Social scientists, constitutional experts, political theorists and leaders and experts on values should make an endeavour to arrive at a system that generates cooperation, goodwill, love and brotherhood. By Rajyogi Brahmakumar Nikunj ji
The history of modern political systems is largely a global evolution towards democracy. That is why democratic systems are generally regarded as the most legitimate and ethically fair form of government. It is easy to understand the reason as democracies are on an average richer than non-democracies, less likely to go to war and have a better record of fighting corruption. More fundamentally, democracy lets people speak their minds and shape their own as well as their children’s futures.
Commonly, in any two party or multi-party democratic system of government, one of the political parties, which constitutes the majority, is generally called the ‘Ruling Party’ and is the party in power that holds the authority, whereas the other major party is known as ‘The Opposition’. This nomenclature, it may be pointed out, unnecessarily generates wrong attitudes in the minds of people. The majority party, because of this terminology, becomes conscious, or gets reminded of its being in control of the levers of power and authority whereas the other parties feel that their primary task now is to oppose everything that the ruling party proposes or does. These two conflicting attitudes build up an atmosphere in which one finds more of confrontation or criticism and lack of co-operation between the two sides. In the process, the spirit of brotherhood, love and the goal of welfare of the whole society is lost while human energy and endeavour is spent on the fulfilment of narrower interests. In this atmosphere, each party tries to prove itself better and in this attempt, denounces the other. Each makes an endeavour to grab the credit for their achievements and for this, indulges even in populist activities and overdoes certain things. It thus creates narrow kind of group-consciousness, leading to divisions and lack of loyalty to wider interests. This leads also, in many cases, to the tendency of non-cooperation in certain areas of work.
Even if a better nomenclature was used, things will not improve because in this system, lust and rivalry for office and power will always remain as the main motivating forces. One also finds that in countries where a republic has the name of a particular religion included in its nomenclature, its policies inherently harbour prejudice, partiality and an attitude of unequal treatment towards those who profess any religion which is different from the state religion. And, where there is military rule or legalised military dictatorship, there the stress is on the rule of the brute force.
To be brief, one finds that, even though the Constitution of many countries speaks of their commitment to justice, equality, fraternal feelings, freedom, human rights and public welfare, yet many systems have an in-built tendency to incorporate one or the other kind of negative traits which are opposite to what the declared objectives are. It is, therefore, time that social scientists, constitutional experts, political theorists and leaders and experts on values make an endeavour to arrive at a system that generates co-operation, goodwill, love and brotherhood and caters to the wider interest of the whole society.