NEW
DELHI - On Monday, Indians cast their votes in the
fourth and final phase of the country's 14th general
elections. The results should be known by the end of the
week, amid general predictions of a hung parliament by
most exit polls.
According to the traditions of
British democracy, on which the Indian system is
modeled, if the government fails to acquire a simple
majority, that is, 272 members in the 543-member lower
house, it should be deemed as having lost the mandate to
govern, and the main opposition party should be called
to form a government and prove its majority in the house
within a stipulated period of time.
However,
unless opposition party leader Sonia Gandhi is able to
expand her alliances quickly and cobble together a
majority clear enough to convince the president in a day
or two, the greater likelihood is that by virtue of
being the leader of the single largest party - the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - incumbent premier Atal
Bihari Vajpayee will again be sworn in and asked to
prove his majority in about a fortnight. It is in this
fashion that Vajpayee's first government in 1996 lasted
a mere 13 days, but the possibility of his attracting
smaller parties will be much better this time.
This is not the only feature that distinguishes
Indian democracy. It would, of course, pass all the
tests set by the international community: a secular
constitution that respects the rights of all minorities,
regular free and fair elections, an independent
judiciary, a more or less functioning executive, one
person one vote, multiple political parties and a
largely free media.
But Indian democracy is much
more than a collection of all these internationally
recognized democratic traits: it is practically a new
religion, a new faith for the common man in India. In
which democracy in the world, for instance, do
politicians have the privilege of being worshipped
regularly after having been elevated to the status of
gods and goddesses? Vajpayee may miss becoming prime
minister again, but his "divine" status is assured. His
idol is surely going to be worshipped by devotees soon.
On an ancient hilltop in Gwalior in Madhya
Pradesh, a new temple has been established for this
purpose. An idol of the prime minister made of the
appropriate ashtdhatu (eight metals) lies in
lawyer Vijay Singh Chauhan's study, waiting to be
consecrated through a number of rituals. It has already
traveled to Ujjain during the recent Kumbh fair for a
dip in the holy Kshipra river. It will now travel to
Mathura, Kashi and even Ayodhya in the state of Uttar
Pradesh to visit the idols of Lord Ram that have been
installed on the site of a medieval mosque demolished by
Hindu zealots in 1992. (The Indian Express newspaper
finds this planned visit to the disputed shrine in
Ayodhya "disconcerting".)
The process of
consecration has, however, begun and will be completed
by July 2, when Vajpayee "will turn into a full god".
The only hitch is the impediment being created by the
Ujjain administration, which has served notice to the
advocate that his organization, the Akhil Bhartiya Yuva
Abhibhashak Manch, is setting up the Vajpayee temple on
encroached land.
It would be a pity if Vajpayee
was being elevated to divine status only for some people
to grab a piece of government land, and not out of real
devotion. But no such suspicion exists in the case of
another politician, the chief minister of the south
Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Jayaram Jayalalitha, a
former film actress and a convicted criminal who was not
allowed to vote or contest in the provincial election in
which her party won a landslide victory a couple of
years ago, was turned into a "goddess" quite some time
ago. Her idol has been worshipped in a temple in Chennai
for years. Her devotees include doctors, engineers and
scientists.
Recently anointed as the rain
goddess, Jayalalitha is once again an ally of the Hindu
fundamentalist BJP. Vajpayee's second 13-month-old
government had fallen in 1999 as this mercurial lady,
also called India's Imelda Marcos (she of Philippine
fame) , with her thousands of pairs of shoes and saris
and millions of dollars worth of jewelry, had withdrawn
her support for no apparent reason. Her party has been
welcomed back into the coalition, largely because she
passed legislation in Tamil Nadu making it very
difficult for Adivasis (aboriginals) and Dalits (lower
caste people considered untouchable despite a
constitutional ban on caste discrimination) to convert
from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam. This has
naturally made her a darling of the Hindu supremacist
organizations.
The main opposition Congress
party, which ruled India for about 45 years after its
independence from the British in 1947, has not been so
lucky. It has not produced any gods or goddesses yet.
For some reason, even the father of the nation, Mahatma
Gandhi, the apostle of peace, has not been so elevated
to join the ranks of 330 million Hindu gods. The law
minister in the first Congress government and the father
of the Indian constitution, Dr B R Ambedkar, is, of
course, worshipped as a god by millions of Dalits. But
he had converted to Buddhism in his last days and stands
in a class different from other politicians. He was the
first leader to fight for the rights of Dalits, who have
been oppressed for millennia. The secularist and humane
nature of the Indian constitution owes much to the
influence of the Babasaheb - as he is fondly
called by many Indians.
India's political
musclemen It is one thing to worship politicians
as gods or goddesses and vote for them, but quite
another for many Indian voters to remain consistently
loyal to hardened criminals accused of multiple murders
and other heinous crimes, contesting elections again and
again from their sanctuaries in jail. All major
political parties allot 15 to 20 percent of seats to
these criminals and mafia elements, also known as
"history sheeters", as the police maintain a long
history sheet of their crimes, ranging from murder and
rape to rioting and possession of illegal arms.
This is something that baffles not only the
foreign observer, but even the urban Indian
intellectual, who is generally not aware of the ground
realities. Indeed, even the election commission (EC),
the constitutional body charged with the task of
conducting elections, thought it could tackle the menace
by asking the candidates to announce their full criminal
records while filing their electoral nominations. As it
didn't work, the high court of Bihar state, which is
particularly affected by this problem, along with Uttar
Pradesh (UP), asked the election commission if something
could be done to stop these unsavory characters from
contesting. The EC has now said that nothing can be
done. Most legal luminaries advise against "any
shortcuts even for achieving desirable goals" as these
are liable to be misused.
This has been
explained in Indian and the foreign media largely as
caste loyalty by the voters. Caste loyalty in India is
perhaps even deeper than tribal loyalty in Africa and
elsewhere. But this doesn't fully explain the
phenomenon. There are very few constituencies where one
caste or community has complete domination. Indeed, how
would one explain the case of contesting mafia dons Mohd
Shahabuddin in Bihar and Mukhtar Ansari in UP. Both are
from the minority Muslim community, and in Shahabuddin's
constituency the number of Muslims is miniscule.
What the Patna High Court, very active in trying
to prevent such characters from contesting elections,
doesn't understand or doesn't want to admit is that the
criminalization of Indian polity is a symptom of a
larger malaise. The police, civil administration and
judicial systems are in a state of disrepair. If a
television journalist in a sting operation, as happened
recently in Gujarat, could spend just a few dollars and
get a warrant of arrest issued by a judicial magistrate
in the name of the president of India, the chief justice
and other judges of the Supreme Court, one doesn't need
much imagination to visualize the state of the judicial
system in the country.
While a wealthy criminal
is assured of getting bail, even if he has committed
crimes like murder and rape, an innocent accused is not
likely to be able to acquire one if he or she is poor.
Several cases have come to light in which people have
spent as many as three decades in jail, though they were
accused of minor crimes in which maximum punishment on
conviction would have been a month in jail. On the other
hand, the Shahubuddins of India can hold press
conferences and discuss matters of governmental policies
and speak like sober statesmen from the comfort of their
plush jail sofas. Other similar characters can even
visit their constituencies and address their
constituents. Vajpayee can lose his election - indeed
the prime minister was able to attract only 35 percent
of his voters to the polling booths in his constituency
in Lucknow in UP this time against the national average
of 60 percent - but whether or not they campaign, the
mafia dons always win.
It would be wrong to
assume from this that the musclemen of Indian politics,
as they are respectfully called, have to always rig
their polls or use violent means. While some rigging
does take place in some pockets, mostly people exercise
their choice in voting for them. These musclemen are the
only people who can provide instant, even if brutal,
justice to the victims of society. Upper caste Hindus,
some landed people among the middle castes and
businessmen all need them to protect their businesses
and even lives from the police and bureaucracy, as well
as from the the Maoists or Naxalites, as the extreme
left-wingers are called. The lower castes and rural poor
on the other hand go to the Maoists for quick and
assured justice through their kangaroo courts and
parallel administrations in several large states.
An issue of castes Another feature
that stumps foreign observers of an Indian election is
its "issuelessness". Alex Perry of Time magazine, for
instance, is flummoxed: "India doesn't follow the normal
election conventions. Violence and stuffed ballot boxes
scarcely raise an eyebrow. Issues that might be expected
to dominate - candidates' criminal pasts, peace with
Pakistan, a pogrom that claimed more than 1,000 lives -
are almost no issue at all."
This is, however,
the wrong perception. Far deeper issues than those of
bread and butter are involved. A case in point is that
of former chief minister of Bihar and Rashtriya Janata
Dal chief, Laloo Prashad Yadav. He has ruled Bihar for
the past 15 years. When the court wanted to send him to
jail for his involvement in a corruption scandal, he
brought his illiterate wife from his kitchen and put her
on the chief minister's chair before shifting his
residence to a comfortable suite in a jail . Why would
the people of Bihar, many would ask, elect him, his wife
Rabri Devi, who has now been chief minister for seven
years, their illiterate relatives and equally illiterate
party candidates again and again for the past 15 years?
Indeed, many even want Yadav to hold the post of prime
minister, and Yadav has himself declared that though he
is not a candidate for the top job now, he certainly
would sit on that chair one day if given the chance. For
the moment he is an ally and the most vocal supporter
for elevating leader of opposition in the parliament and
Congress president Sonia Gandhi as prime minister.
Yadav wins in Bihar, as does the other Yadav,
Mulayam Singh, present chief minister in UP, on the
basis of what is known as the M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) factor.
Why do Muslims and Yadavs vote for the Yadavs in two of
the largest states in India when they have apparently
done nothing for them or for their states in terms of
development and are believed commonly to have been
looting the state exchequer for personal aggrandizement?
Not a difficult question to answer; but the answer
eludes a foreign journalist as no one in the elite
classes with whom foreigners usually interact ever likes
to talk about them.
The Muslims vote because
they are happy to be simply "alive" under illiterate,
sectarian Backward caste Yadav rule. When the upper
caste secular Congress party run by highly educated,
astute administrators trained in Oxford in Cambridge
ruled, no Muslim felt safe. One can hardly name a city
or town in Bihar and UP which was not a site of a major
massacre of Muslims. The Yadavs have refrained from
organizing any massacres. Is that not reason enough to
vote a party to power again and again? Incidentally,
this is also the secret of unquestioning Muslim support
for the communists in West Bengal which they have now
been ruling for 25 years at a stretch.
As for
the Yadavs, they just love the idea of a Backward,
basically illiterate, foul-mouthed, corrupt Yadav
lording over it all. They love him best when he publicly
insults upper caste civil servants and politicians in
front of his Backward supporters. The more the media
reviles him and discuss what a good-for-nothing
scoundrel he is, the more they love him. He has given
them a voice, brought them at par with the upper caste
in terms of social mobility. Back in the 1950s and
1960s, it was the upper castes, particularly the
Rajputs, the former ruling castes, that used to rig
elections, hardly even allowing the Backwards to reach
the polling booths. Now it is they who do the rigging,
if required, not allowing Rajputs and Brahmins to even
stir from their homes on polling day. Only a Backward
who has a caste memory of millennia of deprivation,
humiliation and insult can truly understand what it
means for them to see a Yadav, no matter which one, lord
over it all. Others can merely guess and wonder and try
to understand the unique dynamics of Indian democracy.
This unique commitment to personal
aggrandizement and caste loyalty also explains the
widespread problem of defections in Indian democracy.
The utter lack of scruples and principles displayed by
the politicians in joining any group and leaving it the
next day only to rejoin the first group again is
something that leaves the superficial observer dazed. A
politician who has spent the better part of his life in
the so-called secular Congress party calling the BJP
communal and fascist will not think twice to join the
latter party, if denied a ticket to contest elections by
his own party, and will start leveling the same charges
against his original party. But if he has problems in
the BJP and is being invited back by the Congress, he
would once again become secular and start playing the
original game all over again. He can play this game as
many times in his life as he wants without hurting his
chances of re-election. No one expects him to be loyal
to any so-called ideology, not even a so-called
ideological party like the BJP.
Having spent
some time with Sonia Gandhi, her newly anointed
politician-son Rahul, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan
Advani and the poster-boy of Hindutva, Narendra Modi,
the chief minister of the state of Gujarat, that has now
become almost synonymous with genocide of Muslims, Alex
Perry comments: "The West may hold the monopoly on the
really big politicians' lies - weapons of mass
destruction, anyone? But there's something about the
casual and personal insincerity of Indian politics -
lying to squatters, deceiving beggars, giving false hope
to drought-stricken farmers - that is deeply
disturbing." Obviously, like most other foreign
observers, he has failed to discover the real issues,
the real goals and the real commitment of Indian
politicians, as well as the electorate.
It is
not that there are no issues. There are deeper issues,
not visible on the surface, certainly not to a casual
foreign observer, who comes to India to cover the dance
of democracy in the largest democracy in the world and
tries to decipher India with the help of books and
newspaper articles written by upper caste intellectuals
and journalists. One way of understanding India would be
to search for a Yadav byline in the Indian media - print
or electronic. Now if Yadav is a caste big enough to
rule two of India's biggest states, Bihar and UP, why
has it not been able to produce a single journalist?
Pondering over this question might help understand the
features that characterize Indian politics - defections,
empty promises, corruption, criminalization, communalism
and casteism. It would also explain the complete lack of
scruples on the part of politicians and almost complete
lack of expectations on the part of the voters.
If democracy has become the latest and most
popular religion in India, rather than remaining a mere
system of governance as in other countries, there are
thus good reasons for it. India is fortunate that the
overwhelming majority of its population, deprived and
dispossessed for millennia, considers democracy and not
Maoist or revolutionary violence as the vehicle of
change. The ultimate goal of the majority, the 87
percent of Indians, the Backwards, Dalits and Muslims is
to live with dignity and self-respect. The BJP's
"Shining India" campaign failed to click because the
majority doesn't want India to shine - for a few people.
Economic prosperity and superpower status can wait as
far as they are concerned. It is not without
significance that the BJP is winning wherever it is
giving leadership positions to Backwards like Narendra
Modi (Gujarat), Uma Bharti (Madhya Pradesh), Kalyan
Singh and Vinay Katyar (UP) and so on. Congress, too, is
learning to play second fiddle to Backwards and Dalits
in large parts of India.
Democracy is finally
beginning to change India's social dynamics for the
better, even if it is leaving its roads and railway
tracks unattended for the moment.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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