Unfortunately this has been the political discourse in this country for the past two decades. Each political party blames others to hide their own faults. While it might create favourable election results in short term, the problems that they are running away from does not exist in some other world but are the living realities of millions in this nation. Nobody, neither the elite politicians and privileged few nor the downtrodden millions can run away from the mounting social crisis. A question becomes harder the longer you avoid it. We are staring at a large scale societal unrest and instability but by blaming its genesis on someone else we cannot run away from its consequences.
A very vital question we must ask here is how did we reach this sorry state of politics? Starting from the high moral and value based politics how did we became oblivious and inconsiderate towards our poor millions? One of the most popular maxim on politics tells us, politicians speak whatever we want them to say. I am not the strongest believer of this maxim but it does point out to the pathetic public discourse we live in. We the people find it very convenient to blame everything on someone else when we are ourselves guilty of the same sins. Students would blame teachers for the poor quality of education while he would not invest a single bit of himself in the process of learning, common man would blame government for the misery of society but would dare not invest himself in its betterment. The worst fact about the latter is if given the opportunity every common man would take on the same political coat and do the same derogatory regressive acts as he accuses the current political classes for. This public discourse allows politicians to blame each other easily or the politics of blaming each other drives this public discourse is a question we can debate on, but the existence of this regressive nature of our public and political discourse should be agreeable to all.
In every walk of life we would put the blame on someone else to hide our own deficiencies.
Now i would like to discuss why I don’t believe in the above political maxim. The fact that public discourse shapes political thought is in itself a very restricted lens to understand politics. All revered politicians across the world share some common feature amongst them. I would like to point out two very important characteristics shared by these men: One, the ability to accept the wrong within them and two, the ability to look beyond public discourse and give the society a new path to walk upon. I would like to bring forward some of the most revered public figure around the world and some of their believes here. Mahatma Gandhi is not just the most revered but one of the most pragmatic leader of this nation. While discussing the direction our independence movement should take, it seemed certain to all other leaders of the time that it has to direct, aggressive and if necessary violent. This seemed as the only way to undo the injustice suffered by Indians at the hands of British, but Gandhi argued that we must change their minds and not kill them for weaknesses that we all posses. And if we are to ever do this we must first purge ourselves from the deficiencies that we all have but find it convenient to blame and point out in others. While it might sound an ordinary story, the man with his personal sacrifices changed the discourse of an entire nation and stitched a non violent movement against the mightiest empire and at the same time attempted to reconstruct the society that wished to fight for its independence. Mandela during the South African anti-apartheid movement championed the cause of tolerance and forgiveness towards those who subjected an entire race to the most inhuman treatment for centuries. The entire discourse in the nation especially amongst the black population was driven by hate and revenge but one man with his pragmatism and devotion towards a cause transformed the entire social fabric of a nation.
Through this article all I want to point out is that we all are deficient and we all are flawed. Rather than hiding those deficiencies and imperfection by blaming it on others we should try to accept them and transform ourselves. Such actions would create ripples of transformation that would change both the political and public discourse and at the same time weave a a new thread in our social fabric.
समाज समाचार 