M. Mizanur Rahman :
The word ‘democracy’ is inert until and unless it becomes activated by the state machinery like fair election commission with its impartial adaptation of universal adult franchise having implication of human rights in full. Democracy implies people’s state without adulteration of any other means of fraudulence like autocracy, fascism and dictatorship. Here independent judiciary must play its impartial role without fear or favour. By the way other administrative branches of the state must be allowed to work impartially for the benefit of all people of the state.
During the British imperialist and colonial rule of India Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore cried out, “(Protikarhin sokter oporadhe bicharer bani nirobe nivrite kande.”
“For un-remediable offense of the coercive force of the powerful the words of justice cry deserted in silence…” The world of ours appears to have been deluging under the cover of empty speeches most of lies and fabricated with full of false hopes by some impostor but shrewd so-called politicians. The poor people are helpless under their crafty but demonic powerful hands of leadership.
It is very difficult to understand man or woman from his/her outer physical appearance while s/he keeps wolf at heart. The act of terrorism on the part of the concerned government of the people over those people who entrusted their representatives in the government seems treacherous. Other than the ruling political party the strong opposition must be allowed to play its legitimate parts in democracy, otherwise or if there is zero tolerance on the part of the ruling political party in the government against the opposition by means of coercive measures that would tantamount to authoritative autocracy or fascism. Here the party in power will continue clinging to power by hook or by crook no matter what may run counter near or far. To crush the opposition forces there are hundred and thousand corruptible means. According to Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The power-hungry people do not understand what futile life the living beings face on earth. The madness of clinging to power as the history showed in the past has its ultimate form and pattern disastrous. Let’s listen to the poet what caution he deliberates-
“Is time crazy now for some power-hungry people?
Simply for lust of power some people become crazy!
Only for them rest of the people suffer!
Here is conflict; there is war for this clash of power!
See all the people are in trouble in such time so hazy.
What man has made of man? Only God knows.
Seldom have the powerful ones
had compassion for those
who suffer most in their backbones!
That power tends to corrupt
the person concerned absolutely;
Where democracy fails and autocracy works solely!
Do those powerful people fear God, its ultimate goal
where death awaits for them as well?
Hell with them who fail
to understand their time is also cursed on the whole.”
(By M. M. Rahman)
Since communism is crumbled down to dust and capitalism flourished with its dominating fangs all over the world and the misled ones took resort to terrorism or ritual aberration of faiths to its self-styled interests. That’s neither virtuous faiths nor humanism. In India since its colonial era of British empire communalism breeds ground. After a lapse of a few decades recently the minority community, poor Muslims and Christians are advised by the BJP government of the so-called democratic free India to be reconverted into Hinduism because their ancestors were supposed to be the Hindus. The people of the majority Hindu community are excited by the vested quarters to attack the helpless minority community and to extirpate them from their habitats on flimsy ground. Thus here the clashes of faiths are imminent among the communities concerned where mutual respect and peaceful co-existence appears to be nowhere. Hence the crisis of democracy is at large.
Nowadays militancy is a common feature of the States concerned. Only fire of guns, explosive-oriented bombs or any means of sabotage make most to play sinister inhuman games. But then for whose interests, who pays and provides arms, ammunitions and explosives to maim, kill common ordinary working people and destroy properties of the people and of the state in particular? Then who bears the economic loss and depends on foreign subservient loans at higher interests at the cost of teeming moribund people of the country concerned? Thus crooked interests accruing capitalism flares up by leaps and bounds without any hindrance in favour of the corrupted vested-interest quarters. The worldwide economic interest of the capitalists could beat down world communism to the teeth smashing down the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Harold J Laski very earlier (London May 18, 1934) prefaced his book “A Grammar of politics” mentioning even… “That capitalism in distress makes impossible the effective operation of international institutions; …For capitalism (though in many aspects itself international) is organised on a national basis; and, since this is the case, the owners of capital in each national community utilise the framework of State power for their protection. Since capitalism forces them to press ever more strongly to the capture of foreign markets the State largely becomes for them a means of protecting and extending their investments abroad. The outcome of this tendency is the clash of competing economic imperialisms which arm themselves to the teeth to secure their gains. Fear, suspicion and hatred are born of this atmosphere; the sovereign State will not in these terms, be persuaded to submit its will to a power outside itself.”
And that capitalism is the root of all evils around the world which cannot be avoided unless the heads of all capitalist countries come to terms for the purpose of world humanitarianism respecting human causes to live in peace in togetherness, if possible under the fold of the United Nation’s Organization. However, it is very difficult job. Terms of interests vary everywhere. Lord Palmerstone once had to say, “There’s no permanent friendship or permanent enmity, what’s permanent is interest.”
It was Second World War (1939-45) when the sun is to be set off the British Empire. Laski wrote, “In the war period it was widely assumed that the universal attainment of democracy was the highest political objective before mankind; since the war it has had a decreasing Empire over the minds of men. Not a little of the present confusion in political theory is the outcome of a failure to state the problems to which this change in the mental climate of our time has given rise in anything like adequate terms. Men have been asked to accept a formal political democracy as good in itself without taking regard to the complex economic relationships in which that formal political democracy is involved.” (Crisis in the theory of the state, ibid. p. xiii)
Since enough trials and errors take place in assuming democracy in the State power. War time’s loss of human lives and destruction of properties were enormous and beyond any description. Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) alone killed millions of innocent people of all ages and sex alive in the poisonous gas chamber. The president of the USA Franklin D Roosevelt’s order dropped atom bombs on Japanese industrial cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945 respectively killing a huge people of all ages destroying the cities aground. Additional atomic radiation hazards lay beyond the centre attack at ground zero. Modern warfare annihilates everything within no time. Human psychology is very complex. Love and piety at war seldom works. There only cruelty prevails. War and communalism are curses in human society. These curses can never give relief to mankind rather put the people in perpetual distress and democracy will remain here obsolete.
Let the political leaders come to the sense of love and compassion for mankind irrespective of their different faiths. Let conventional weapons including those of nuclear weapons of destruction of human lives and properties be made inert or destroyed forever and boost the priority of love of every soul with sincere compassionate behaviour. Let justice and tolerance prevail in society eternally, so that human security of peace and happiness be upheld. Where the people are the core of a nation or valued properties of the world, the inculcation of love and amity should be must for each and everyone to do away with all evils. And then only democracy or rule of the people, by the people and of the people shall prevail.
To bring about democracy in the state as the best way to solve all social problems is not to resort to violence but to sit in conference table to discuss pros and cons resolving issues of national problems or interests for the benefit of the people who elect the representatives and speak for them honestly and sincerely. Hence the people of the country are the master authority of the state and not the particular political party or parties. Democracy lives only on the altar of argumentum dialogues amicably between the political parties that earn people’s confidence by dint of their good works for the people. Democracy dies when people’s voice is disregarded; brute force of violence takes place at the dictation of a particular political party while enjoying power without people’s support.
The word ‘democracy’ is inert until and unless it becomes activated by the state machinery like fair election commission with its impartial adaptation of universal adult franchise having implication of human rights in full. Democracy implies people’s state without adulteration of any other means of fraudulence like autocracy, fascism and dictatorship. Here independent judiciary must play its impartial role without fear or favour. By the way other administrative branches of the state must be allowed to work impartially for the benefit of all people of the state.
During the British imperialist and colonial rule of India Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore cried out, “(Protikarhin sokter oporadhe bicharer bani nirobe nivrite kande.”
“For un-remediable offense of the coercive force of the powerful the words of justice cry deserted in silence…” The world of ours appears to have been deluging under the cover of empty speeches most of lies and fabricated with full of false hopes by some impostor but shrewd so-called politicians. The poor people are helpless under their crafty but demonic powerful hands of leadership.
It is very difficult to understand man or woman from his/her outer physical appearance while s/he keeps wolf at heart. The act of terrorism on the part of the concerned government of the people over those people who entrusted their representatives in the government seems treacherous. Other than the ruling political party the strong opposition must be allowed to play its legitimate parts in democracy, otherwise or if there is zero tolerance on the part of the ruling political party in the government against the opposition by means of coercive measures that would tantamount to authoritative autocracy or fascism. Here the party in power will continue clinging to power by hook or by crook no matter what may run counter near or far. To crush the opposition forces there are hundred and thousand corruptible means. According to Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The power-hungry people do not understand what futile life the living beings face on earth. The madness of clinging to power as the history showed in the past has its ultimate form and pattern disastrous. Let’s listen to the poet what caution he deliberates-
“Is time crazy now for some power-hungry people?
Simply for lust of power some people become crazy!
Only for them rest of the people suffer!
Here is conflict; there is war for this clash of power!
See all the people are in trouble in such time so hazy.
What man has made of man? Only God knows.
Seldom have the powerful ones
had compassion for those
who suffer most in their backbones!
That power tends to corrupt
the person concerned absolutely;
Where democracy fails and autocracy works solely!
Do those powerful people fear God, its ultimate goal
where death awaits for them as well?
Hell with them who fail
to understand their time is also cursed on the whole.”
(By M. M. Rahman)
Since communism is crumbled down to dust and capitalism flourished with its dominating fangs all over the world and the misled ones took resort to terrorism or ritual aberration of faiths to its self-styled interests. That’s neither virtuous faiths nor humanism. In India since its colonial era of British empire communalism breeds ground. After a lapse of a few decades recently the minority community, poor Muslims and Christians are advised by the BJP government of the so-called democratic free India to be reconverted into Hinduism because their ancestors were supposed to be the Hindus. The people of the majority Hindu community are excited by the vested quarters to attack the helpless minority community and to extirpate them from their habitats on flimsy ground. Thus here the clashes of faiths are imminent among the communities concerned where mutual respect and peaceful co-existence appears to be nowhere. Hence the crisis of democracy is at large.
Nowadays militancy is a common feature of the States concerned. Only fire of guns, explosive-oriented bombs or any means of sabotage make most to play sinister inhuman games. But then for whose interests, who pays and provides arms, ammunitions and explosives to maim, kill common ordinary working people and destroy properties of the people and of the state in particular? Then who bears the economic loss and depends on foreign subservient loans at higher interests at the cost of teeming moribund people of the country concerned? Thus crooked interests accruing capitalism flares up by leaps and bounds without any hindrance in favour of the corrupted vested-interest quarters. The worldwide economic interest of the capitalists could beat down world communism to the teeth smashing down the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Harold J Laski very earlier (London May 18, 1934) prefaced his book “A Grammar of politics” mentioning even… “That capitalism in distress makes impossible the effective operation of international institutions; …For capitalism (though in many aspects itself international) is organised on a national basis; and, since this is the case, the owners of capital in each national community utilise the framework of State power for their protection. Since capitalism forces them to press ever more strongly to the capture of foreign markets the State largely becomes for them a means of protecting and extending their investments abroad. The outcome of this tendency is the clash of competing economic imperialisms which arm themselves to the teeth to secure their gains. Fear, suspicion and hatred are born of this atmosphere; the sovereign State will not in these terms, be persuaded to submit its will to a power outside itself.”
And that capitalism is the root of all evils around the world which cannot be avoided unless the heads of all capitalist countries come to terms for the purpose of world humanitarianism respecting human causes to live in peace in togetherness, if possible under the fold of the United Nation’s Organization. However, it is very difficult job. Terms of interests vary everywhere. Lord Palmerstone once had to say, “There’s no permanent friendship or permanent enmity, what’s permanent is interest.”
It was Second World War (1939-45) when the sun is to be set off the British Empire. Laski wrote, “In the war period it was widely assumed that the universal attainment of democracy was the highest political objective before mankind; since the war it has had a decreasing Empire over the minds of men. Not a little of the present confusion in political theory is the outcome of a failure to state the problems to which this change in the mental climate of our time has given rise in anything like adequate terms. Men have been asked to accept a formal political democracy as good in itself without taking regard to the complex economic relationships in which that formal political democracy is involved.” (Crisis in the theory of the state, ibid. p. xiii)
Since enough trials and errors take place in assuming democracy in the State power. War time’s loss of human lives and destruction of properties were enormous and beyond any description. Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) alone killed millions of innocent people of all ages and sex alive in the poisonous gas chamber. The president of the USA Franklin D Roosevelt’s order dropped atom bombs on Japanese industrial cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945 respectively killing a huge people of all ages destroying the cities aground. Additional atomic radiation hazards lay beyond the centre attack at ground zero. Modern warfare annihilates everything within no time. Human psychology is very complex. Love and piety at war seldom works. There only cruelty prevails. War and communalism are curses in human society. These curses can never give relief to mankind rather put the people in perpetual distress and democracy will remain here obsolete.
Let the political leaders come to the sense of love and compassion for mankind irrespective of their different faiths. Let conventional weapons including those of nuclear weapons of destruction of human lives and properties be made inert or destroyed forever and boost the priority of love of every soul with sincere compassionate behaviour. Let justice and tolerance prevail in society eternally, so that human security of peace and happiness be upheld. Where the people are the core of a nation or valued properties of the world, the inculcation of love and amity should be must for each and everyone to do away with all evils. And then only democracy or rule of the people, by the people and of the people shall prevail.
To bring about democracy in the state as the best way to solve all social problems is not to resort to violence but to sit in conference table to discuss pros and cons resolving issues of national problems or interests for the benefit of the people who elect the representatives and speak for them honestly and sincerely. Hence the people of the country are the master authority of the state and not the particular political party or parties. Democracy lives only on the altar of argumentum dialogues amicably between the political parties that earn people’s confidence by dint of their good works for the people. Democracy dies when people’s voice is disregarded; brute force of violence takes place at the dictation of a particular political party while enjoying power without people’s support.
(The author is a poet, essayist, translator and columnist.)
