• Ponmala

Since the two hundred thousand years that the human race is believed to have made its appearance on the face of the earth, it has been on a path of relentless progress. Although that progress has on the whole been imperceptibly slow, there have been in between certain periods marked by giant leaps. The past couple of centuries have witnessed a string of massive breakthroughs, made possible by scientific research that led to mind boggling inventions. They literally changed the face of the earth through industrialisation, speedy travel, space exploration, information explosion, and now artificial intelligence. Concurrently, on the social and political front there was the emergence and spread of modern democracy. While the West has been enjoying the fruits of these changes for more than a century, they have been in the most part made available to India only since the past seven decades. And when they came, they rushed in almost like a flash flood, plunging our social, cultural, moral and emotional moorings into a turmoil, some for the good and some for the bad.
The generation that was born during the World War ll and a decade later have enjoyed the unique privilege of living through the static old and the surging new. Theirs has been a golden era when leavening moral values produced the golden era of worldwide democracy: almost all of the colonised nations of Asia and Africa that won freedom during that period opted for democracy. That golden era of democracy is now on the wane, for the simple reason that the moral fabric on which it was knit is now fast falling apart. Democracy, by its very nature, allows weeds to grow along with the crop. And so, time and again it gets choked by thorns of fanatic nationalism and religio-cultural bigotry when left undeterred.
It was to escape the torment of tyrannical kings spawned by dynastic monarchies that human ingenuity came up with the concept of rule of the people, by the people and for the people. Thrones that were adorned by kings who were worshipped as divine avatars were consigned to museums and in their place came rulers who were subjected to the same laws that the ordinary citizens had to adhere to. But that scenario is being overturned now. Parochial considerations are prompting people to elect rulers who, as in the case of Donald Trump, claim to be above the law of the land and, as in the case of Modi, claim to be of divine origin. What’s more, a recent judgement by USA’s supreme of court has laid the axe to the root of democracy. As per the Supreme Court’s six-to-three ruling, the US president can commit any crime with immunity as long as it is presumably done as part of his official duty. Modi and Putin have achieved the same for all practical purposes by buying off or arm-twisting the courts and other constitutional institutions, which are the guardrails of democracy. In short, the generation that enjoyed the golden age of democracy is now glaring at its demise. What a fall from euphoria to despair!
The danger to democracy has always been there even in America, which has fought wars in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and now supports Ukraine in its war against Russia, in its role as the guardian of democracy worldwide. There have been American presidents who read the constitution in such a way as to support an authoritarian vision of the presidency. John Adams saw analogies between monarchs and presidents. Andrew Johnson compared himself to Moses. Nixon spoke of his vast presidential powers, which lead him to think that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Unfortunately, there is now in America a Christian cultural phenomenon pitted against a counter-Christian cultural phenomenon.
But all seems not to be lost yet. In the just concluded general elections, the people of India snubbed Modi by giving him far less than the 400 plus seats that would have put the stamp of approval to his claim of divine origin. It shows there are still in our country a significant number of right-minded people who retain the acumen to distinguish between fake Ram from the righteous Ram. The decline of democracy is emblematic of society’s moral decline. As President Biden said, “Character in public life matters. We are a great nation, because we are a good people.” From it also follows that good people elect good rulers and bad people elect bad rulers.
The gospel values and democratic values are interchangeable. And that was why democracies first thrived in the Christian West. Even if churches have been converted into bars, brewpubs and other venues in that part of the world, there still remains rooted there a Christian ethos on which democracy thrives. The fuel that feeds the torchbearers of democracy are the gospel values. And therefore, to safeguard democracy is to safeguard the gospel values. Both are so essential to the progress of the human spirit and also so fragile that we need to vigilantly guard them, even if at great costs.