Sunday 12 February 2017

Why I don't have faith in parliamentary democracy
Under the Indian Constitution we have adopted the British system of parliamentary democracy. I don't have faith in it, and in my opinion it is unsuitable to India, and so deserves to be scrapped.
Parliamentary democracy relies on the vote of the majority. But the majority is usually stupid, guided by emotions, prejudices and conservative thinking rather than by reason and scientific thinking.
Let me give an example. When Copernicus ( 1473-1543 ) said that the earth goes around the sun ( heliocentrism ), rather than the sun around the earth ( geocentrism ), most people believed in the Biblical and Ptolemaic view that the sun goes around the earth, and visual observation of the movement of the sun from dawn to dusk also seemed to support this view. We see the sun arising from the east, moving gradually until noon when it is overhead, and then gradually going down until it sets in the west. But Copernicus went deeper than the mere visual impression and reasoned that the same phenomenon ( sun arising from the east and setting in the west ) could be caused by the earth rotating on its axis.
Now this capacity to go deeper is a trait of genuine intellectuals, but not shared by common men who are satisfied with the superficial. In fact Copernicus' theory was dangerous, because it went against the Bible, and in those days speaking against the Bible was a crime, often of a capital nature. Galileo ( 1564-1642 ), who supported Copernicus' theory narrowly escaped being burnt at the stake during the Inquisition ( by recanting his view ).
So the minority is often right and the majority, who are usually conservative by nature and with backward, feudal mindsets, often wrong.
In India the majority of people are casteist, communal and superstitious. If we go by their views no progress is possible.
Today India requires scientific thinking to abolish poverty, unemployment, lack of healthcare and good education, etc. But our politics under the present parliamentary system of democracy is largely based on caste and communal vote banks. When most people go to vote in elections they do not see the merit of the candidate, i.e. whether he is a good man or bad man, educated or uneducated, etc but only his caste or the party representing a caste or religion. That is why there are so many people with criminal backgrounds in our legislatures. Most of our present politicians are utterly selfish and unpatriotic, with no genuine love for the people, but they are experts in manipulating vote banks and polarizing the people on caste and communal lines.
Casteism and communalism are feudal forces, while the national interest requires destruction of feudal forces. How then can our country progress under the present system ?
Therefore we must have a new system in which the leadership of the country comes in the hands of genuinely scientific, rational and patriotic thinkers whose only concern is welfare of the people, and not self aggrandizement.. This is not possible under a system based on majority vote of people with a backward, feudal mindset..

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