The Republic Of Hurt Sentiments

Nobody should have any doubts that most of them live by the values of secular democracy and the civilsociety those values aim at creating and sustaining for the common good.

But in an election year all thinking citizens of India must reflect whether they elect a government on thebasis of sentiments and feelings alone and encourage sentiments to be freely expressed without regard to ourcommon ideal of a civil society--the only such society in the world with such ethnic diversity and such aunique plurality.

For the election campaigns we have witnessed since the early 1950s have been increasingly ‘sentimental’with the current ‘feel good’ campaign of the BJP as a ‘shining’ example of nation-widesentiment-generation.

But between these five-year events of sentimental significance, all our political parties work hard, if notofficially under their party banner then at least through their ‘parivar’s and ‘samghatana's, ‘sena’sand ‘brigades’ that assiduously work towards keeping our ‘sentiments’ alive.

Must we not laud these cadres and storm-troopers for their sentimental zeal? Don’t we owe atribute--before we cast our votes--to the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Akhil BharatiyaVidyarthi Parishad, the Shiv Sena, the Maratha Seva Sangh, the Sambhaji Brigade, SIMI, the Tanzeem and theTabligue, the Raza Academy and countless others in their different hues and colours across the space of ourRepublic? Thanks to them in particular that we have become what we are: not just populous, but populist aswell.

The doctrine of populism is based on a belief in the rights, wisdom, and virtues of the common people. Itis a word derived from the Latin ‘populus’ that means ‘the people’.

That’s who we all are--the People--though most of us are more ‘people’ than ‘others’. I oftenwonder why our founding fathers, all members of the Constituent Assembly, used the singular when theydescribed us as ‘We the People of India’ rather than the plural alternative "We the Peoples ofIndia".

I hope I am not accused of quibbling, carping, or pettifogging. After all, we’ve got to get the grammarof our Republic right. Using the noun ‘people’ in the plural gives us an altogether different picture thanits singular conjures up. But then in 1949 we were a nation in a hurry. In 2004 we have become a nation inworry.

The elections cannot hide the worries of the electorate and the political parties appealing to their ‘sentiments’.And what really are these ‘sentiments’ about? Feeling good about what? Feeling bad about what? Feelingindifferent to what?

I am just one of one billion citizens of this Republic today. I am a writer and speak only as anindividual; and I am aware that writers, artists, intellectuals, scientists, journalists et al are amicroscopic minority of the kind that a Minorities Commission would not recognize. Even to be recognized as a‘minority’ in our country, one has to belong to a ‘religion’ or a ‘scheduled caste or tribe’ or a‘backward caste’ or an ‘other backward caste’. We have embraced a philosophy that believes in dividingminorities along these lines so that an aggregate majority would rule; and that is our simplified notion ofthe kind of electoral democracy we are.

So our elections become a percentage game, a religious roulette, or perhaps a mega-matka of somesort. This is the dyoota our political Yudhishthirs will play again and again and bet theirwife--the Draupadi that our Constitution is on their next throw of dice.

But, to take the metaphor to its conclusion, what Krishna do we have to help our Draupadi from beingtotally stripped by so-many willing Dushshanas? Who will play Krishna in this mega-starrer SabhaParva? The Supreme Court? The Election Commission? The President of the Republic? We all know whathappened in The Mahabharata; and we have no better hopes nor worse fears about what is likely to happenin India that is Bharat.

Dilip Chitre, a Sahitya Akademi awardee is a poet, writer, translator of Bhakti poetry, painter andfilmmaker. He lives in Pune.