People against people

The pages of the land’s history, spanning several centuries, portrays people of past generations with the scripts dictated by the extent to which the chroniclers not only got the opportunities to observe the goings on but also their perceptions and even inferences. Knowledge of the land’s highly rated richness, both material and otherwise, wafting beyond its shores drew not only scholars from far off lands on a learning mission but also conquerors with their eyes on the land’s wealth. We owe to the former flock the land’s historical records, however close or adrift the script passes as reality. In spite of the life’s vicissitudes that people of successive generations are known to have experienced in the past, their profile has not witnessed changes to any worrisome point, perhaps until India gained freedom from alien rule and adopted democratic ways of self-rule. The country’s brief history of six-plus decades since then triggers varied thoughts about the way its masses are conducting themselves.

The legacy that the present generation in the country has inherited including the words of wisdom attributed to the luminaries of the past and everything relating to the life of people at large is commonly praised in glorious terms by public speakers of all hues from various platforms, but the question of safeguarding whatever is left of that legacy looms large in one’s mind, provided one is sincerely concerned about the country’s future.

Having raised the question of threats to a stable democracy, some introspection about the imperatives of the nation’s people to be proactive citizens, instead of succumbing to the viles and guiles of the vote-seekers, as passive victims, may help in preparing the people to address those threats. While the country’s administration by the colonialists has been criticised by political observers for its divide and rule strategy, the current dispensation under democracy and self-rule is marked by only more of that strategy, drumming up diversities of language and faith of the land’s people, serving as opium to its gullible sections.

The nation’s urban spaces have ceased to be hosts of residents leading life from turmoil resulting from protest rallies, road-shows by political parties and unabated criminal acts in nature and numbers beyond the preparedness of the law-keeping machinery of the government. Democracy has thus acquired the new definition of the rule of people against people.