By S Paul
Don’t we realise that, in this part of the world, belonging to this particular race and culture, we have become a ‘nation’ for the first time in our history? A nation now free of any encumbrance of slavery under a foreign ruler or a king/queen. We now rule ourselves with our own choice of governance. But the fungus of hundreds of years of slavery still sticks on a significant part of our population’s psyche. We are still beset with the ailment of ‘separatism’ that had been our Achilles’ heel exploited by our foreign rulers. Our social categorisation was evolved from the ‘Purush Sukta’ in the ‘Rigveda’ according to which the pure castes Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras were defined as dynastic professions. It was perhaps a successful social instrument of governance at the time when information (knowledge) was not easily and freely available to the populace. Yet the seekers from the less advantageous class of the society even at that time acquired knowledge and became known for their literary, spiritual and social greatness. To name a few are Maharishi Valmiki, Kalidasa, Jaya Deva (writer of Geet Govinda), Mahatama Jyotiba Phule, et al.
This dynastic tendency has been the major element of the divisive attitude in our social fabric and our downfall. Then and even now if a person from a less fortunate class gets to achieve great distinction, the higher placed section of our society tries to prove that the person actually belonged to their genes but were unfortunate to be born in lower placed parentage. Unfortunately, despite the great wisdom of our intellectual leaders, the malady of caste distinction has been ingrained in our nascent national constitution. Thereby making it a matter of rights for a certain category of our populace and giving fuel to the fire of division by caste. This constitutional right is a great impediment in our feeling like a nation where every citizen has equal rights and opportunities. We were told that this privilege of reservations to the lower class of citizens was to give them a chance to come up would last only for the first 50 years of the Republic. But now our politicians, having found it as a great weapon to fight elections, are not inclined to delete the articles 15 and 16 of our Constitution especially dealing with this menace.
Then again, we have another fixation by way of our regionalism. Ideally, the nation could have been sectored on the basis of longitudes and latitudes but then natural boundaries, language, traditions and those created by our ethnicities took precedence. Now, every such division of our nation desires to get a major portion of the central grant but not contributing proportionately to the central funds. Hence giving rise to the idea of various types of taxation at the state and central levels. Consequently, the benefit of our nation’s natural wealth including human resources does not get distributed homogeneously causing a feeling of differentiation.
The provision of a domicile certification even being a citizen of this republic is yet another such divisive concept. If we, who live in this land, belong to a secular democratic nation then why this charade of domesticity? We also boast of being a multilingual society. Is it in any way helping us to become a cohesive race and nation? I feel this multilingualism is merely a tool again in the hands of those who like to divide and rule. We have become adept in moving out to the other nations and adopting their way of living and their language but are loath to adopt a common means of communication within the nation. In order to explore the illusions of greener grass in the world we take great pride and make great effort to learn an unscientific language of our erstwhile rulers but adamantly refuse to adopt our own constitutionally recommended language based on the most scientific language, Sanskrit. North and South divide, East and West differences are freely talked about.
The Constitution of India envisages a secular model and provides that every person has the right and freedom to choose and practice his or her religion. The 42nd Amendment (1976) to the constitution changed the description of India from a “sovereign democratic republic” to a “sovereign, socialist secular democratic republic”, and also changed the words “unity of the nation” to “unity and integrity of the nation”. It defined that the citizens are free to follow any religion of their choice but that would not have any bearing on the democratic governance of this nation, yet it is our governments who keep using religion to define minority/majority and grant privileges to the minority ostensibly to encourage parity in the privileges and opportunities afforded by the governments; but actually it is ploy to garner votes. Such ‘favours’ only generate more jealousy and division in the social fabric of our country.
We boast of the youth power of our nation, but our political leadership entices this gullible section of our society into having their political leanings even when they are not mature enough to understand the intricacies of governance. The entrenched old politicians claim this as nurturing future leadership of the nation and permit under constitutional provisions for them to form student’s unions backed by political parties. A democratically elected students’ body is meant to represent all students of graduate and above levels to ensure their fair and proper education only. But it invariably makes them think that they can dictate terms to the teachers and the management to run the systems as per their convenience. In such a confrontation they are invariably backed morally and financially by the political party they represent. Such an atmosphere created at the vulnerable age of our youth patterns their mind set on the politics of governance; the proverbial ‘necessary evil’. This politics as is practiced in the nation today is the politics of division not cohesion as has been described above. Students should remain students and finish their education before indulging in politically motivated protestations and demonstrations.
To summarise. our political leadership should rethink the involvement of the following in their ethics of divide and rule.
- Start a movement to clean our society of casteist tendencies.
- The weaker section of society should be educated and equipped with professional skills in exclusive institutes. They are unable to stand the competition from the more affluent among our social fabric.
- Gradually get rid of reservations and quotas.
- There should be no differentiation as majority /minority based on religion. All must be treated by common national laws for all aspects of citizenship.
- Stop using youth power to further political aims. Any ‘student’ of any standard up to graduate level showing any political leanings should be debarred from further education.
Therefore, those who are suffering from this myopic attitude of segregation ought to consider that, for us, who belong to this part of the world and are known to be the brown race called ‘INDIANS’, our Nation today is a blessing from the Divine. All other typicality of religion, region, lingo, caste, tradition, etc., are our humanly invented frailties. Therefore, we should prefer our gift from God to our own inventions.
