Articles
How Long Will India’s Democracy Endure
Dt:18/11/24
How Long Will India’s Democracy Endure
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
1. Celebratory Facts:
Let us recall some celebratory superlative facts about Bharat that was India.
· Ours is the most populous country
· The largest democracy with adult franchise including women even to start with in the first general elections to the Lok Sabha
· We made the largest number (103) of amendments to our Constitution ( USA amended its Constitution 27 times since it was ratified in 1787; the last amendment was on 2nd November 1949)
· We have the largest number of voters at about 900 million
· We graduate 1.5 mln engineers the largest number in the world every year
· We have the largest number of unemployed post-matriculates
· We feed the largest number ( over 800 mln) of people receiving ten free rationed items of food grains
· We have the largest number of political parties – 6 national, 58 state and 2763 unrecognized ones.
· We are the 5th largest economy in world with an annual GDP of $ 3.7 trln. Our Per Capita GDP is about one fifth that of China and about 124th of the USA.
· All these superlatives affect the quality of our democracy.
1.2 Only once between June 1975 and March 1977 was the Constitution assaulted by the lady Prime Minister Indira (Priyadarshini Nehru) Gandhi. Her captive party encouraged and assisted by one Communist party, declared national emergency ; the CPI prolonged the term of the Lok Sabha , did away with some fundamental rights in the Constitution locked up most of the opposition leaders and made her election unchallengeable in any court of law including the Supreme Court of India. But since the end of such “emergency rule” , there are free and fair elections at constitutionally mandated to the intervals Union Parliament and all State Legislative Assemblies.
2. Threats to our Democracy and Integrity:
2.1 The five South Indian States ( AP, Karnataka, Kerala , Tamilnadu and Telangana) together have 16.3% of the area of Bharat and 23% of the population with a density of 492 per sq. kmts compared to the rest of India’s 356 per sq.kmts with 129 MPs in the Lok Sabha out of 543 ; the South MPs are 23.8% .
Five Southern States - AP, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamilnadu and Telangana
|
Area |
Population |
MPs in Lok Sabha |
Population Density |
|
|
16.3% |
23% |
23.8% |
South |
Rest of India |
|
|
|
|
492 |
356 |
Decadal Population Growth (2001-2011)
|
AP ( undivided) |
Karnataka |
Kerala* |
Tamil Nadu |
|
11.1% |
15.67% |
4.86% |
15.6% |
|
* Far below north and whole of India |
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2.2 The South’s population growth is significantly less that of the rest of India, especially compared to the north India states. There is an apprehension that census 2025 will show further increase in disparity in the populations of north India ( especially Hindi speaking belt and South India and therefore the number of seats in Lok Sabha for the southern states especially Kerala, will go down as percentage of the total Lok Sabha states. The share of the South Indian states in the distributable taxes will further go down if the 2025 census is taken as the basis. Instead of rewarding the states which are controlling their population growth they are getting penalized. The resentment in south will go up and the demand for “federalism” will increase. The Chief Ministers of AP & Tamilnadu are, in disgust calling upon their people to have more children. That will be a disaster both for the South and even for the whole of India . Therefore a new proportion for the distributable revenues collected by the Union government will have to be found so that the states that control their population growth will get more and those are simply increasing their population will get less. The population density in Bihar is 1,195 per sq. kmt, the highest in India and therefore it is the poorest state with less than Rs. 65,000 per capita income; whereas the all India average is about Rs. 1,75,000 and that of Telangana is over Rs. 300,000 the highest in India.
2.3 Bharat as the 5th Largest Economy – Facts and Fiction:
Our Prime Minister often talks of Vikasit Bharat ( developed India) says that ours is the fifth largest economy in the world and would soon become the third largest after the USA and China. Look at the fact sin the table below.
|
Country |
USA |
China |
Germany |
Japan |
India |
|
GDP ($ Trln) |
27 |
17.7 |
4.4 |
4.2 |
3.7 |
|
Pop (mln) |
333 |
1,444 |
81 |
127 |
1,341 |
|
Per Capita GDP ($) |
81,818 |
12,258 |
54,321 |
33,071 |
2,643 |
The economy is large but per capita at $ 2,643 ( about Rs. 2,16,000) it is a little less than one fifth of China, our unfriendly neighbour. Can this be comforting to a Vikasit status aspiring Bharat ?
3. Freebies – Competitive : Guarantees Instead of Promises :
3.1 Political parties, especially the regional ones are making reckless promises of welfare payout. There are elections almost round the year in some state or the other. The national parties BJP and the Congress are competing with the regional parties. To beat one another more and more freebies are being promised. Now they have become so many and so much that instead of promises unfilled in the past they are giving guarantees ! The all -India parties are being forced to join this race of giving freebies. In AP one regional party, YSRCP during the period 2019-24 was transferring Rs. 48,000 per year for 80% of the families in the state ! It was borrowing money and distributing it. It increased the state- owned corporations to over 50. The state was taking loans in the name of those companies and distributing the borrowed money towards bank guarantee ! The state pledged the next twenty years revenue it may get from excise duty on wine ! The regional parties are agitating for more funds from the Union Government for every “give-away social welfare” scheme. They assert their Right to Spend and the Union Government’s Duty to Fund. One party candidate in Maharashtra has promised to find and fund a spouse for marriage of the unmarried in need ! State-owned corporations for marriages, Surrogacy and Fertility ( all free) are being contemplated to dispense further social welfare from womb to tomb/ grave.
3.2 Since there are elections at different intervals in some state or the other almost every year, parties are competing to give more and more freebies, many of them out of borrowed money. The philosophy is” “our (states) right to spend : your ( Union government) duty to fund”. This is getting accentuated by the phrase double engine growth. For eg: BJP -led government at the center and the BJP government in the state will ensure double engine growth ! Naturally the regional parties are against “one nation one election”. The rational for one nation one election ( from Zilla Parishad State legislature and the Lok Sabha ) is to avoid the ever growing election expenses to the government as well as to the political parties. Round the year election in some state or other is making political parties to promise, rather guarantee more freebies in the state having the elections next.
4. Buying Votes with Government Money:
4.1 Now the freebies in some states are given in the personal name of the Chief Minister . This system started in AP ruled by the Telugu Desam Party led by Sri Chandra Babu Naidu during 2014-19. Some of the freebies were called Chandranna Kanukalu, ( gifts) and Chandranna Pasupu Kumkamulu (auspicious gifts for ladies in the self- help groups). The succeeding government by the YSRCP Chief Minister named every gift scheme either after himself or his father. There were about 40 such schemes. This is rank corruption -misuse of state money for self-aggrandizement and electoral victory.
4.2 The state’s money is gifted in another way. For eg: in AP there are 59 state- owned corporations. When there are government departments with Secretaries , Special Secretaries, Joint Secretaries and Additional Secretaries etc., for all the matters dealt with by the state-owned corporations, what is the necessity for these corporations ? The Chairmen of these corporations are nominated by the Chief Minister . None of them has qualification to run any business or industry. They are simply ruling party MLAs who could not be made ministers or financiers or vote-supplies for the ruling party who cannot be rewarded as either MLAs or ministers. Through the freebies being distributed and rewarding some party people by appointing / nominating them as Chairmen, the State’s funds are squandered to promote ruling party interests. These nominated chairmen are provided with gun-men for protection and impressive offices, secretaries, PAs, PSs, liveried peons, costly cars, and such paraphernalia, besides huge salaries .
5. Caste-based Power and Welfare: The Indo-Italian -led Congress ( of Mother-Son-Daughter) promises “ jitne aabadee- utanee power” and so demands caste census, so it can distribute power, welfare, employment etc., among castes in proportion to their numbers. The last census-enumerating caste was in 1931. The Indian National Congress under the leadership of the true Gandhi, the Mahatma agitated and succeeded in forcing the imperial British government of India to stop caste enumeration in the census 1941 and so in no subsequent census of free India there caste enumeration. But now we have a different Congress which swears by caste-based distribution of power , and welfare in the name of just democracy, where caste and not the individual who merits power and welfare. Dr Ambedkar’s life-long struggle for the annihilation of caste to bring about fraternity among people has been in vain and caste gets an invigorated and decisive new relevance in the sharing of power and prosperity !
6. Election Expenses:
6.2 Hundreds of crores of rupees are transported in different ways for distribution among voters are getting seized by the police. Such amounts are increasing year after year. Elections at different times for the state assembly and Lok Sabha are involving more and more money being acquired by illegal means and stashed in cash for distribution among voters. This note for vote culture is becoming more and more costly and notorious. The amount of money that the voter is expecting and being met with by the rival candidates is increasing. Democracy thus is increasingly becoming hostage to cash distribution . The cash is getting accumulated by avoiding taxes.
6.3 Democracy is getting vitiated by injection of cash and material gifts to voters and the need to generate black money for buying the votes. One nation, one election expected among other benefits, less cost to government and candidates needs many amendments to the Constitution. Whether those amendments can be successfully made or not is in doubt.
7. Threat to Integrity of the Nation and State:
7.1 While these are general afflictions to democracy in India, the integrity of the country itself is under peril. Muslims by the very theology of Islam cannot be part of a non-Muslim nation. They are part of transnational millat . That Muslims are a different nation by dint of their religion was successfully agitated leading to the partition of India and the creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan which in 1971 broke into two on the basis of difference in languages in the two parts of Pakistan. Muslim countries may divide into different states but Muslims in a non-Muslim state want disintegration of the combined state for creation of an exclusively Muslim state as happened in India in 1947. When the Ottoman Turkish empire was dismantled at the end of the First World War (1914-‘19), there was an exchange of Muslim & Christian populations under the auspices of the League of Nations between Turkey, the Muslim state and Bulgaria and Greece which are mainly Christian .
7.2 In India, for a few years before partition of the country the Muslim League stridently demanded exchange of minority populations ; that is, all Muslims from Hindustan (that is, India) to go to Pakistan to be created and the non-Muslims like Hindus and Sikhs and Buddhists from Pakistan to be sent to Hindustan. Since Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress said they accept partition but they don’t accept the two- nation theory. As a corollary exchange of population; Muslims can stay in India even if Hindus and Sikhs are expelled from Pakistan. The Muslim League did not press for exchange of minority population. Therefore most Muslims in what is now India who agitated for division and creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan did not go to Pakistan. A few of them from west UP and some parts of Bihar only went to Pakistan. Nearly the 17% Hindu -Sikh population of west Pakistan was reduced to less than 2% . In retaliation some Muslims in east Punjab and Haryana were forced out (not by government) by militant majorities. In east Pakistan which now is Bangladesh the expulsion of Hindus has been at intervals. Thus the once 33% Hindu Buddhist minorities have by now squeezed out to about 6% and still going down. The 32 year long communist government and the Trinamool government that followed in West Bengal allowed illegal infiltration of millions of Muslims from east Pakistan .
7.3 The result is 17% Muslim population of West Bengal soon after partition has, become 35% and is increasing. Infiltration has spread upto Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and even Orissa. The Bangla Muslims and Bangla speaking Rohingya Muslims are settling among their co-religionist Indian families, marrying into them and somehow registering as Indians for ration cards and voter list. The Rohingyas, Bengali speaking Muslims, expelled from Myanmar are getting settled in even far off Kerala and in J&K; but not in the Muslim majority Kashmir valley but in Hindu majority Jammu city and environs. This is with the deliberate intent of changing the demography of Jammu where they are settling.
7.4 Another menace to Indian democracy is the persisting divisiveness and its encouragement by vote-seeking non-BJP parties - the Indo- Italian family- led Congress and the regional parties. That the Indo-Italian family -led Congress has been specially promoting Muslims interests in order to get their votes is evident from the following Congress -led UPA government appointed Sachar Committee. It identified over 80 districts spread all over India as having considerable Muslim population. It is in pursuit of special Muslim First programs, that the purportedly “secular” UPA government created the National Waqf Development Corporation with a capital of Rs .375 cr then raised to Rs. 875 cr for the development of waqfs . The income of this corporation is solely and fully for the promotion and welfare of only Muslims with government money . The Congress also created the National Minority Commission at Union Level. In states where Hindus are a minority as in J&K, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland (and very soon Kerala) there are no minority commissions. Thus, the interests of Muslims are being promoted specially by the non-BJP parties, mainly Congress and the regional parties. India is progressively ceasing to be a secular state. It is becoming an “ansar*” state. ( *Ansars were those Madina people who helped Prophet Mohammad’s conquests and converted to Islam)
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Moslems may expect no more tolerance than what they show to others
- Nobel Laureate Sir Vidyadhar S. Naipaul
7.5 That Muslim majority areas all over India are required and for what purposes had been clearly spelt out by the Hyderabad origin Muslim intellectual, Dr. Omar Khalidi ( a post graduate of Harvard University and Ph.D from University of Wales) in the Jamat-e-Islami ‘s weekly, “Radiance” : “ we need Muslim districts for three reasons. First , concentrated areas provide security; second, to provide an environment that is conducive to our cultural independence; third, to provide a political base through which our people can be elected ……at present…our numbers don’t’ add up to elect adequate legislators. Hyderabad & Rangareddy in Andhra and Gulbarga (Karnataka) and certain Talukas could be merged to create Deccan province ( with Muslim majority) similarly in Bihar, Bengal & UP.. where Muslims can be in majority…”.
7.6 Further one Prof. Samar Abbas, another Muslim intellectual wrote in the leftist Economic Political Weekly of December 2000 that India should be divided further to provide a Muslim state, Mughalistan comprising of the Western districts of Assam northern districts of West Bengal, Bihar and UP and Punjab to form a continuous belt adjoining Pakistan on the West and Bangladesh on the East. This reminds us of Md Ali Jinnah wanting a corridor across Northern India to link up West and East Pakistan (Bangladesh). It is possible that in their bid to get Muslim block votes, regional parties as well as the Indo-Italian family-led Congress and congenitally anti-Hindu communist parties may if and when and instates elected create the 80 (Muslim First claim on development (not SCs or STs or MBCs) districts identified by Sachar Committee into Muslim majority districts like Malappuram in Kerala ( a CPI/CPM creation), Mewat out of Gurgaon in Haryana and Malerkotla in Punjab (both created by Congress).
7.7 The prospect is that these Muslim-majority districts specially carved and developed by government funds ( including those from the National Waqf Development Corporation) will first form a society, then an Association and then a Federation of them ; finally constitute themselves into an independent Islamisthan as an enclave in India much like Lesotho in South Africa. The Nawab of Bhopal as Chairman of the Chamber of (Indian) Princes ( Rajas, Maharajas & Nawabs) tried to beguile and lead India’s Princes / Nawabs to constitute themselves into a third state, Pricesthan besides Pakistan and Hindustan / India, when Britain renounces its paramountcy over princes and gives independence to India. This move was thwarted by Mountbatten, the Vice-Roy at Sardar Patel’s commanding advice in June 1947. It was to thwart the Nizam of Hyderabad from becoming an independent sovereign king of Hyderabad state that Sardar Patel, much against the opposition of Nehru, sent the Indian army in September 1948 into Hyderabad and liberated and integrated it with the rest of Bharat. Will enfeebled, democratic India disintegrate like post – Aurangzeb - ruled India ? This fear was expressed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar ( Annex#2) in his speech on 26 Nov 1949 in the concluding session of the Constituent Assembly. Dr Rajendra Prasad (Annex#3) expressed the fear that the Constitution cannot save India if politicians don’t have character.
7.8 Muslim voters are demanding Haj Houses, enhancement of Haj subsidies, funding madrasas,, paying salaries to Imams and muezzins, funding the National Waqf Development Corporation national state minority commission even while we have the National Human (including Muslims) Rights Commission.
8. Secularism Abused: The secularism the noble idea that is inscribed into our Constitution is undermined by implementing Articles - 25 to 30 in favour of the Muslim and Christian minorities whose religions direct their followers to convert all the world’s population to their own religion. Therefore the Indian democracy and the state and Hindus in particular are terribly menaced by deterioration in the purpose and quality of politics . While in the west through a series of measures and experiences, politics has become a profession governed by professional systematized ethics , in India politics is morphing into commerce and contest for the power market . It is getting more and more corrupted. It is well to recall what Bhagwan Krishna had messaged in the Bhagawad Gita :
yadyadacharati ?hre?h?has tattadevetaro jana?
sa yatpram??a? kurute lokastadanuvartate
-B.G 3.21
Meaning: As the leaders act, so the people; the standard the leaders set, the people follow.
9. Parivarvad: The deterioration in the quality of India’s democracy is entirely due to the degradation of many political leaders . What has come to be known as parivarvad has its source from Motilal Nehru and his progeny - Jawaharlal , Indira and Rajiv and his Indo -Italian children. Following their example in many states the powerful and effective leadership and therefore power is in the hands of the Parivar’s head. Powerful and the wealthy politicians are having their children succeed them in the realm of politics and party governments.
10. Education:
10.1 At the time of Independence , literacy in India was under 20% . So it was in South Korea, China, Malaysia. All of them who became self-governing have attained literacy levels above 95% within forty/ fifty years . 77 years after independence , literacy in India is 74.4%
|
S.Korea |
Sri Lanka |
Myanmar |
Malaysia |
|
98 |
92.3 |
89 |
95 |
|
China |
Indonesia |
Surinam |
Fiji |
|
96.8 |
96 |
94.4 |
99.1 |
|
Mauritius |
Guyana |
Trinidad |
Pakistan |
|
91.3 |
88.5 |
99 |
58 |
|
Bangladesh |
|
|
|
|
74.6 |
|
|
|
10.2 All our neighbours except Pakistan have higher literacy than India, though they got independence later than us. The countries where Indians had gone as “coolies” in the 19th century are now majorities and ruling because of higher education. Sir Vidyadhar S.Naipaul of Trinidad is a Nobel Laureate. Several Indians settled abroad got Nobel prize. Few Indians in India are Nobel laureates is reason we have neglected education .
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“History will record that the greatest mistake of the Indian republic in the first 50 years (77 now) of its existence was to make less investment in human resources- education, family planning, nutrition and public health- than in brick and motor dams and factories”. - Sri Nani Palkhiwala
Education makes a people easy to lead but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but difficult to enslave - Henry Peter Brougham
“…no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills and the other familiar furniture of economic development…” - John Kenneth Galbraith
10.3 Aspiration and education can make even those of low birth and poverty affluent, powerful and distinguished. This is proved by poor, even destitute Indians, “coolies” who went as “indenture” labourers in sugar plantations of the British, Dutch and French colonies rising to political power and Nobel laureates . Mauritius, Surinam, Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago are countries where former Indian “Coolies’ have risen to political power and Prime Ministers . Sir Vidyadhar Naipaul of Trinidad & Tobago is a Nobel Laureate . Indian scientists, engineers and business graduates are in the ranks of Nobel Laureates and chiefs of USA’s global corporations. Indian democracy as noted by N A Palkhiwala has not yet been able to give quality education to the young as even civil war ravaged South Korea has done. China competes, even excels USA in regard to the frontier science and technology of artificial intelligence, AI . Many of our politicians are more interested in competitively promising / guaranteed freebies, than in delivering quality education to all. In fact, education from pre-school / LKG to PG is getting privatised even as banks, industries and trade and insurance were nationalised .
11. Judiciary :
11.1 If a telegraphic address is to be given to our judicial courts, the most apt one would be “ ADJOURNMENT”. The adjournments given most liberally are so vexatious and make justice so costly and delayed that in the words of one of our greatest lawyers, the late N A Palkhiwala, “A law suite once started in India is the nearest thing to eternal life ever seen on this earth….”
11.2 The Justices of the Supreme Court want to select and decide themselves as to who should be the Justices. The utmost concession they give to the Executive ( the PM, President or Parliament) is that instead of the Chief Justice alone, a collegium of senior most judges will make the selection and it has to be accepted by the President. This has no parallel in the world !
11.3 The Supreme Court directed the State High Courts to constitute special C.B.I Courts to expeditiously try MLAs, MPs and ministers charged with corruption . That this is unheeded but is just a famous supreme order is evident from a former MP who was in jail for eighteen months on serious charges of corruption established by the CBI has been on bail since over twelve years, during which he became the Chief Minister for fiver years, lost the latest election for his party and is an MLA now. He managed not to appear even once in the Special CBI court; this court’s judges were transferred seven times and the case against him is as it was twelve years ago without trial ! His daughters who are students have become multi millionaires!
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Words have sometimes to be violent because they represent assault of thought on the unthinking. - Lord Maynard Keynes
11.4 A retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when asked whether there is corruption in the Supreme Court judges answered: “ They are from our society: If MLAs, MPs, ministers could be corrupt why not judges?” A Supreme Court judge facing impeachment resigned and another’s impeached was unsuccessful.
12. The Evangelist Fraud:
12.1 Our Constitution confers reservations in government jobs and educational institutions ; state legislatures, parliament and such elected bodies . Persons among Schedule Castes (SCs) and Schedule Tribes (STs) are getting converted to Christianity in several dubious ways. The converted seem to be instructed to hide the fact of conversion and simply write SC/ ST in all applications. Thus, the converts are fraudulently depriving the real Hindu SCs and STs from the benefits of reservation. Many MPs, MLAs, IAS, IPS, IFS etc., officers seem to be impostor SCs.
12.2 According to the census, the Christian population in undivided AP has been declining but the churches are proliferating in the territory. The proof of the fraud is revealed in my letter of Feb 2019 to a retired “SC” IAS officer ( Annex#1). The officer did not reply.
13. Abuse of Fundamental Rights: Democratic India’s greatest failure is not eliminating the insurrection, the civil war being waged since the late 1970s by the Maoist Communist Party ( one of about half a dozen communist parties in India) with its Peoples’ War Guerrilla (PWG) battalions. This is the longest civil war in history. If India cannot defeat the Maoist PWG, and bring normalcy in the areas the PWG is operating, can we be confident to win wars against our implacable enemies on our western and northern borders? The PWG cannot be waging war without supply of money and weapons and promotion of indecision in government and wrong appraised among some political parties. This is what “urban Naxalites” are doing. They are in fact the above-ground units of the PWG. They are invoking fundamental rights & human rights. These are for normal citizens; not for armies and parties that wage war against the state and summarily execute whom they suspect as “informers” and “collaborators”. Indian democracy will be failing the people if it does not defeat and eliminate the Maoist PWG war-waging communist parties .
14. National Integration:
14.1 The National Integration Council (NIC) was established in 1961 by Sri Jawaharlal Nehru to address issues like communalism, casteism and regionalism and promotion of harmony. It consists of chief Ministers, eminent public men and intellectuals. It is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body. It is to meet every six months, chaired by the Prime Minister. It first met in June 1962. The 16th and the last meeting was on 16 Sept 2013. Since then it is non-functional. And for good reasons Muslims by the theology of Islam cannot sincerely agree to be integrated with non-Muslims . In India they rioted and voted for division of the country and creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan. Abetted by vote-mongering “secular” parties, they are demanding reservations for them, creation of Muslim-majority districts, funds for Haj pilgrimage and Islamic schools (Madrasas) .
14.2 There are thousands of mosques constructed on destroyed temples (sometimes called Hindu Masjids) like those in Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura, Dhar, Rajamahendravaram etc. Hindus claim these sites for reconstruction of destroyed temples . Muslims don’t agree . The strife is intensifying . To reduce strife, the first step is to establish by law a “ Truth and Reconciliation Commission” as in South Africa and Peru. The second step is to task the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct scientific tests as in Ayodhya in important disputed Hindu Masjids ( i.e mosques on destroyed temple sites) and resolve the disputes.
14.3 Yet another Hindu-Muslim divide unresolved is “waqf” properties. The Muslim Waqf Boards go on claiming properties of people, temple even High Courts as waqfs. At this rate they may claim the entire territory ruled by Aurangzeb as Waqfs. Actually, waqf are Islamic Imperialisms remains . Just as princely states , privy purses, Zamindaris were all abolished, just as the former French and Portuguese territories in India were reintegrated with the rest of India; Waqfs, the spoils of conquest may be taken over by the state. Travancore State dedicated to Hindu God Padmanabha by the ruler Marthanda Varma in 1750 was taken over and merged with the rest of India. If this Waqf issue is not solved, India’s democracy will continue to be vitiated by Hindu-Muslim strife.
15. Hope and Endeavour:
15.1 Inspite of the deficiencies and distortions and corruptions in the operation of our democracy we can still hope and endeavour build a prosperous, powerful, intellectual and ethical nation to be a Viswa Guru once again . Millions among our young are becoming slowly but steadily aware of the glorious past - that till 1707 ( Aurangzeb’s’ death) Bharat was the largest rich nation with China as our equal, both with about 25% of the world’s trade. It was so even during the long period of Islamist imperial rule in much of Bharat. The decline and fall began with most exploitative, imperialist British rule bent upon rooting out our heritage wealth that we became a weak nation. The foreign Islamist rule and the Marxist communist visceral enmity to Hinduism had dulled our perceptive power . Our education and thinking got colonized by the imperial British rule. Increasing number of our intellectual class are doing away with Marxist - communist, Islamist anti- sanatan dharma positions and getting aware of all human -embracing philosophy of Sanatan Dharma and are getting determined to make Bharat a great super power for Bahujana Hitaya, Bahujana Sukhaya (for the good of all people , for the comfort of all people). May the following few Maha Vakyas guide us so that as Swami Vivekananda exhorted us : “arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached “ .
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"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -Winston Churchill
15.2 The sage Aurobindo envisioned that man will become superman as evolution does not stop with Homo-sapiens that is, human beings. Artificial Intelligence (AI) now being developed and adopted can make us superman hopefully with saatvik qualities .
16. Dharmic Aspirations:
Whether the deterioration in politics and the corruptions are temporary phenomenon or not will have to be decided by the vast majority which Hindus are by themselves getting informed and inspired by dharma, righteousness which in Bharat has the following noble messages to mankind informing life and conduct of people.
· Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam..
· Ekam sat, viprah bahudhaa vadanti
· Krinvato viswamaaryam
· o? sarve bhavantu sukhina?
sarve santu nir?may??
sarve bhadr??i pa?yantu m? ka?ciddu? khabh?gbhaveta?
o? ??nti? ??nti? ??nti??
· o? saha n?vavatu .
saha nau bhunaktu .
saha v?rya? karav?vahai .
tejasvi n?vadh?tamastu m? vidvi??vahai .
o? ??nti? ??nti? ??nti? ..
17. I will end this long article by rephrasing Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s prayer:
Where the Hindu is without fear
Where the Hindu is “Without Fear”
Where true history is told and every Hindu holds his head high
Where Bharat is not broken into Muslim and Christian districts
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where reason and inquiry are not silenced by terror of fanatics
Where treason and guilt lead to insecurity in those who harbour them
Into the heaven of freedom, honest endeavour and divine grace
My Father ! let my country awake and march
(With apologies to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore )
(5,377 words)
END