Humanity Boiling in the Communist Cauldron

 

The more I read the facts and fiction of communist dictatorial regimes, the times when humanity faces a roadblock, the more I forget my own collective as well as personal pain here in India. I feel blessed to be born beyond the communist shadow. If God has been merciful enough not to cast you into a communist land in either this or previous births, then you have no right to ask for more. It’s already the best blessings from the Lord. It's a divine gift not to be born under the communist system. The biggest pains you feel in a non-communist regime appear like luxurious sprouts in comparison to the horrendous systemic tortures perpetrated on the masses under communist regimes.

So to me, as part of democracy, the smallest of gains look like the biggest boon. Not that democracy is perfect. It has its own sweet-sour set of nuisances. But these are lesser symptoms of non-fatal diseases like cough, cold, running nose, sneezing etc., etc. Communist dictatorship on the other hand is simply a terminator like incurable cancer. 

Mao Zedong: “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer that we use to crush the enemy.”  

Unfortunately, the enemy is always at hand. It is most of the time one’s next door neighbor. There is so much hate and distrust. There is an ever-persistent enemy of the state. One line purged, you redefine the meaning of state enemy, and purge the second line. It continues like this, waves of purging arrive like Tsunami. No wonder Mao Zedong and Stalin slaughtered millions of their own countrymen. These regimes stand as the epitomes of hate culture. And when love rarely matters in an epoch, it stands as the darkest phase.

The communist ideology is an all-pervading fire that doesn't spare either good or bad. Intended to burn the evil, it stretches the definition of evil too far and turns fiery evil itself. It's a huge stone hurtling down the slope, squashing leaves, saplings, petals, thorns and all. A fire needs fodder to burn. The communist ideology needs hordes of victims to survive. There is an endless chain of imagined enemies and hence successive waves of purges.

It's human industrialization wherein people are turned into machines and cogs in the production line. Looking at the ways and means of the emerging international bully, I’m afraid, at the end of it, the human civilization, despite its efforts at capitalist systems, will perish as a mechanical society controlled by the communist system. Nonetheless, such cataclysmic end should not make me skip my enjoyment of life in a democratic system.

Very often I wondered how the communist dictators built cult status with millions of blind followers. Now I realize it's a simple technique. First they rob people of their faith, make them forget the intrinsic goodness in them, introduce them to mindless violence and blood-bathing thus turning them utterly atheist. However, we are genetically inclined to have faith. In the vacuum they plant their personality. Thus starts the cult of a dictator. State propaganda is used for the dictator's deification. And we have crazy, blinded masses, happy over having their God nearby. It’s sadistic deification where common people love their own wounds and injuries.

However, the communist edifice, which gets soaring high in the sky, outgrows its sustainability like cancerous propagation of cells. Too much of laws, rules, regulations and legalized forced discipline create a facade that rises too perfectly, but soullessly, to soar too high to sustain its elevation. It then crumbles because mechanical perfection rarely sustains. You need to have a humanistic soul to help any human endeavor sustain the onslaught of time. That's why communist societies crumble like a castle of cards. They simply crash after a time like it did suddenly in Russia.

China is rabble rousing boundary issues with all neighbors to retain its CPC dictatorship. Keep them believing that there are foes outside, who have committed crimes against the Motherland, and they will forget about their own irritation at the ruling party’s manipulation of their lives. However, there is a possibility that it will snap like the former USSR. The Soviet Russia went boom to bust from 1917 to 1991, 74 years of experiment, which was inevitably bound to fail. Let’s see how far China can manage the experiment that started in 1949. It has been 70 years. Even they may not have as much time as they think. Things may just crumble up, almost magically.

To survive, a society has to have its pitfalls and imperfections. The facade doesn't go too high. It sustains. There are plus and minus that cancel out each other, like in a democratic system. Oh, the glorious imperfections of democracy! That's why it thrives.

The well managed, rigid facade in China may disintegrate. It may suddenly collapse. Well, unless they voluntarily introduce some imperfections themselves, some traits of democracy, to make it pliable, some allowance of mischief, some humor, some criticism to bring down the upper stories of the facade that has gone too high. It won't fall then.

The communist model carries the seeds of its own destruction. Right now Chinese leadership has to have more and more enemies, real and imagined, to keep the people hooked onto the idea that has failed everywhere else in the world. Let’s see where such mass distrust of the humanity outside the boundaries of the latest superpower takes us.

Casteism: History’s Biggest Mass Exploitation

 

In India we have casteism as the history’s most obnoxious social system of mass exploitation of helpless millions for the longest period of time, for an astounding 2500 years in fact, and still going in many modern forms of the evil practice.

Elsewhere in the world you have the classes. There is fluidity in this system as Osho says. One can go from low class to high class and vice versa, but not so in the caste system in India. Once you are born in a low caste, your deprivation and disadvantages get stamped on your soul. It’s hardly possible to pick out a more evil practice where the soul is tamed to this abysmal level, where you rob dreams, love, peace and respect from the eyes of generation after generation of millions of your fellow human beings.

Beyond historical injustices and blunders, the issue fuels the Indian political system even now. Indian democracy is addicted to the system. The caste-based job reservation can make or break anyone’s chances. The issue is politically so sensitive that just an off-hand remark by the RSS chief was enough to decimate BJP's hopes in the last Bihar assembly elections. So nobody dares to touch the issue at the practical level. At least the lower castes hold this symbolic political power now.

The so called ‘lower castes’ have been systemically exploited for the last 2500 years in India. There is no doubt that they need institutional support to bring them into the mainstream. Not that the government cannot give them positive incentives in other forms. Reservation in itself is not the end. It is just one of the means to the end. However, in the present system of reservation there are flaws that need to be corrected if the real goal of Dalit upliftment is to be achieved.

I have seen three generations of elite Dalit families reaping reservation benefits to rise on the socio-economic ladder. Like someone’s father is a class one officer in railways. He raises his family comfortably in Delhi, provides best education to his children. His son, born, brought up and educated in Delhi, becomes a police officer. The police officer’s children born, brought up and educated in the best set up get reservation benefits to get still more elite governmental jobs.

On the other hand, I am surrounded by poor educated Dalit young people in the countryside who haven't benefited from reservation in any way. They have the qualifications, but in the fight within the reserved category, they are easily beaten by the elite Dalit families. So does it really serve the purpose? The cause is served if the reservation benefits spread horizontally across the social strata instead of creating vertical towers of prosperity in the same families where the reservation benefits pile up across generations.

The solution can be: Let reservation be a first generation benefit only, i.e., the children of a reservation beneficiary will not be eligible for the scheme anymore. When a Dalit gets a job on reservation, he/she is supposed to bring up his/her children in a way that they can compete against the best. It will help in spreading the reservation benefits horizontally to the other poorer Dalit families rather than the vertical compilation of benefits in the already rich Dalit families. Unfortunately it has been the trend so far. Job reservation is supposed to provide more and more people with basic amenities of life rather than some particular families reaping the benefits and get wealthy on account of the already existing benefits.

The New-age Democracy

 

Democracy, by modern day consensus, is the best—among others—form of governance. With some skepticism, it is agreed that it is best among the worst. It even appears so. But that doesn’t mean all is well with democracy. No system is perfect. Perfection is just a mirage. However, like all political systems democracy also can be better.

My main issue with democracy is with its propensity to rake up divisions to breed social disharmony, fanning the smoldering smoke to build-up a fire and then with a suave smile offer the solution on paper only and thus allowing the issue to stretch till eternity. Pitted against each other at numerous fronts, social cohesiveness, a must for collective compassion for humanity’s greater good, takes a backseat.   

My other reservation about democracy is the principle of same voting weight carried by all individuals as voters. The best and the worst carry the same political weight, at least as voters, when it comes to contributing to the process of selecting the most suitable representatives and hence the best government. Isn’t it ironical that in election as voters, the people who have been fatal to society carry the same political weight as the ones who have been of real help to the society? Shouldn’t the weightage of votes vary as per the contribution or potential of individual voters?

Under the present system of voting, Hitler, Stalin and Edi Amin, responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent lives, carry the same vote weightage as the healers of humanity like Gandhi, Vivekananda, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammad. Shouldn’t the people with proven records of being better human beings, having more understanding of the issues of common interests, have more voting power than the criminals, social degenerates and blood-shedders.

Common people, busy in the small domain of life to survive, carrying the good and bad in them, can have the value of one to their vote. The criminals, terrorists, law breakers and hate-mongers can have fraction of one in proportion to their crimes. And achievers and contributors in academics, sports, spirituality, arts, science and culture can have the multiple of one to their vote. The latter with their better selves, more awareness and more constructive nature will turn the game of democracy far more dynamic and vibrant than it is now.

Since the best and the worst just occupy a few minor edges on the fringe of society in terms of numbers, it will not shake the present system’s foundations immediately. But it will act as a system of reward and punishment for the majority to maintain and improve their political ratings. Who doesn’t want to grow? And certified more so. A better political rating on the basis of standing and achievement in life will look good on anybody’s CV. It will be as good as holding doctorate degrees, gold medals and mushy citations. A cut in the voting right, and the rating coming to a fraction of one, will add to scores of other deterrents that stop a person from going to the wrong side to be lesser of a human being in all its forms.

A voting right cannot be static. It cannot be frozen for all times irrespective of best and worst deeds of the holders. In case a person comes out worst, it should be abrogated altogether. In case of glorious achievement, the person should have multiple of one. It is a suitable political reward. It’s better to have a Hitler without any voting right and still more suitable to have Mother Teresa with multiple of one voting right.

The Election Commission has to make the voting right a bit dynamic with the possibilities of upgrade and degrade and even outright abrogation. It will save democracy from being the puppet of poor choices where masses, hardly knowing what they are voting for, barely knowing the issues involved, get swayed by selfish rhetoric and emotional rabble-rousing to elect pitiable leaders to power.

The differential voting rights will carry democracy to its next stage. The elected representatives will be better and people will have one more incentive to be better.

It will stop the politicians from digging into the foundations of society with their tools of hate and division. I just want a voter with a proven record of his loving compassionate self to carry multiple of one voting right. Shouldn’t a person, who has been planting trees for decades and has ensured that at least hundred trees survive to grow mature and big, be given at least two voting rights? This is just one example. There are scores of other small time feats that have a huge impact on the health of our main home, mother earth. Isn’t it high time that democracy now turns new-age to help build vibrant, robust, open-minded societies?   

Trimming the Hedge to Maintain the Power Center

 

Political extremists (both left and right) and religious fundamentalists try to change the masses for the worse. They play cards to cut down the people to a fraction of their potential and you have nice governable puny-heads. They serve meow meow for instant gratification. Hate, phobias, pseudo-greatness, anger and jealousy are very convenient tools to rob someone of sanity and get cast as a hallucinated pawn in the power game.

The power hungry—individuals, groups, political parties, governments and institutions—try to disempower the masses. It cannot be otherwise. The power pyramid has few strong characters at the apex and weak masses at the base. It can never be a square, having people of the same realized potential from top to the bottom. Those ambitious for power can never think of empowering the masses. In that case the pyramid loses its standing.

With pseudoism and populist rhetoric, they rob the masses of the balance of their judgment. Hate does it. It tilts you off the balance. You fall prey to a peculiar weakness. You become lesser of a human being. The power monger’s ambition draws on the peoples’ weakness of judgment. They try their best to keep the people nearsighted to tame them in a narrow sphere, with unrealized potential, from where the launch-pad of wisdom is too far. The biggest loss is when people tend to lose faith in love, peace and harmony as the mass-managed dark cloud of hate, anger and distrust builds up.

It draws votes for the power hungry. In the day to day life, however, it is paid in terms of racial attacks in America, brutal killings by Islamic extremists, attacks on Africans in India, and scores of incidences when people pick up hate and run after each other.

Quite ironically, power politics is just the butter churned out of the milk of social disharmony.

Corridors of Organized Hate where Love Suffers

 

Jimi Hendrix  says: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”

Well, it may appear too much to ask for. But aren’t the evil effects of love of power too evident to at least reconsider Jimi’s advice? More so because the corridors of power almost unerringly become the corridors of hate. The urge for power bears a directly proportional relation with breeding hate. Sadly, when hate becomes the mantra at the top, it is hardly possible to stop its cascade effect from creeping into the normal functioning of day to day life of the citizenry.

Deepak Chopra nails it completely: “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.”

Absolutely correct! Spiritually suffused leadership becomes a tool to work in the garden full of flowers for a fragrant humanity instead of stinking muck.

Cal Thomas maintains: “One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective, election and power are.”

Your humble brother thinks that is where the problem starts. By being power-centric you surrender a large portion of your compassionate self to feed the rapacious bug of ambition. The bigger problem is that you are able to let loose the waves of hate because you are in a position to influence.

Friedrich Nietzsche captures the grey shades of reality when he says: “All things are subject to interpretation and whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

So brothers and sisters, the functionaries of power end up suffering from a natural helplessness to fall in the trap of lies, conceit, falsification and what not.

Your humble brother is not inimically ill-willed against the agents of power-seeking brigade. You know there is a very thin line between one’s skill set and its honestly hardworked rewards on the one hand and the endeavor to use the same set of skills by using the disability and ignorance of the fellow human beings. The latter sadly turns an ambition into a profession called politics, which entitles the power hungry to climb the ladder for more and more glories. It’s never enough in the palace of power and politics. The misdirected self is ever dying to control the destinies of millions.

The leadership is churned out from a sleazy concoction of mudslinging, aspersion and whole lot of bull-shit. They have huffing and burning souls behind the smiling expression. It carries its momentum to the larger set of policies because more than what you are doing to make, you are focusing on breaking the opposition. You may think that by such broad generalization I am almost leaving the solution impossible. No. My only point of raising the issue of this typical political malady is to highlight the importance of more compassionate beings in leadership positions.

All we see in political systems world over is literally war-mongering among hateful brigades. Does violence and hate come so naturally to us? No, it doesn’t. It’s simply darkness in the absence of the lamp of love and compassion, which is facing furious winds as we raise storms with our stampede. In any case, I reserve my right to call a spade a spade and nurture my utopian dreams of an all-loving system because that is what we are destined for. So kindly allow me to crib over the spools of darkness formed due to the absence of the light of love!