Lovely word “bonds”, come to think of it. As in ‘filial bonds’, ‘bonds of friendship,’ ‘bonds between neighbours,’ ‘inter-community bonds,’ and bonds even among adversaries of diverse hues.
Bonds betoken trust and dependability.
Thus, the purity of bonds between government and constitution, government and polity, institutions and the rule of law, media and truth-telling, between producers and consumers, officialdom and academic centres, banks and clients, judges and litigants, employers and employees, information givers and information seekers, establishment and public-spirited men and women, protesting citizens and enforcement agencies, between toddlers and educators—all those bonds and more—determine the quality of democracy.
When ruler and ruled remain in a contract of trust in such purity of bonds, no tin-horn dictator may ever hope to subvert a republic.
But, alas, when the word ‘bonds’ becomes a dirty, clandestine, suspiciously underhand and transactional link between the extorting power broker and the Mammonite wealth accumulator at the expense of ‘we the people’, the trust which democracy depends on stands betrayed.
Then the bonds that must exist between governed and governor, chosen by the citizen, come to terminal grief, letting loose a reign of falsehood, chicanery, subversions of law and ethics, and also violence – on the street, on television screens, even within assemblies and parliaments. This is what helps pave the way for false prophets to take over the realm on the back of sectarian invocations of faith and imprecations against manufactured enemies.
Then perfectly upright citizens begin to speak edgewise, fearing the wrath of pugilists and impersonators who claim to speak for the fallen bonds.
Then in the interests of safe-keep, brother strikes at brother, old acquaintances turn their faces away, books that ought to be read disappear, all bonds crushed, only the bond between the strong men and the giver of the dirty bond comes to rule; and a frightened populace, robbed of reason, turn to sheep, regurgitating a common, uniform sound.
This is what has happened in Sanatan, Vishwa Guru Bharat.
Our bonds may be anonymous, but there is real lucre in them. The ministers who designed this crooked scheme are trying to play down its malignancy. How deep the cancer has spread will be known on June 4, when the results of the election are declared.
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
