By Md Farrukh Ilyas
Amidst the global chaos due to COVID19, the world is witnessing a new settlement for its respective governance. The global village has a lot in the bucket of its responsibilities and accountabilities as social, political and economic frames of all countries from the world has thrown ahead the challenges for a stout globalized economy and geopolitics.
Time will tell how far we reached to conquer the future, or how far the wrath of ignoring the rules of nature is lethal but for now we have only questions: Did the world order for the rule of law lean? How is the political voice changing its course during the pandemic in the global political system? How are citizens dealt with public health by the government of the globe?
However, in the case of India, we have something crucial to ponder all along the road towards fighting the pandemic in this country. In India, functioning of the organs of the government has to sync with the constitution of India, no matter what arrives in the doors of its governance. The constitution of India has drawn the path forward for the government to effective governance in the country. But history is on record and we need to answer – did we religiously follow the constitution? The Indian constitution overwhelmingly shares and preaches the idea of deliberative democracy, but is it really entertained by the government? Our rational approach should respond according to the established words of the constitution, a democracy is willful towards its citizens, and this should sink in.
The national problems come without recognition of caste, creed, religions, and a target to a particular community. It is a canvas that covers all in it. As the scourge of coronavirus escalated in the nation, the political edicts directly shifted its course from taking responsibility towards accusing a particular section of the community for its spread. A country with a gigantic population demands effective governance with prompt actions, and the same doesn’t come easy, it comes with lots of toils and with a just approach to the civil society for the greater common good. In the words of B R Ambedkar, “Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.” Are we ready to accept equality as our governing principle? The recent incidents in the nation depict the worst picture of equality in the nation. As if the government had specifically introduced it as a pattern of dealing with the virus by throwing the blame of its spread on Tablighi Jamaat members. And amidst all the chaos of upholding its liability to answer for the medical emergency the nation faces right now, the government does not seem to dismantle from its projection of Muslims as ‘super spreaders’ of the coronavirus. This is how we are trained to follow statements of political leaders and with active disobedience to the very spirit of the constitution, we break off from questioning them. And to put Ambedkar into perspective, it is exactly when the activity of questioning stops in democracy, a true democracy ceases to function.
It’s on the final call of the citizens, how rationally one approves of the tenets for the core values of the constitution of India? The politically privileged section of the country is trying through all its efforts to introduce and institutionalize the differentiation amongst citizens of the country, which shall prove as the greatest assault on the values and the idea of “We the people of India.”
Ideas are powerful as it builds a nation or scrambles the units of it. You might have few of them too, as the Constituent Assembly had, that gave us the complete constitution with its magnificent importance and values in our daily lives. This was recorded too, in the words of the prime architect of the constitution himself, when Ambedkar said, “Constitution is not a mere lawyer’s document, it is a vehicle of Life, and its spirit is always the spirit of Age.”
The challenges rest with the people of India, how do you see justice and equality in the nation? One should always be vigilant towards the institutionalization of ‘bhakti’ in religion by the political class, which shall demean the public reasoning in democracy. On the same note, B R Ambedkar sums up, “In politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”
Our civil society has gone through the contours of creating privileged class with relations to religious associations amongst its people; this has been done with help of the political class in the political atmosphere of the country, privilege in opinion-making, commenting, decision-making on matters of national interest, and even to high society social gossips. This inclusion of a particular privileged class excludes all of its other citizens from being a part of nation building, as they are fundamentally ascribed to, in a democracy.
The phenomena of asserting a soft corner for people regarding anything that has a religious edge, is dangerous. Nevertheless, this becomes the many reasons for communal disharmony by promoting a feeling of otherness among the neglected class. How do we address this stigma? How does it introduce in the common sentiments of people? It is by far and large that we don’t accept the concept of pluralism in the nation-state practising with its values in the civil society. This is omitted through the deliberative patterns of the political leaders. The people at the helms of power are in continuous approach to stir hate and disharmonize the status-quo and large-hearted tolerance in the civil society. The wings of their desire to fulfill their goals are by mounting intolerance, communal hatred, and largely – minority insecurity.
This is firstly made fictitious in the state affairs, but slowly with the course of time, they take the place in their destinations, dividing people into lines of hatred and religions. We all feel them, but we ignore them, because the politics of the contemporary times have engulfed us, and we are nowhere out.
But with a change in ourselves, and we all know, politics choose us all, we need to decide how. In the book, ‘Why Nations Fail’ by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, they say, “Politics is the process by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it.” The question is, how do we want to be governed? A democracy with public reasoning or the one without it? The politics with a just society or the one submerged in injustice?
The choice is with the nation of the people. Let the philosophy of the words from the preamble breathe in the true sense and spirits, so that justice, liberty, equality and fraternity for the larger goal and for the greater common good can be served.
MD Farrukh Ilyas is a student of Political Science at Aligarh Muslim University