The Hindu Business Line : "Flawed democracy"?

THE US State Department has had the temerity, in a 71-page report on human rights, to call India, a "flawed democracy" for reasons of violence during elections, allegations of corruption influencing court decisions, police brutalities, atrocities by both government forces and domestic and foreign militants in Kashmir and other States, "deep-rooted" tension between Muslims and Hindus, and between Hindus and Christians, and restrictions on religious and academic freedom.

It accuses the members of the BJP, the RSS and other affiliated organisations of harassing and at times threatening the use of violence against Christians and Muslims.

It is egregiously pretentious of a government to arrogate to itself the right to throw stones from its glass house at a sister democracy which is second to none, and may even be superior to some other cultures, in terms of value systems, resilience and vitality. The US conveniently forgets that it is not merely that all men and women are equal (as its Constitution resoundingly proclaims) but that all nations too are entitled to equal respect and understanding. No nation should presume to impose on the rest of the world its own prescriptions of right and wrong, or proper and improper. It is this supercilious attitude that has given birth to the doctrine of obliteration of regimes which do not toe the US line even if it be by resorting to Goebbels-like viciously false propaganda.

Admitted that there are incidents of violence during elections in India, they should be viewed in the context of an electorate of 700 million and 650,000 polling centres, spread over a country of sub-continental dimensions of mind-boggling complexity and diversity. Certainly, the management of the polling operations on this gigantic scale has been much smoother and more credible than the one that put Mr George W. Bush in the White House in 2000.

It is unfair to blacken a democracy as flawed simply because of stray cases of excesses whether of police or the deviant fringes of society. It is not that the US can claim to be free of large-scale corruption and numerous examples of execrable governance.

Looked at critically, there is plenty in the US to find fault with. For that reason, will it be civilised to malign it in unacceptable language in an official document meant to be made public?

B. S. Raghavan

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