Winston Churchill, WW-II British Prime Minister, made this famous pronouncement on government and democracy :
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947
What he said in 1947 has become a very famous quotable quote in the world everywhere, of course … But methinks Churchill was lying through his cigar-chewing teeth.
We must ask ourselves if during his reign as the Queen of Great Britain’s Prime Minister , did Churchill lift even a finger for the cause of Democracy anywhere else in the brutally colonised British Empire? The answer is No … from anyone who understands the 20th century world history.
History tells us that Pax Brittanica was just about as anti-democratic as any other fascist-state that ruled parts of the world through the centuries before the British Empire came on the scene… Roman, Ottoman, Islamic Caliphate, Mongol …
Today , Churchill’s quote is reverentially used by all us even in India as though it were some kind of sacred mantra to be uttered whenever we want to either sanctify or defend Democracy, but little knowing that even the Devil can quote scripture .
///********///
For the ordinary man on the street — like me, for instance — in a such an overly populous republic as India … what’s it really that I’m expecting my so-called elected government to do ?
Is it to create a perfect society ? No , not at all… The Utopian idea of society is a fool’s paradise … And common men and women are not such fools .
Ordinary citizens can tolerate an imperfect society … but what they abhor is an unjust society .. This truism, to me at least, is, in fact, the very essence of what in our ancient culture was known as Raja Dharma .
A government can take any form or shape … and it can go ahead and fashion society in any way it deems fit, politically, economically , technologically etc. … And it can go about doing its job of governance through any system or political order I.e. according to a monarchic or dynastic tradition of succession, or else , according to a republican Constitution, or according to democratic , electoral processes , or according to an autocratic system of ruling order, etc … or indeed by whatever other governance model by whatever name given it …. The people really don’t care … so long as they are able to feel secure and content living in what they know to be is a society where imperfections, yes, maybe do exist, but then there is, indubitably, also to be found only the very least of injustice generally right across the length and breadth of the country …
That in my view is what the entire philosophy of Dharma all about …
The so-called great and wise Churchillian doctrine hails only Democracy . It says however nothing at all about Dharma because it knows nothing about Dharma .
In my view, however, you can claim to be representing the best model of democracy in the entire world prevailing inside any country , or as Churchill said, claim to be the least imperfect democracy working inside any other land … and yet, I can tell you this with conviction, you can still see it as completely bereft of Dharma … justice or Raja Dharma .
What is the use then of Democracy to a common man like me?
A democracy without dharma is like a man who has lost both limbs . He can be made to walk, of course, with prosthetic limbs fitted into him . But then that is only going to make him able to limp along … but never will he be able to walk erect … proudly with his head held high.
Indian Democracy , in my view, is therefore wholly prosthetic in structure … It is not at all naturally orthopaedic.
When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution of this country , they drew inspiration and ideas for it from all other constitutions of the modern western civilisation … but deliberately and totally ignored the very mainspring of our own civilisation — the central idea of Dharma . Our Constitution is emblazoned and smattered with such words as Democracy , Socialism, Secularism … etc … but it’s painful to an ordinary man like me to see that it does not even mention the word Dharma or Raja Dharma anywhere in its pages … !
Our founding fathers gave us a gift, it seems to me, wrapped in fancy, shiny, attractive cellophane-package called Democracy. When we opened it, however, alas, we found nothing inside it we had expected viz. the gift of justice … no, there just wasn’t any gift of Dharma to be found…
A Democracy not rooted in Dharma is lame. It will hobble along , maybe … but I as a commoner, do not see it journeying very far a distance into the future.
Sudarshan Madabushi