Speaking at the 42nd session of the U.N. General Assembly, President Reagan said, “We will not, and the World community will not accept phoney democratization designed to mask perpetuation of dictatorship”. He made this observation in the context of Sandinistan regime’s approval to the reopening of the independent newspaper La Prensa. Mr Reagan has very correctly described the seemingly “liberal” gestures of Mr. Ortega as “phoney democratization”. The scope of Mr. Reagan’s caustic remarks does not stretch to the Sandinista regime alone. It covers all such dictatorial and fascist regimes as have contrived a deceptive facade of democracy.
The people of the free world cannot be duped by simply holding elections after every four or five years. Even totalitarian States have their own farcical electoral processes. The nature of socio religious contradictions that plague some of the countries inhabited by diverse races, cultures and religions often make it extremely difficult to cultivate healthy democratic traditions. Ina social milieu of a country like India where highly surcharged communal passions rather than secular political agendas rule the voters’ mind, democracy has little chance to take roots, much less thrive. The edifice of democracy cannot be raised on token gestures or hollow oaths. To evolve a truly democratic system, it is imperative to have an independent judiciary, a free and autonomous media, a fully accountable legislature, a service oriented bureaucracy and an unadulterated secularism.
India claims to be a democracy but has so far failed to develop even one of these essential features of the democratic system. It functions more in line with the totalitarian regimes, Indian judiciary is nothing but helpless plaything in the hands of the all-powerful Executive. Judges have lost their integrity and are swayed by either communal or fiscal considerations. The major media organs like radio and T.V. are exclusively owned by the government and present colored and twisted versions of the events. Newspapers thrive on government patronage and generally speak the ruler’s language. Any one playing a different tune has to go through the disquieting experience to which the Indian Express, the largest English language daily, was subjected simply because it dared to expose corruption in the top levels of the administration.
In the Indian Parliament, the opposition moves to get the wrongs corrected meet with cacophonous catcalls from the treasury benches. The ruling party members act like drafted cheerleaders. A little “indiscretion” results in us expulsion from the party. V.P. Singh, Arif Mohammad and Arun Nehru were hounded out for striking a “discordant” note. The Indian bureaucracy constitutes a corrupt crowd of spineless timeservers.
Besides, secularism is something alien to the caste ridden Hindu psyche. Rather to perpetuate the dynastic rule, communal passions are cunningly fanned and exploited. India has been converted into a virtual Hindu theocratic state where religious minorities have no rights and are being coerced to embrace Hinduism. The Muslims and the Sikhs are facing the worst siege. If at all there is any semblance of democracy in India, it is confined to Hindus alone. For other religious groups, it is pure and simple a fascist regime.
President Reagan and other leaders of the free world need of recognize that India is also another phoney ‘democracy that occasionally makes calculated token gestures like the Sandinista regime to deceive the world. They ‘also need to tell India in forthright terms that the free world ‘will not hesitate to club it with South Africa if it persists with its present persecution of the religious minorities.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 2, 1987
