Forget the poll dance. This is the revenge of democracy. Who could have imagined that last fortnight’s electoral verdict would have overnight rendered battle hardened princes into political paupers? Not me. Or for that matter, make a backroom manipulator of an empress dowager? You know who I am pointing at. But that’s the Verdict. And it ought to be respected. No government can take its people for granted.
Manmohan Singh’s elevation to the prime minister’s office has provoked lavish praise on the lady who should have been the queen. The best I could have imagined goes thus: Hell hath seen no fury like a woman scorned. How apt for Sonia. But was Sonia’s the ultimate act of renunciation? I doubt that very much. Sonia Gandhi knew too well, perhaps, that the people’s mandate was not for her to rule; it was to rid the BJP of power. And for all that it stood for.
Now go beyond mathematical calculations. What does the verdict mean? Let’s put it simply like this: People, cutting across ideological affiliations, caste and communal loyalties, have said one thing through their fractured mandate: We don’t need the archetypal politician to rule us any longer. We don’t need a one-party rule to take India backward. Take it or leave it, the choice is ours. In a way, the verdict says in two words what BJP sought to convince the electorate all along: India Shining. Elections 2002 ended in India’s finest hour.
What else explains that for the first time in history of electoral democracies, perhaps, we have a head of government who cannot possibly win a mandate. The last time Manmohan Singh went to the hustings in India’s most prosperous and politically aware constituency, South Delhi, he lost convincingly to a veteran. Now you could call him the child of circumstances. I’d rather say he’s a definitive creation of history.
Now, take another look. Also, possibly for the first time in history, a country has both a head of state and a head of government who are not politicians, but technocrats. President APJ Abdul Kalam is a scientist, elevated to the highest seat in the country, because of sheer dedication and commitment to the cause he stood for; the second an economist, roped in to lift the country out of an economic quagmire well over a decade ago. The two have appeared from nowhere in the political theatre to rule a country because those mandated to rule can’t deliver, and not because they were the first choice for governance.
What does this point to? That a people when forced to be ruled by a band of scoundrels, can throw up alternate choices that are best capable to deliver. And those choices could well go beyond political calculations.
Before going any further, let me ask you who makes for a philosopher king? For an answer, flip through Plato’s Republic. To quote: “It will be possible then, and only then, when kings are philosophers or philosophers kings."
“The philosopher desires all knowledge. Justice, beauty, good, and so on are single, though their presentation is multiplex and variable."
Curiosity about the multiplex particulars is not desire of knowledge, which is of the one constant idea — of that which is, as ignorance is of that which is not. What neither is nor is not, that which fluctuates and changes, is the subject matter of opinion, a state between knowledge and ignorance. Beauty is beauty always and everywhere; the things that look beautiful may be ugly from another point of view. Experience of beautiful things, curiosity about them, must be distinguished from knowledge of beauty; the philosopher is not to be confounded with the connoisseur, nor knowledge with opinion. The philosopher is he who has in his mind the perfect pattern of justice, beauty, truth; his is the knowledge of the eternal; he contemplates all time and all existence; no praises are too high for him.”
Ask yourself, who fits this description best. Between Kalam and Manmohan, the country could not have a better choice. But does Manmohan really fit the bill? All by himself he does. But the power block he heads, gives little hope for justice.
There are too many contradictions in the Cabinet, even though Singh also has the wisest men in his team. You can sense it in the DMK’s bargaining for power. You can feel it in the weight of the heartland ‘heroes’. You can see it in the power struggle among the vanquished old guard of the Congress. For the philosopher king to deliver his best he will need to go back to the people the soonest he can.
That’s when, democracy will possibly deliver him justice.
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