THE SPIRIT OF POLITICS

“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!” So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.”
MARK TWAIN


Oh! God, why am I so depressed? Like all other guys of my age why can’t I no longer drop my jaw and gasp a ‘wow!’ when a pretty girl walks by? Why can’t I think of a settled and contended future the way others around me expect me to? Still, why does every sweet fancy that once captivated my mind leave me with each new experience with this world? May be something is terribly wrong with me…………….or may be something has gone terribly wrong with this world. Of both I can’t decide which is. But pause you who read this, I expect you to.

I have been living in this country for nineteen years and I have been taught glorious stories of its feat. Those priceless ideas that nourished the concept of India had made a dewy impression in my childhood self that life was worth living. The necessary evil of growing up changed my tastes though. Everyday someone or the other was always bent on teaching me that real life does not look like childhood fancies, that life needs to be practical, that life is about achievement, success, and personal well-being. So I naturally grew up to be that stereotypic modern Indian middleclass youth. Yet, even when I partied and recklessly enjoyed with my friends and found it comfortable to believe that life was just fun and money, even at times when I pretended to stare at my mobile screen just to ignore a child begging on the street, I knew deep inside that I had my chance at will to go back. I had my chance because I lived in India, a nation where there was hope, a nation where every fantasy of the human mind had found utterance. Yes my dear friends, let’s face it. That we are the most wonderful race on earth.

The party ruled democratic India has many achievements to put forth. And beneath the rosy surface picture, under the golden demeanor of achievements lie the unspoken realms of doom. I don’t know how each of you may feel like but it pains me right away to have the knowledge that in every 30 minutes a woman is raped in my country, that 40% of my fellow Indians can’t afford one meal a day, that my nation tops among the most corrupt nations of the world , that............ Of course you know that I could go on for another hour completing the sentence and as both of us will find that unaffordable, let’s leave it there. So the question at hand is “Do we deserve this?”

Just to have a faint insight into the kind of political spirit that existed in this country, let’s turn the pages back to the days of independence struggle. Forsaking a few groups which pursued administrative interests above freedom, patriotism was a way of life to the multitude. Two words which do not presently have the faintest connection were synonymous back then -- politics and patriotism. The great sacrifices of the martyrs were not just what fate brought to them. They chose it for themselves and most importantly the chose it with joy and conviction. At some point along their path, they all realized that love for the nation was nothing but the love for the fellow beings, a way towards self realization. Deep inside their souls patriotism evolved into a kind of philosophy of life. What we lesser mortals call sacrifices were not literally sacrifices for them. The amount of swelling joy and vigour Bhagat Singh must have experienced during his execution is hard to attain through any amount of meditation, prayer or material pursuits.

The readers must bear the emotional imbalance as the narrative now shifts from the sentially appeasing picture of pre-independence India to the brand new modern Incredible India - an India where political power equations and clash of ideals run the show. But the human obsession towards living and working for something that is above them survives. And so, the love for the nation has been replaced in the common hearts with the love for something rather special, the party. Yeah that is the magical word in a democracy - the political party. In addition to Hindus, Muslims and Christians, we have the Congressmen, the Swayamsevaks, the Communists and so on, and yet hardly any Indians. They are not supposed to be ever supporting or accepting each other and that is because they have different........er.....I almost forgot the word......er...oh yes ‘ideologies’. They devote their chief energies to prove that the other is unfit to rule. “If pro is the opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?" - shouts a communist." If communism is the party of the poor, then who will be most vigilant in keeping them poor always?" - counters a faithful congress worker. Thus goes on the great Indian drama.

There is something rather intriguing about what we call organizations or establishments. They are showcased to be the cornerstones of human progress, yet the negative impact organizations have inflicted in a long term remains largely overlooked. As a species we have been successful in generating wonderful ideas and intellectual assets which were potentially capable of changing the whole course of human history. It is not long after such a ground-breaking idea emerges that it is fortified with an organization to give it a practical vent. It is needless to add that more valuable the idea, more powerful will be the organization. As time wears out the organization becomes the sole guardian of the idea and slowly the organizational structure amasses more powerful than the idea itself. As the organization comprises individuals it takes up the form of a larger, more powerful individual. With this crops up the greatest virtue of individuality - ego. Let us call it organizational ego. After one or two dedicated generations, the people at the top helms of the organization happen to be the ones who are bluntly focused on strengthening the organization. So over the years, the focus gradually shifts from the idea to USING the idea to strengthen the organization. Consequently, the idea starts to degenerate. And after many years of such manipulation to aid the healthy survival of the organisation, what remains is just a forged skeleton of the original. Eventually, the organization kills the original idea as it keeps on spreading the manipulated version. This has been true in the case of all established religions and scientific philosophies, and yeah, for our political parties too.

So each major political party in India has a soul of its own which its founders blew life into. And that soul is dedicated to the service of India. Universal welfare, the love for fellow beings was the central idea around which they were all built. The sole duty of a party worker was to defend, preserve and put this idea into action. The party must have no meaning to him beyond being a platform for this service and the external aura of the party must not be important to him compared to the idea it protects. Everyone who has a similar vision must be his comrade irrespective of his Party. But this core ideology is no more present in any political party in democratic India. The soul of every party has been distorted over the years to suit the means of pro-power political activity. Consequently, our collective perception of political ethics has been constantly deteriorating. That is why we don’t feel anything strange when the leader of a party publicly announces that their primary mission is to prevent the other from gaining power. That is why we find it ordinary to accept that even local party leaders are jobless and take to politics as a profession.

Should the common people have a party? Yes would be the answer of a politically literate Indian who has been fed the idea of fake politics over decades. No would be the answer of unprejudiced thought. Every party being composed of the so-called organizational ego characteristically does good things and so do they make lapses. What we need is a society which has the wisdom to realize that no organization can be perfect as such. We need a class of politicians who works purely for the nation and its people relishing the fundamental knowledge that politics is nothing but voluntary service and sacrifice. As a nation, we must build up a mass social morale that is flexible enough to support what is good without being blinded by the veil of loyalty to any party. The success of this will lie with discerning citizens who respect every party, who uphold politics as one of the purest form of human endeavor and who place pure nationalism at the helm of social activity.

So if you ask me who is responsible for the plight of the nation as it is today, I have a simple answer – us. The responsibility goes to every citizen who has forgot to respond, to every father who tells his son that politics is a field of foul-play and advices him to stay away, to every young enjoyer who has forgotten to open his eyes and look around, and to every man who is too busy with his life to peep out of his ignorantly blissful cocoon. If there is any reason for democracy still surviving in India then it is the legacy of the great minds that once roamed this land. It is the sense of peace, love and set of lofty ideals that they bequeathed to us that still sustains our democratic skeleton. To them politics was service. To them being in power was just a means for this service and not an end on itself. So let the future politics of India be built plainly on the foundation of love, dedication and patriotism. It is critical that we must create and sustain a political trend that focuses on nation building rather than Party building, a new political culture that concerns more with right or wrong than with Right or Left. Thus let us reinstate mother India to the rightful position that she must adore.

But do it all sound too illogical or too utopist to be put into practice? Believe me; nobody ever believed that the battle for freedom against a world power could be won through non-violence or self-penance before it was done here. In no other place did a half-dozen religions co-existed without engaging in any kind of religious intolerance for over 15 centuries. Yes, in the Asian mainland between the Himalayas and the deep ocean exists the place which has been always different from the rest of the world. It shelters the only race in the world that does not realize their own worth and yet have been the best in the run. Deep inside, each one of us knows what is to be done and what is right. But we dare not speak it out, not even to ourselves. There is a force that keeps yelling at us that it is insane, not practical. It is nothing but the social momentum that has evolved over decades of pseudo-national political activity. It makes us believe what we don’t want to and in turn make use of us to spread itself. Each one of us embodies a spirit that craves to be set free but is chained and bound by these meticulously operating social forces. It spurts forth when we watch a ‘rang-de-basanthi’ or ‘swadesh’ and dies down instantly as we blend ourselves back into our common routines. As you all must know, living in India is a great responsibility. Here we walk in the shadow of giants, we need to do justice to the legacy of the greatest nation in the world and we need to prove that we are a generation worthy enough to live hither.


As always, there are two paths ahead – the one that is easy and the one that is right. Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you.