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Inner Party Democracy And Sikhs
Kalam Nishan Singh
 The
New York based Freedom House, a watchdog organization for democracy,
has said in its latest annual survey that only 90 countries among
the 193 countries of the world have been found eligible to be called
democracies. Among the many criteria are free elections, free press,
independent judiciary, commitment to human rights, respect for
Opposition parties, etc. Not measurable in tangible terms, these are
of course important criteria. While
India
may have found a place in the list of democracies, there are many
voices now that are pointing to one particular factor that has been
a cause for concern. What we are arguing here is the fact that it is
also a factor that has been a cause for concern for the Sikhs also.
We are talking about lack of intra-party democracy, and it starts
with the trend of substituting elections with nominations.
No democracy can
be healthy and sound in the absence of a healthy and sound party
system based on inner party democracy with regular elections at all
levels of the party hierarchy. And no party can be healthy
democratically run party if its leadership is not elected in a
healthy democratic way.
 With the
exception of a few, practically every political party in
India
has found it convenient to dispense with elections and to resort to
nominations by the party’s high command. The Akali Dal led by
Parkash Singh Badal has been as guilty as the rest of the Indian
parties, and gradually the other Akali Dals, and Sikh organizations
also adopted the same ills of the Indian system. Add to it the
proclivity to turn nepotistic and the picture is complete. Rout of
inner party democracy, the rise of personality based party cult and
centralization of power. Ruling party in Punjab revolves around
Badal and his family, the Akali Dal (Amritsar)
at one stage meant only Simranjit Singh Mann, the 1920 Dal meant
Ravi Inder Singh and so on and so forth.
Since the Indian
laws demand elections (the CEC at least does), the formaility used
to take place. Elections became command performances that are a
drama at the behest of the high command, rather than free exercise
of the will of the members of the party. Much has been said and
written about this trend in the last quarter of a century, but very
little has been done to correct it. An equally disturbing trend came
as a twin of the lack of intra-party democracy. This was to treat
political parties as instruments for maneuvering for power without
any consideration for principles or ideologies. There is nothing
wrong in considering acquisition of power as the main objective of
political parties in any democracy but it is important that the
means for it have to be clean and fair. At the federal level, the
tendency became to chase power without bothering about any
principles, and
Punjab was soon
to see a party set up for the Khalsa Ji Ka Bolbala striking
alliances with an RSS-backed BJP which coined the slogan Garv Se
Kaho Hum Hindu Hain!
Several
instances of compromises on principles can be cited to prove the
dangers involved in the practice of politics bereft of principles
but the readers of the WSN need no repetition. The latest situation
in which the ruling Akalis find themselves serves to expose how
politics has been reduced to a game of chasing power without any
respect for principles. Every now and then, Badal announces that
"the crisis has been satisfactorily resolved" but there may not be
many takers since these are crises which arise in the fight for
power without any basis of principles.
 The danger that
the Sikhs as a nation face today is that most politicians seem to
believe that departing from the norms of decency and fairness are
part of the political game and therefore not anything to be overly
worried about. If this feeling gains general acceptance within the
community, we may be in for more troubled times. It was in such a
scenario that the WSN had welcomed the moves of bringing the
Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar)
out of the shadow of a personality cult. We continue to believe that
sincere political activity has often to be carried out at the
grassroots level for years before it is to bear fruits and not all
politics is done necessarily to go fight in the electoral arena. But
we must not lose sight of the fact that intra-party democracy should
be seen as a key touch stone of any faith in democratic ideals.
30 January 2008
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