Democracy: A vote for nation, caste, religion?

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"Opiates are the religion of the masses!"

From Bachchoo’s Das

Sassural (Vol. I)

Augest.08 : Tony Blair’s press secretary said "we don’t do God". He thought it would sound eccentric if Tony began, as American Presidents do, to call on the grace of the Almighty. They praise God and sanction the ammunition.

Indian politicians have to be all things to all religions in a heterogeneous country. Congresswallahs have to celebrate iftaar parties and be seen to be pious without bias. The Bharatiya Janata Party probably don’t care to be seen celebrating Christmas or sending Eid Mubarak greetings to Gujarati Muslims, but they are prone to folding their hands in obeisance to the avatars of Lord Vishnu and, yes, they "do God" in a big way. It is part of the game of democracy in countries such as India and the United States of America.

And so it may have been in Britain before the 19th century brought in a certain amount of tolerance and scepticism. The voters, while guided by God, would and did vote in a converted Jew as their Prime Minister. It wouldn’t matter today if the candidate for the highest office were a Catholic or a Jew, though it may matter if he or she were Muslim. In the last century, US voters were more than comfortable with the fact that John F. Kennedy (what does the "F" stand for? Not "Farrukh", surely!) was a Catholic and today it doesn’t seem to matter that Barrack Obama’s middle name is Hussein.

One can’t imagine Iran electing a Hindu or Buddhist President. Its democracy is constitutionally Islamic and by definition limits the religion of the rulers. The "mature" democracies are tending towards "not doing God".

This is a pragmatic rather than constitutional evolution. In practice, what do these mature democracies expect from those they elect?

The present scandal in Britain, with serialised revelations about the members of Parliament abusing the system of claiming expenses to absurd degrees, has certainly caused the voters to react violently. In the words of David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister-in-waiting, the voters are "pissed off" with politicians.

He used the phrase in a nationally broadcast interview and may just about have done it unwittingly. I doubt it. He followed it soon after in the same interview with the word "twat", which is slang for female genitalia. He apologised immediately, in the manner of a man who slipped into his private argot in a public speech. Who is he kidding? The mild swearing and the apology from this former PR man were calculated to spotlight him in the colours of the straight-talking bloke, albeit one who knows that ultimately, while representing the nation, one needs to bow or at least nod towards a certain decorum.

The news from Italy, which demonstrates that Senor Berlusconi’s popularity ratings are not suffering from revelations that he phones and entertains prostitutes, may have influenced Cameron’s advisers to let slip these mild macho words. And I believe his little slips into common bar-room parlance will not, despite the sanctimonious comments they have elicited from some parts of the British press, damage his popularity. Quite the opposite. The men will appreciate the "real man" and the women will support plain speaking.

It’s the way "mature" democracy works.

I have in recent weeks read a lot of rot written about democracy and its betrayal, mostly from people who seem to love the sound of their own voices (I can see them reading their mixed metaphors aloud to themselves). There may have been nuggets of wisdom and insight in these ramblings, but like the blind gold-miner, listening to the babble of the highland stream, I missed them.

There is probably a great deal to say about Indian democracy and the system we constitutionally adopted in imitation of the Westminster model and someone should write a serious book. It has, over the years since the Congress Party, inheritor of nationalist sentiment swept the polls, evolved in a direction unique in history. It doesn’t need saying that "democracy", the system of one individual adult with one equal vote, will sooner or later result in that vote being cast in a way which maximises the material and social advantage of the voter.

This is not absolute and always so. The proletariat may and does vote for parties which openly favour the capitalist but in so doing expresses an endorsement of inequality and embraces the American dream. Free vote.

Indian democracy has evolved in a unique way because regional demands displaced the early fervent nationalism and subsequently even this regional allegiance was supplanted by the rise, the atma-vishwas, of caste groups and variegated interests who voted for those who would putatively represent them. The fact that those seeking office were unabashedly keen on trousering the corrupt benefits of power rather than legislating for the common good was never a factor in this evolution from nationalism to regionalism to caste and religious allegiance.

Neither has this shift in political demographic encouraged the "maturity" of our democracy. Such a "maturity" depends on a vibrant and politically-untied free press, a vast or at least significant educated class which can hold the elected representatives to account at every turn and a virulent rejection of corruption. And this last cannot be a moral duty. It has to be incorporated into the acts and procedures of accountability.

Indian democracy has evolved none of these, though very many green shoots are evident. At several levels even the judiciary is financially corrupt and subject to political pressure.

The country goes to the polls at regular intervals and that certainly means that India has resisted dictatorial forms of governance, but that’s no indication that our democracy works. It rumbles and rattles along. In Western democracies, people vote through some algebraic balance between ideological allegiance and the material advantage of their class. The working classes and unemployed of America will vote for a politician who offers a comprehensive free medical service but there will be issues on which the blacks, Hispanic and "red-neck" working classes vote in opposition to each other.

In India the material interests of voters are assumed to follow the contours of religion, caste and sub-caste. In an expanding economy with decreasingly "reserved" employment, the match between material advantage and caste will get blurred.

Then it may be that the country can discard the Joans-of-Arc model of democracy where public spirited individuals elect themselves to speak for those whom they characterise as voiceless.

Farrukh Dhondy