Comment

When Narendra Modi won the assembly elections in Gujarat in 2002, soon after at least 2,000 Muslims were massacred in that state, the Bharatiya Janata Party threw its hands up in the air, and said to all detractors, “Hey, that’s democracy.”

And guess what? They were right. Of course the riots shouldn’t have happened in a well-run civil state,of course the riots were the death of the Indian dream of a fair nation. But Modi winning the elections? Heck, that’s democracy at work.

Democracy is the greatest good for the greatest number. It’s not perfect. Far from it. A benevolent dictatorship might well be perfect, but improbable. How do you guarantee the benevolent part?

So where do we fit in the latest diatribe by our One Person Republic of the Self, the Conscience of the Nation, the Woman who is an Island unto Herself? On Arundhati Roy’s recent visit to the United States, she suddenly stopped reading from her book (the one and only God of Small Things). “There’s something I have to tell you,”she said, “‘The biggest PR myth of all times is that India is a democracy. In reality, it is not.”

One of Roy’s most endearing characteristics is the enchanting naiveté she brings to all her causes. There is passion, there is intelligence—certainly, she is one of the most intelligent Indians in our public space—there is talent, there is argument too. But every argument, whether it is nuclear explosions or big dams or riots, is tinged with a little-girl-lost-in-the-woods quality. Her opponents are usually man-eating sharks, which is fun but hardly takes the discussion forward.

This latest hissy fit though must lead us to re-question the role that she who seceded from the Indian Union after the Pokhran blasts, in a brilliantly impassioned essay, plays in the world today. “There is no real democracy in India. Several Indian states are on the verge of a civil war.”

Huh?

Roy took exception to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the darling of all nationalist, capitalist Indians for his yeoman service in bringing the new Indian economy to the world, to America and at the very least, to the readers of The New York Times. Friedman should visit those parts of India which aren’t call centres, she said.

Fact is, the world has visited all those other parts of India all too many times since 1947. And many horrible places still do exist—300 million below the poverty line, Naxal attacks, caste atrocities, displaced peoples, insurgency, terrorism. No one denies these. No one can.

But are they undemocratic?

India, complained Roy, is a free market meant to steal from the poor and subsidise the rich. Gosh, that sounds like that other democracy, whatsisname? The USA? But then that’s not a democracy either, right?

Maybe we need to redefine the whole thing. A democracy ain’t: A perfect system. A fair system. A system that brings justice to everyone. A system that makes all poor people rich. A system that makes all rich people poor. Or even a system that makes all rich people caring and generous. A system that removes all inequalities.

These political systems have existed in the past. They’ve been called monarchies, theocracies, dictatorships, oligarchies, and most recently, fascism and communism.

End of brief history lesson.

As for Roy, she might consider inventing a new form of government. Whatever works when you’re both the ruler and the subject.