings with it the anniversary of India’s first Prime Minister, who was instrumental in choosing a democratic governance for this land. And we have ensured that we have practiced it such that the forefathers of this nation, if were alive, would have given it a serious thought and saved us all from this mockery that we call democracy.
The sound of thought 