From Democracy to 'Modocracy': The Greatest Show of People's Will on Earth
By Dr Aslam Abdullah
Las Vegas, NV
The biggest show of democracy in the world is taking place in India. 814.5 million voters will elect 543 members of India’s lower house, Lok Sabha, on May 16 through a process of election in five phases.
On the one hand is the Indian National Congress and its allies and on the other is the Bhartiya Janata Party and its allies. There are other groups in the fray, yet the main contest is between these major parties. The Congress and its allies claim to represent the people espousing secular and pluralistic values while the BJP represents people believing in the ideology of Hindutva, meaning that India is primarily a Hindu nation and its Hindu identity must never be negated.
The Congress is pitching Rahul Gandhi, the great grandson of India’s first prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, while the BJP has fielded Narendar Modi, a 63-year-old man who until fairly recently maintained that he is the same Modi who was accused of presiding over the genocide of Muslims in 2003 in the State of Gujarat where he had been ruling as Chief Minister for over 12 years.
The issue is simple. What kind of India will emerge after May 16: an India run by secularists or an India run by the champions of Hindutva. It is this issue that overrides all other issues including the development and employment in the coming years. The BJP is trying to create a secular image for itself by declaring that it believes in one nation, and in one people. But the one nation and one people theory in the BJP does not refer to Indians, rather to Hindus and Hindus of upper castes or those who in religious terms are described as twice-born. Indian politics is primarily dominated by these so-called twice-
born leaders during the last 66 years under different names and pretexts and this election cycle is not any different in substance. It is based on deception with a few exceptions here and there.
Deception is the act of making someone believe something that is not true. The latest statement of Modi, BJP candidate for the Indian Prime-ministerial position, describing Muslims as brothers is a cacophony in deception. The glibness in this fakery is well evident. Once he called the same "brothers" puppies and once he wanted to teach them a lesson, but now they are his brothers because he wants to create an image of a compassionate leader ready to govern the world's largest democracy. It is nothing but a sham and an exercise in deceit. Even though politics itself is a deceptive art, but one has to coin a new term to describe what Modi has been saying and doing. We can call it Modocracy, a process to take control of government through a web of lies and deceptions.
The real agenda of BJP is dictated by the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) an organization created on the pattern of the Nazi party. Its agenda is to create a Hindu Rashtra (nation) run by the teachings of its religious scriptures. This Rashtra must reflect the Hindu social structure where people are accorded a stagnant position by birth, where purity and profanity is dependent on one's birth to his or her caste and where certain castes are most favored by the society and the creator because they were born in a state of purity. RSS believes in an India that has little room for non-Hindus. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, even Jains and Jews must succumb to Hindu social structure and laws and accept the superiority of the upper castes because they are malich or untouchables. The emergence of Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, the three indigenous religions of India, clearly speak of the religious protests against upper caste-lead Hinduism in the past.
RSS and BJP have already succeeded in infiltrating India’s schools, military, bureaucracy, and law enforcement agencies as well as the media and judiciary. They are promoting their ideals in these vital institutions creating hatred. RSS and BJP leaders are threatening people who are opposed to their style of leadership of dire consequences and they are inciting Hindus to ostracize Muslims in their colonies. They are reminding Hindus to get ready to take revenge from Muslims for the wrongs their forefathers committed against Hindus.
RSS believes that violence can be used to reconvert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism and future conversion to Islam and Christianity can be stopped through legal means. RSS believes that once in power, it can change the constitution to serve its political agenda. So in a Modi-led government, discrimination and injustices would be given a constitutional framework, the same strategy followed by Hitler's Germany when the holocaust was approved by the will of the people within a legal framework.
The Congress Party and its allies are burdened with the accusations of corruption, hence they are unable to match the rhetoric of the BJP. Regional parties might pose challenge to the BJP and a new player may cause tremor in Indian politics. The new player is Aam Admi (common people) Party (AAP). It is running on close to 400 Lok Sabha seats. No one knows how it would fare. Its fate is, as its name suggests, in the hands of the common voters. If the common voters are convinced with the integrity and style of the AAP, they may provide the biggest shock in Indian politics. It is possible that AAP might but nothing can be predicted about it because of the role of money and propaganda as well as caste and religion in Indian politics. Can an average nonaligned voter take a decision based on the strength of his convictions for a clean political system? This election might provide a clue to it.
Muslims in India are bewildered with the political drama unfolding in front of their eyes. Divided into political camps, castes, classes and clans and on sectarian and religious lines, they are looking at everyone to save them from Modi or RSS. Some have opted to join the RSS and BJP and the Modi bandwagon believing that if they cannot beat them, they can join them. Those who have joined BJP are fully aware of the RSS agenda and Modi murders, yet political expediency seems to be more relevant to them than the bitter truth.
The politics of deception that is being played in independent India is manifesting itself fully in this election. Politicians in general do not tell the truth but speak lies and that too loudly. Non-Indian groups have been inducted into this election campaign. Image makers, policy creators, message broadcasters from the US, Japan, Britain, Israel and other places are hired by political parties to deceive voters so that victory could be achieved. Mega corporations see a big opportunity in these elections to use their money to win as many mercenaries through ballots as they can. Indian democracy is in one heck of a mess.
Democracy is transforming itself into Modocracy with little regard to pluralistic values and human dignity that it was initially introduced for.
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