Democracy in India

Gyanotsuk: What strikes me the most about comments about India is that everyone but Indians have very appreciative thoughts towards Indian democracy. The former are appreciative of Indian democracy because since it was able to survive so far even when two of the strongest communist nations were so close to India, even when India had close ties with Russia (and erstwhile USSR), even when India has so many ethnic groups and languages and even when neighboring countries in India are struggling to keep themselves democratic.

An American once said "To me India is a miracle - less than 20% of world population is Muslims and we have such a big problem at our hands while in India more than 25% of the population in is Muslims.

Another American social scientist had quoted "all over the world democracies grow best when surrounded by democracies while Indian neighbors have been non-democratic for years. Its a miracle."

Is it then just a problem of bird's eye view that these foreigners do not share the pessimism of the country's own people denouncing the government? Are these people taking a holistic view and not really concerned about problems existing at the grassroots level? Is this the nature of the humans to be not satisfied in the very environ they dwell? or this attitude increasingly Indian?

Guru: In one one of the essays of Albert Einstein I read his views on America and her people. He shared that Americans are the kind of people who value co-operation among individuals and better functioning of society more than meeting the individual ends. I, having lived in India, realize that people are more concerned about the opposite. Thus, an American will show more civic sense than an Indian. He would be more concerned about a dirty neighborhood and probably wouldn't want to add to the scum. Americans are more concerned about their troops dying in Iraq when it has been just 2-3 years since they are there. Many Americans have held demonstrations against troops being sent to Iraq, troops being increased in Iraq. India has been fighting a similar battle in Kashmir for 2 decades. Not even an eye bat for the people dying there. I think that Indians, thus, focus more on what they get from the democracy rather than what the society is getting from being democratic.

Gyanotsuk: What does an Indian expect from his government that it is not able to deliver? Does this need vary from one ethnic group from another? Do these needs overlap between various ethnic groups?

Guru: An Indian expects pretty much the same things from his government as any other citizen of the world would from their respective government. He expects prosperity, maintenance of law, order and justice, corruption free services and utilization of taxes, freedom in all aspects of the life and accomplishments to feel proud about the nation. These needs are common across the ethnic groups. The real problem of Indian democracy lies in more number of people chasing smaller services potential and number of goods. Under these circumstances the economics doesn't favor equal treatment to all giving rise to corruption. Politicians take advantage of this fact and make these services and goods available to their own vote banks. This gives rise to despair, conflicts and finally to dissatisfaction of some of such groups.

Gyaotsuk: What are the needs of society from the democracy?

Guru: Democracy is a way of society. An individual or his wishes do not matter in this system. It is the collective needs which are addressed in this system. Every society looks for its development - scientific, economic and cultural. For this development it is required for a society to live in a harmonious and peaceful environment. For development of people belonging to all financial background it needs a system of social and economic justice. For the scientific. financial and cultural development it needs freedom in all the spheres of life. Democracy seeks to meet these expectations of the society.

Gyanotsuk: By delineating these needs of the society and the individual, you have hinted that what is visible to an observer is what society goes through in democracy. In the broader perspective what happens as a whole in the country is what matters. The general well being of the society in India is far better than the fate of the other countries. But what an individual experiences is not this holistic experience but very personal one. The experience of Indian individual is not commendable and praise worthy. Is the Indian individual then wrong in complaining about the government?

Guru: Except economic matters of the country, individual is wrong in every aspect to complain about anything in democracy because it is of his own making what he is going through. His bad experiences are the sum total of the habits of the fellow countrymen and his choice of not doing anything about it. If law and order of the country is not maintained it is because people have found a way to commit the crime and get away with it. If freedom of any kind is compromised this is because an individual doesn't stand up to his rights. If corruption mars the government processes this is because people have not voted for the person who is against it.

Guru: Democracy can only function efficiently if people are aware of the well being of the society. By society here I do not mean the whole country. By society I mean the very people we associate with - our neighbors, our city. If we are proud to be associated with the place. are aware and proud of the accomplishments of our cities, villages etc, we will work towards its development, treat injustice against it as a personal insult. In US, the society have established such a structure in sports. People are so passionate about their local sports team that school and college level sports is very popular in the country. They treat their local school team as their own and associate with their ups and downs. India as we know, there is no promise of support from the people even when nation is represented at the international level. There is absolutely nothing which binds an Indian individual to the society he lives in.
It is amply clear that social structures of Indian democracy is very strong and commended by one and all. The individual part of the democracy, unfortunately, is not so passionate about it. This individual part is not so noticeable for international observers and the holistic part is not so apparent to the national observers. Here lies the root cause of the difference in the two views.

me, myself and god - I

Right from the time I could call myself conscious, I never really felt a strong connection to the god in temples or in images or in prayers. My mom never failed to make me sit for pujas; she always took me to temple but I could never understand why I felt no devotion to god in the way she did. She says that this devotion to god has been her strength through all the bad times and she fervently believes that god can take care of things beyond the control of humans. She is also ready to believe in an instant of a heavenly intervention as plausible explanations to problems. I think I can say the same about a large number of people.

I, on the other hand, had not found my god in images of Hinduism; that doesn't mean that I am agnostic, but I refuse to believe something which is marred with contradictions, which is beyond the realm of logic. If noone has seen god, how can they make images of the god? I recently read an excerpt from Kuran which says that god cannot be compared to anything in the world. Even in other religion god has been called incomparable including Hinduism. It doesn't make sense either because by comparing the gods to images we limit the gods to what the images may seem able to do. They can be only be as beautiful as human imagination, only as powerful as human make them. If they have only 4 hands they can do only as much as 4 hands can do. if they can travel at the speed of thought, then thats limiting for them as well. No one would like to know that the one they pray to is limited in any fashion possible. On the other hand it would not be fair to god's self that he be called limited after making the whole universe, billions of species, controlling everyone's life... helping everyone in its own special way, I think it would be offensive to limit god's power in any way.

Having established that its not fair towards god to be limited in any form mere mortals may fathom, can we bind the time or state to pray to god? The problem with the world is that we consider our gods like we are. We subject him to treatment which would please us as human race. We think that god is also bound by the emotions we are bound by like greed, rage, vying for attention, love etc. How otherwise we would explain our action of not talking to god will have any effect on his decision for us. How can we think it logical that he will be so enraged sometimes that he will punish all the people in an area by floods and earthquake when its a fact that all those who are effected are the not evil. How can we think that since we need money for our satisfaction, he too will want the same? It is like we have created our god in our own image. Isn't that blasphemy at its worst. Lets for example say, if dogs start worshiping humans someday, and they bring rags and half eaten food from all over the dust bins and offer it to you, would you be happy about it? How then we know that at particular time of the year gods are more favorable and they listen to people who are clean? Ain't these our prejudices we want to project gods as?

Having denied the established thoughts about gods, what is that which I call my god? God is a hope. Hope that things will be better. Hope that we are not lost, hope that we are being watched. Like all hopes its pure, without malice.Like all hopes we are ready to give our lives for it to come true. Imagine your mother dying and your hope that she will be fine. Imagine again someone trying to steal away that hope from you. Imagine the pain, the anger.

But does hope bring about a change? Is hope enough for the change? People who have about change in the societies have not left it on a hope to change things. They have gone beyond that. Perhaps they realized that god is nothing but a hope. Didn't moses went out for a quest to find god? did he hope that gods will someday give the commandments himself? Did Krishna left it to a hope that pandavas will defeat kauravas? Did Jesus left it to people to be enlightened? Did Mahatma Gandhi and other freedom fighters only hoped that the British government will free India? Imagine if they had not done what they did. We wouldn't have known them like we do. They would have been one of the common stock.

God is like a cushion to rest against when you have lost the energy. Cushions can help you rest, but it takes hard work to do anything more.