Indian Sawaal-My India, My Views

India is one of oldest civilizations in the world. This land of more than billion people has had many many people who influenced history and directed the flow of civilization. From Indus valley civilization to vedic age to buddist era to mughals to britishers to modern India .

India is land of diverse group of people belonging to various faiths , various languages , various traditions. Being second most fertile land in the world and being business center in ancient times , India was time and again being raided and invaded by various groups. Some came just for looting while some made India their homes. With invasion came initial clash and then acceptance .

Since 5000 years of civilization , India has seen many great souls . Souls who became legends, who became heros and who became immortal with their names becoming synonyms of courage , of peace , of bravery , of rightousness.

Lord Ram , Lord Hanuman , Maata Sita , Lord Krishna , Arjun , Bhim , Buddha , Mahavir , Ashoka , Chandra Gupt , Rana Sangha , Rana Pratap , Akhbar , Rani Laxmi Bai , Rani Padamini , Humayu , Bhagat Singh , Netaji , Sukhdev , Chandra Shekar Azad , B R Ambedkar , Sarojni naidu , mangal padney , sardar patel , lokmaniya tilak , nehru and  Mahatma Gandhi.

India has had many legends , many heros and many inspirations.Contribution of above mentioned names and many other names which are not mentioned above have had immense contribution in directing , developing and evolving thought process of civilization . Their life set standards , their life became examples and their life became source of inspiration.

Some became gods who were worshipped , some became super humans while some remained as pinnacle of respect. But with that it also gave rise to traditional problem of  India and that is hero worship. The trend which fails to die and trend which makes society vunerable to critisim of any hero and trend which makes India fail to analyze lives in balanced perceptive.

Human race always needed hero be it be  fictious characters like super man , batman or be it be real characters like mahatma or rani laxmi bai. We need inspirations , standards and role models and there is nothing wrong in it.

But inability or rather lack of will to analyze humans in balanced way has negative aspect related to hero worship too. The best example of traditional hero worship can be understood by nehru-gandhi family.

Now to make things clearer nehru-gandhi family is not related with mahatma gandhi . It is clan related to jawarharlal nehru. Rahul/Priyanka/Varun are fifth generation of nehru clan. Motilal nehru , father of jawarharlal was first person from the family to enter politics. He was followed by his son who became first prime minister of India. Later his daughter became prime minister and with entry of Indira gandhi , the family enterprise of usually democractic congress began. After assisination of Indira gandhi , rajiv took the command of party and became prime minister . When rajiv was assisinated , his widow sonia gandhi , temporarily withdrew from politics for few years. She returned to become party chief and now her son rahul gandhi is active in politics and is most likely to become prime minister of India , once Dr manmohan singh retires.

Dr manmohan singh is expected to finish the present term. He would be in late 70s once his term gets over and in next election 5th generation of nehru-gandhi clan is expected to become prime minister of India.

Rahul gandhi is young , sincere and is making serious efforts to get acquainted with India . He travels a lot and is working hard to re generate the grass root worker base for congress all over India. He is not taking his position for granted and no one can question his sincerity and his keen desire to work for India.

Having said that the biggest problem which congress in particular and media/congress loyalist in general are facing is hero worship. While nehru clan has done some great job for India , the hero worship towards one family has done harm to congress in larger way.

Critisim of Indira , Nehru , Rajiv or sonia is dealt with severe opposition by grand old party. Behaviour of grand old party is like this family is divine which can do nothing wrong. Now making gods out of humans can be dangerous because it blinds from analyzing and learning.

To understand how it has harmed congress , we need to understand what was congress . Congress is oldest party of India . It was first genuine inclusive forum to represent India. It genuinely tried to be inclusive and had muslims , dalits and woman representation along with other hindu communities. It was genuinely democratic force which tried to understand concerns of all and tried to have representations of all in the party. It used to have party chief elections which were democratic and one didn’t need to belong to one family to become party chief.

The biggest strength of mahatma was his ability to spot leadership talent , nurture it , test it by allowing to handle movement . Gandhiji had more than 10 people who could have become primeminister of India. He had team of leaders.

Today’s congress has set of people who have necessary skills to handle any job but it has rider attached to it. Rider is that the person must be loyal to nehru family to become prime minister of India.

Any person who is amibitious , full of ideas and zeal but lacks afinity towards nehru family wont be able to rise in congress. The hero worship has taken over and it shows not just in party but in media too. Recently the prince of congress and future prime minister of India turned 41 . Now whether he celebrated his birthday or not is what we dont know but media did. Some ran story called ‘change is here’ , some published list of unmarried woman who can become rahul’s wife , some wrote about how rahul change xyz in congress and such things.

Sadly this hero worship is not just limited to congress . Hero worship is seen in almost all parties and politics is becoming family enterprise for most of parties of India. SP , DMK , Shiv Sena , National Congress all have become family enterprise. Even pakistan too have family enterprise in PPP and PML-N. Zardari is still loosing ground but sharifs are kings in PML-N.

It is like dynasty where prince is considered to be legitimate heir of throne. Prince is special because he is born in some family. His birth in family is enough proof for his claim on throne and I am not talking about times of mughal or mauryas , I am talking about largest democracy of the world!!!!!!!!

Ideally in democracy it would be highly appreciative if parties have candidates who want to become prime minister. Then we can have live debate among those candidates and depending of public opinion that candidate should be projected as prime minister candidate by the party , much before elections.

It should not be ‘decision would be taken by high command’ theme. There is only one high command in democracy and that is people of India , rest are servers who are given mandate to serve.

I just hope that issue which has been part of Indian since thousands of years is dealt with and we give this hero worship trend so that democracy can prevail in real terms.