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Editorial
King, Obama and I
 Five days after
the birth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama will be
installed the President of the
United States of
America.
It will be a truly significant day in American politics. And now
that the initial euphoria is over and we are all waiting for tons of
confetti to rain on us, let's take a moment to analyse the ground
realities.
India
today has an upper-caste Hindu woman as President. A dalit as chief
justice of its Supreme Court. A Muslim for Vice-President. A Sikh
for Prime Minister. And the leader of its biggest - and ruling -
political party, the Congress, is Sonia Gandhi, a Catholic from
Italy. The Speaker of Parliament is a godless Communist.
As P Sainath
recently pointed out,
India's most
famous war hero Sam who died this year was a Parsi. Incidentally,
the last President of India was a dalit.
What does this
prove? Was Indira's years at the helm helpful particularly in
improving the lot of the women? The
US may be an
awful latecomer to the party where self-representation is being
celebrated, but the hopes on Obama are no less than that he will
enter the White House walking on water.Years
after King Jr fired a million men's hearts, Obama has been able to
fill with zeal and zest and took on the Race question full frontal
when he finally did in
Philadelphia.
Obama represents a historic shift. One that altered
America's
political arena on November 4. A small step for the world, a giant
leap for America.
But the burden
that Barack Obama is saddled with is daunting. He inherits two wars
that are going badly, a $ 10 trillion debt , unprecedented job
losses, a reputation of US in tatters, and new enemies in Wall
Street and Corporate
US.
Obama has a King
Jr to look up to and learn. With all its flaws, the democracy in US
is also propelling the cause of democratisation of all procedures,
values and institutions. As Diaspora community, the Indians and the
Sikh nation must learn its own lessons from the Obama phenomenon,
must revise the ones that King Jr's legacy has to teach us.
India's own political Obama, the much respected B.R. Ambedkar was
once asked, "What are the prospects of democracy in
India?"
He was quick to underline that linking Democracy with Parliamentary
Government or elections was corrupting the notion of democracy.
With
Congress and BJP, the country's two main political parties upholding
the caste system, there is little chance of
India ever
pushing the democratisation process.
India's
best and brilliant, many in the Left domain, have also tried to put
the Class patina on caste, but this was akin to refusing to see the
800 pound gorilla in the bedroom.
If
stratification is stunting the growth of the individual then
deliberate stunting is a deliberate denial of democracy.
Obama and King
Jr both used their understanding and knowledge to push for democracy
for all. In India, we see the best and brilliant among the
brahamanical classes using their knowledge to push strange logic of
postmodern skepticism that delegitimises all fight for the have nots.
Instead, young and upcoming generations in
India are being
fed the development mantra as if it could be the end all of all
problems.
Both King Jr and
Obama’s message is a message of Hope and Change. But the beauty of
their message is that they say something that is doable. Do-able
because it is completely in our own hands. The Change must start
from Self and then go on to Society. Obama has shown that he started
from Self. From Jan 20th, he will go on to change our
world. As for us, have we already started. My God, we are late,
because we did promise to ourselves that we too shall start
effecting the change, and who better to start than the Self? Last
time we made this promise was on November 4. We renew it on January
15, and we shall repeat it on January 20. And then every single day,
and soon we shall have some progress to show.
14 January
2008
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