In a democratic republic an individual should be the unit for
governance. His or her identification to a particular community should be of
limited political relevance. However, India’s diverse social and unequal economic
fabric has been prostituted to the advantage of political parties which claim
to represent the cause or identity of one specific community as distinguishable
from the other.
Irony of such representative politics is that it seeks to ameliorate the
conditions of the very sect on whose social or economic backwardness it
justifies its own existence. If the identifiable group is no longer deprived,
the existence of a separate political outfit will be redundant. The political
party who claims to work for the poor has every incentive to ensure that there
should always be zillions of those. The need for continued political relevance compels
them to work positively to ensure that anything that fuels the mobilization of
the group is avoided at all cost.
Worthlessness of this brand of politics is empirically proven. It is
this brand of politics that allows Bahujan Samaj Party in ensuring that the
deprivation does not leave the marginalised scheduled tribes. It allows Rashtriya
Janta Dal to be sole guardian the Muslim-Yadav community and the poorest of the
poor and do nothing to benefit them. It
allowed the congress to permanently reverse the path towards uniform civil code
by nullifying the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court and bending backwards
repeatedly by sustaining regressive and archaic laws which would be despicable
by any objective standard in a civilized society. So convenient and addictive
was this trend that they had the audacity to subvert the constitution by
introducing religious based reservation, prejudicing the interest the very
muslim community which it claimed to represent.
Acceptability of this politics grants the party an immunity from any
level of underperformance or corruption as ability to govern was never the
basis for their claim for power. It is contagious as it almost forces other
political rivals to adopt similar pattern. Consequently, what the country witnessed
the creation and widening of social divide, invention of competitive and often
conflicting identities and precedence of symbolism over substance. Meanwhile,
the national interest is relegated leaving the identity of an individual as
Indian largely irrelevant.
The last thing that a community would need to secure its identity is
self-proclaimed political guardians.
