Whether we appreciate those who challenge a leader when their conscience is threatened or whether we see their reactions, for or against, as being street smart, the fact remains that those that dare take important decisions and carry them out, they are more concerned with a greater task; for them there is a line that they toe because they know that the fabric of the society is at stake in the instance that they are in and so they do, all and everyone of them will do, what they think is best for the society. This is what can be assessed (from face value, because what is unseen is still unseen on the 11th March 2024) in the recent resignation of the Election Commissioner Arun Goel on the 9th of March 2024, just months away from a nationwide parliamentary election.
Even the most dangerous man becomes the most useful when it comes to the preservation of the society for the simple fact that everyone nurtures and expects that in the course of the growth of any society there are certain instincts of goodness without which society would long have become rotten and weak. And the reason for this imperative to preserve the society above self can only be traced back to the fact that the individual nurtures in him or her that which society nurtures instinctively – its own preservation and that without this instinct in society, society would have long become feeble and rotten.
In a sense society is family and those that make up the family, mother, father and child, know that they are not, as individuals, more important than the family. Those that do not have this instinctive love of family in them, are essentially the ones that do not have family, that do not know what family ties really means…they are the selfish individuals, individuals that seek only the love of self and hatred of everyone else. They find delight in creating mischief and misfortunes upon others, they lust after nothing more than to rob and dominate and whatever else is called evil against the natural growth and establishment of a society, and the preservation of that society.
Such persons are capable of sacrificing the greatest strength of a society for their own selfish ideals for the simple reason that they have no children, and know not what it is to experience the love of others and the love from others, and the preservation of that upon which their children have grown, and will grow. These are the deluded members of the human race – of the society – and it is against such people that a society finds the greatest reason to unite and oppose. And when a society unites in the knowledge of the threat that it is confronted with there is no price too high that it can squander, and though society may appear foolish and risky now and then, it has been proven time and time again that in the final countdown, it has preserved itself. We need not go back too far in the history of any society to see that this is precisely what has happened in the face of all odds.
And Arun Goel’s’ sudden decision to retire as the Election Commissioner is precisely that, wrapped in peals of political speculation – speculation that he will now contest for parliamentary election on the BJP ticket from his native Punjab to the “I salute him for not succumbing to pressure by Delhi leaders” from Mamata Bannerjee the Chief Minister of West Bengal. What Mamata has shown is that she is very much a person of the society, for the society and by the society, and she my dear friends and neighbours is no different from the average person in any society who is not capable of living in a way that would damage the society in a lasting way, in other words, “unreasonably” and “badly.”
In a society perhaps the greatest threat that can come against it is a dictatorial ruler who is an undemocratic leader, and many have come to understand, even the younger generation, that the threat to the Indian society is that it is losing its democratic fabric in exchange for an “Electoral Autocracy” which is a controlled way, or a sweeter way or a softer way of calling it an Electoral Dictatorship. That which is obviously harmful to society may have become extinct many years ago (there was a threat to the Indian Society in the 1970s) and may by now be one of those threats that we cannot perceive in our wildest dreams or entertain by any stretch of our imagination, and so the first signs of such a threat immediately stirs the people to action.
Whether we follow our best or our worst desires, whether we support this or that political party regardless, we will probably find that in some way we are still promoters and benefactors of society above anything else. There can never be anyone who can wholly mock us as individuals when we bring home the fact of the boundless truth that in the final analysis we are in every way like the homing pigeon. What I mean is that the proposition, “society is everything” essentially means the individual is nothing.
We may for a time venture here and there alone but finally we return to that which is collectively considered as normal…socially normal. The individual is only an individual if there is a society, because this eventually is our ultimate liberation from the bonds of personal responsibility for what becomes of a society – freedom from the sheer madness of being an individual is now accessible to all and everyone. Perhaps this is what our DNA is composed of – we are a gregarious species and we can do nothing about that and anyone who tries to fight against this eventually lands “down” dead and buried.
For the present things are still quite fluid when we consider the Indian society; we still live in an age of religious bigotry, religious tragedies, and religious immoralities and above all the age of religious politics. What is the meaning of all this ever new religious madness that is going on in India? What is the meaning of this notion that in some states a law will be passed to ban faith healing when all healing is by faith, at least that is what any doctor will tell you…“Believe that you will be healed and the medicine will work.” That is the question everyone is asking themselves as if they do not know the answer to the questions they are raising. Everyone is asking, “What is this new avatar of politics that it now has taken upon itself as the instigator of morality? How does politics suddenly derive the authority of a moral judge? How has politics become the instigator of fights over moral valuations?”
Thus far politics confined itself to development and progress and politicians confined themselves to seeing that it came about. Suddenly there is this urge for politicians to impose themselves upon moral valuations and with it they have become the teachers, the promoters of religious aggression. They actually take their position on a stage as if from a pulpit, from a “Manch.”
So far we have appreciated the progress that is evidently taking place right before our eyes, the roads are no longer what they were a few years back, the problems we had a few years back when commuting seem to have vanished into thin air and we appreciate all that and everything else, even if at times it was all that could be seen, and we viewed the champions of these changes as our heroes, whether it was the huge 18-wheelers that now ran along these roads or the changes in the wings, all round development was taking place, these heroes deserved applause, deserved to be re-elected.
But now things have changed, it is clear that when there is no further progress in roads and bridges that these politicians can visualise with their limited narrow mindedness, tragedies are bound to surface and the tragedies surface in the name of God or the work they can do as God’s emissaries. Now our politicians have come to realise that they can not only do man’s work but can even venture to start doing God’s work on earth and hope that in the process they are promoting life, and making life worth living. They have forgotten their goal is to promote society, they have usurped the role of the priests instead who remind us that there is another life after this one, and that spirit life is as important as life in the flesh and blood, and that there is a behind life, beneath life and an above life.
And in this entire drama one can see that there are many “Arun Goels” many “Nitish Kumars” who are beginning to realise, that this instinct of politicians to go beyond the normal political field or political instinct is going against the basic fabric of the highest and the basest men in society – going against the instinct for the preservation of the society. This has now erupted as a passion of the spirit, surrounded by a resplendent retinue of reasons which makes them realise that, at bottom there is an instinct, a drive maybe even a folly for lack of any describable reason, that life in a society is basically diverse and that in this diversity there is a unity that binds, a love that binds, because people must progress and in the process their neighbours too must also progress and thereby we become interesting to ourselves once again.
