The Hindu Business Line : Is India’s culture democratic?

When, a few weeks ago, the West Bengal Governor, Mr Gopal Krishna Gandhi, sought to identify himself with the misery of the people going without electricity for long periods by voluntarily subjecting the Raj Bhavan to a power supply cut for two hours daily during the most uncomfortably humid part of the day, the venerable CPI(M) patriarch, Mr Jyoti Basu, upbraided him by calling his gesture of solidarity with the people chelemanushi (childish).

I now came across a striking piece of news published in The Hindu of June 26, 1958, to the effect that China’s 60-year-old Prime Minister, Mr Zhou Enlai, spent three days as a labourer carrying stones on the site of the Ming Toms giant reservoir project. He led two groups of Ministers, heads of departments and Communist Party officials, who left their city offices to spend two weeks as labourers, sleeping at the site in temporary hostels. Earlier, the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, also worked on the site, in line with a Communist Party directive to all executives to work as labourers. I have found in the media another revealing snippet that the Chinese President, Mr Hu Jintao, has opened an Internet window through which he exchanges views with the aam aadmi in China and personally answers their questions.

Would Mr Jyoti Basu apply the same yardstick as he did to Mr Gopal Gandhi, and dub the sharing of the plight of the people by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Hu Jintao and other Communist Party leaders as chelemanushi?

Let me share my own experience in the so-called democratic Indian Republic which solemnly guarantees liberty, equality and fraternity. I am a senior citizen with some public service, for what it is worth, to my credit. And yet, my letters to officials of the rank of Secretaries and Chief Secretaries do not fetch any replies, and my phone calls are not returned. This kind of disdainful attitude is not confined to officialdom. All better-off classes of society are equally prone to it. On the other hand, you will find any message to persons in the UK or the US will get you a prompt return message.

Even invitations to social functions (wedding, birth anniversary etc) which are of the utmost importance to the persons and families concerned go without an appropriate response. Snobbery still rules daily life. The English-educated elite consider it infra dig to speak in their mother tongue, and look down upon those who cannot handle English well or are unfamiliar with it.

Feudal and autocratic

The other day I was participating in a public function in which a newsletter pertaining to a town in the interior of Tamil Nadu was being launched by a group of citizens hailing from the place. All speeches were in English. I made the suggestion, when my turn came, to adopt Tamil as the medium for the paper since it would be concerned with the events and experiences of the local people who may not be comfortable in English. A Central Cabinet Minister, belonging to Tamil Nadu, who spoke after me, took me to task for being parochial, when, according to him, the need of the hour was to be a citizen of the world, knowing and speaking as many languages as possible.

If you look around, even 60 years after claiming to shake ourselves off foreign shackles, the Indian upper class, and most notably the political and governing classes, are still steeped in the old feudal, authoritarian, autocratic mindset, with contempt for the dhoti-clad aam aadmi. Only when they consider themselves part of the common people will India deserve to be called a genuine democracy.

May be, Mao Zedong’s treatment will do them a lot of good!

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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