Dynastic Democracy

Finally, the scion of Congress' first family has returned home, some call it 'Ghar Wapsi', after a 56 days sabbatical. He is expected to take charge of the party with full authority in the coming months. His claim to throne is dynastic. Unlike his political peers, Like Narendra Modi, people in Rahul Gandhi's party believe he has a divine right to lead the party. Despite his many failures, he is being given another chance, its a liberty, a luxury no other party in peril could have afforded. But his is a different case. in fact, the word should be "Dynastic Case'.

Though in democracy, it is said, that there is no place for dynast like Rahul Gandhi. A person has to prove himself worthy of it, before claiming any political position. Look at the current PM or CM of Delhi, Both Modi and Kejriwal have to prove that they possess political acumen, the will to fight, capacity to perform, before being given a chance, not just by electorate but even by their respective parites. Their struggle still goes on. But RG's case is altogether different. He claims the right to lead congress not by merit, but by birth.

India, which claims of being largest democracy, there is not just Rahul Gandhi, who claims a political position as a right obtained by birth. There are many more. Farrukh Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Muft, Anurag Thakur, Ajit Singh, Vijay Bahuguna, Akhilesh Yadav, Navin Patnaik, Sukhbir Badal, OP Chautala and his sons and his grand son, Stalin, Azhagiri, Kanimozhi, Supriya Sule, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, the list is perpetually long.

Not just India, a look at other countries will tell us the same story.
In its patch democratic journey, Pakistan have Bhutto family, Sharif Family, Khan family and many more dynasties.

Perhaps it was Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's elevation as lifelong president of PPP, which led a Pakistani historian Mubarak Ali to say this:

“It is not possible for any dynasty to produce talented and intelligent members continuously because talent is not a property of any particular family. When power is inherited by the weak and dependent, the state confronts disorder and chaos. In a democratic system, the monopoly of a royal dynasty over political power gradually comes to an end. Democracy opens the venue to all classes of society to contest for power and display their talent to govern the country.”

But, the dynastic democracy is not just limited to India or Pakistan. The leading ladies of Bangladesh Politics Sheikh Hasina and Beghum Khalida Zia, both have their fountainhead of right to govern as dynasty. Hasina belongs to Sheikh Mujib Family and Khalida Zia is the widow of ex-president Zia ur Rehman.

When we go south, we find Bandarnayake Family ruling the Lankan Island. Maldives have Gamoon family, Mauritius has their Ghulam Family.

Democracy, which was touted as emancipator from filth of dynastic rule, it seems, is itself in the vice like grip of dynasty.

If you think this vice is limited to developing world, a look at the world's oldest democracy, the United States, will be an eye opener.

Recently former Secretary of State, Hillayr Rotham Clinton announced her candidacy for the presidential elections, due next year. She is wife of former president William Jefferson Clinton. And look, who she is probably going to face. First to decry her announcement was scion of another US' political clan, Jeb Bush of Bush Family. Which already had had three presidential terms between George Bush Father-Son duo. There was a Kennedy family and Adams Family in US political system as well.

Strategic analyst Brahma Chellany observed wryly: Look how degraded the US democracy itself that a presidential fight it is between just two families. 

Though it is expected, many more will throw their hats in the ring of US presidential elections, it is believed that, the primary candidates will be Jeb and Hillary.

The question is not about candidates. It is about how dynasty has entrenched itself in democratic system. How a dynasty which was akin to rule of monarchy has made for itself a central place in democracies around the world.

We may find origin of this devilish system in the origins of monarchy.

Thomas Paine, the famous 18th century British American political thinker, summed up the rule by a monarch and its ill effects thereafter, in his famous pamphlet, "Common Sense":

“Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian world has improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to worm, who in the midst of his splendour is crumbling into dust!

In the same political essay, opposing the British Monarch, in favour of US citizen demanding independence, Paine went on to add, how mankind has improvised in submitting itself to perpetual degradation, thus:

“To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is that Nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ass for a lion” 

The writings of Tom Paine raise one moot question. Why is the rule of a hereditary monarchy harmful to a nation or mankind at large.

Paine himself satisfied this question, in his another masterpiece, when he was residing in France to support the french revolutionaries. In his famous essay, Rights of Man, Paine wrote:

“When the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects. Hereditary succession requires the same obedience to ignorance as to wisdom; and when once the mind can bring itself to pay this indiscriminate reverence, it descends below the statute of mental manhood. It is fit to be great only in little things. It acts a treachery upon itself, and suffocates the sensations that urge to detection.” 

So, Paine, clearly says, when human being accept hereditary succession as divine right, it descends itself below the stature of mental manhood.

The way, Congressmen longed for return of Rahul Gandhi, means, in the word of Pain, they became obedient to ignorance. They degraded themselves from mental manhood. The Indian nation must resist this urge. It must totally, summarily, reject the Congress' effort to further dynastic rule even within party, for not just people of India, but for whole mankind. We can not and must not degrade ourselves.

If we think that we can not find ourselves inspired enough to rebel against dynasty, by the thought of a British-American thinker, we must have a look at the ideas of our own democratic messiah, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. During Constitutional debate, Dr. Ambedkar said:

“To maintain Democracy we must observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not ‘to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions’. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered lifelong services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish patriot Daniel O’Connell, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”

So, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of our great nation, for the sake of our future generations, let us start desisting the urge to have a dynastic party, let us reject a monarchy being perpetuated in our democracy. Let us bury this evil deep some place. Let us have some dignity.