A poignant truth (a sad tale of Indian democracy)

Most of us, at a certain period of time, often look back and question ourselves whether we did any error in the past while making our career and future. Similarly, on the eve of the Independence Day, most of us look back in the past, and try to examine what went wrong while shaping the country during the last sixty years. No one, I believe, would accept the present day India as an ideal State. A poignant truth, perhaps, is that the leadership has never cared for the wishes of the minority but the vibrant educated people of India. Unlike other nations, Indian literates are unfortunate as they were always swayed by the decisions taken by the leadership on the pretext of caring for the wishes of the poor, uneducated people of India, and abided by the norms of democracy.

Unlike many other nations, we were blessed with the conglomeration of leaders, headed by no less than one of the greatest men on earth of our times, Mahatma Gandhi, during the freedom movement. Without much bloodshed, India achieved its freedom, and under the tutelage of the Mahatma, the icon of truth, the country was handed over to the heroes of our freedom movement. Nehru, the modernist was at the helm of power who was assisted by the equally powerful leading lights of the period, Sardar Patel, Rajaji, Rajendra Prasad, Azad, Ambedkar and so many others. Yet, what happened to the country during the next thirty years has been a reality what the generation born after the independence witnessed?

The population of India grew by the extent of reaching to explode. No substantiate policy was ever taken by our erstwhile leaders. The country soon became a corrupt nation, whose people, right from the poor man to the man at the helm, have been indulged in corruption. No country, like India, is as dirty as it is. The people of the country love to speak lies, unlike what has been taught to them by the Mahatma. We are the worst neighbour in the world. There is a distant solution, it seems, in the case of Kashmir, which our forefathers have passed the buck on to us to face the dire consequences of present day terrorism. Killings of the innocents are added to our basic problems of education, sanitation, poverty, beggary, unemployment, drought, flood and corruption. The successive governments failed to provide any respite from these tortures.

Recollecting the memories of the discussions held between our forefathers, our childhood memories during the sixties, and while reading out biographies of eminent leaders, it became conspicuous that all went wrong because the leaders did not comply with the wishes of the educated mass. Truly, the educated mass did not approve of the movement led by Gandhi and Nehru. They were looking for parties to be headed by people of audacious, trustworthy and dashing nature like Subhash Bose or Bhagat Singh. After independence, Sardar Patel was an acceptable personality for them to head the government, which did not materialize. Their aspirations were somehow met only in 1977, though for a very brief period. Vajpayee was adored as PM, but he was kept out by the Congress by aligning with unlike- minded parties on his second term. How could literate people of India accept Sitaramayya against Subhash Bose in the Tripuri congress, and in the same likelihood, how can an educated Indian absorb our present Prime Minister look subservient to 10, Janpath?

Fortunately, our educated class have never gone against the norms of democracy. They knew that they were being swayed by virtue of numbers and the craftsmanship of the leaders. Completing sixty two years of independence, the conclusion remains that the head needs to be placed in front of the body, not at the back of it.