Our strange democracy

A lot of razzmatazz is being thrown into the JNU issue. It is plain and clear that the minority Opposition has once again managed to upstage the actual issue. Umar Khalid has quietly gone off the radar, Kanhaiya Kumar has been pushed to the center of the storm conveniently for the anti-BJP Inc. to mount an assault on the Parliament precinct with the next election in mind. The actual issue of Afzal Guru, the Kashmir separation agenda, separatist propaganda on Indian soil by Kashmiris (who in this case did not come from JNU and consider themselves Kashmiris not Indians and hence any expression by them in Delhi or any other part of India that is not Kashmir is anti-national activity, since they aim it so!) have all been quietly consigned to non-issue. As usual a lot of importance to the (secondary) messenger is being given and everyone is aiming their guns at the messengers and the recipients, rather than the sender of this missive. 

Today it ridiculously has come to the state that a lot of Indian citizens want to question and debate on the notion of What is India? At a time when we must be, like China and Japan, South Korea and other progressive nations, be discussing the one-point of agenda of how to make our nation strong, these politicians with nothing else but political divisiveness on their minds are opportunistically manipulating this freedom of expression thingie. Is this required? Have we become so reactionary, emotionally susceptible to being brainwashed by the political forces who really do not care for the existing national identity purely because it is not convenient that they are not in the seat of power? Do we even have the spine to call ourselves rational beings, falling for these cheap-tricks by phoney cardsharps who claim themselves the good samaritans of the country? Is this democracy?

A democracy, by definition, is that where there is opportunity and scope for peoples of all genders, faiths and classes to participate in the majority. Now the situation we have is this: one group that has been in the majority is afraid that another group MAY become equal if not insidiously dominant; their case is vindicated by the example of Kashmir; then there is another group that has so long been on the minority because, at some point, their founding fathers wanted to shy away from forming the core of nation-building when they had the opportunity and reinvented the wheel aka Pakistan. A majority of this minority that did not fit their vehicle with the reinvented wheel, lives in the rest of the country besides Kashmir, wants to have equal if not dominant status. However, their heart is rent between fighting for the majority status quo of the majority minority, viz their Kashmiri brethren, than changing their own minority minority status quo into equal majority. Inside this scenario we have the majority and the minority fighting on religious preferences than economic. Looking at this conundrum from the periphery, there is a third group, who has no ideals, credo or canons but a vote-bank sense of ruler ship and manipulates the sentiments of the minority, the which the periphery successfully divided into two different minority. Now it is altogether a different matter that the second minority, that has been made to live with delusions as the real minority, is the majority in some states. So how do we get out of this state? 

Get the third party out. This sounds like the story of the cat that helped the two monkey come to a conclusion on how best to share their food, right? Of course, the third party had given us a sense of themselves as the center of gravity. But 'things fall apart, the center cannot hold... the beast turned towards (proverbial Bethlehem and had) its Second Coming.' As a result, sanity and sense of order was restored and the periphery was dumped back to the margins. With it trying to claw back to center, it is time for the original two to come together and stay together. A start has been made. All reconciliations are difficult to start with, but if persisted with, will settle down given time and patience. Hope similar starts can happen in Assam and elsewhere in North-East too!