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Desperately seeking panacea, our
liberal democracy
Abed Chaudhury
The allure of liberal democracy is its
treacle-sweet name; the seductive terminology seems to promise a
never-ending good time for the individual. After all, who in their right
mind would want illiberal theocracy, kleptocratic banditry, or even a benign
hereditary monarchy. The term Liberal, derived from the Spanish term
“Liberales” invokes a long history of ideas that cherishes the right of the
individual over the state or any other putative agent of control or
oppression, and puts the individual citizen on the pedestal as a legitimate
unit on which the good fortune of rights and freedom must be vested. A brain
child of thinkers like Locke, Hume and Baron de Montesquieu upholding the
right of the individual for life liberty and property “liberalism” later
benefited from additional demands for the involvement of government agencies
in education, poverty alleviation, etc. Add to it democracy, the Rosetta
stone of electoral legitimacy and what you have is a heaven of the bleeding
heart idealists, a rallying cry for all the decent folks of the world. This
political ideology now is like morning dew accumulated on a rose bud;
glistening, pristine pure, and full or promises and optimism; by now it has
few detractors or enemy.
Unfortunately the predicament of
liberal democracy in the real world is also the predicament of that rose;
while it is pretty and incandescent with optimism – its fate is also
hopelessly dependent on the ambience of the garden. For us it is an English
rose, albeit with some exotic Athenian lineage, it blooms well in the
moisturised English gardens and the sister rose gardens of Washington, and
in the bucolic gardens of Ottawa and Canberra. Some other well tended
northwestern gardens of the world also have their varieties of these flowers
of human aspirations and optimism. And although stigmatised with some
imperfections, many say it also has taken root in India.
But place that rose in the jungles of
Amazonia, or the acrid soil of Bulgaria, the heat of Nairobi or the flood
plains of Bangladesh and it seems to wilt. Either the heat kills it, or the
encroaching noxious weed smothers it to death, or it needs fertilisers that
cannot be found in these lands. Meanwhile maybe there are other suitable
flowers adapted to those lands, which could have bloomed. But who wants
them? Who knows about them or even cares. The global arbiters of legitimacy
are not interested in those lesser-known flowers.
Instead, experts are hired who tell us
how to make this fragile rose grow in less hospitable locales. For a hefty
sum often promised through aid largesse experts materialise who kill our
weeds, put in sprinkler systems, and moisturised chambers are imported and
installed. With great fanfare we are taught the rituals of this finicky
monoculture, the art of nurturing this unique flower. Election experts are
brought in; we are taught how to display controlled parliamentary anger, the
speaker goes globetrotting learning rituals of behaviour, ex-presidents from
important countries are always available as mentors and builders of
dwindling self-confidence. Meanwhile the honourable gentlemen from the left
side of the isle don’t even bother to show up in the parliament or if they
do they have to endure endless indignities from their honourable
parliamentary colleagues from the right side of the isle. In the grandiose
chambers designed by an eminent architect they sit and they hurl abuses at
each other. They pull the plug of the microphones when their parliamentary
colleagues from the wrong side begin to say something. Insults are
exchanged, snarling reciprocated, pairs of shoes are displayed, and bodily
harm sometimes attempted or narrowly averted. Meanwhile the international
parliamentary training courses continue in the name of an aspiration for a
civil society; the avatars of political floriculture; the western gurus,
they come and go relentlessly, now retaliating for all the Maharishis that
we sent in their direction for all these years.
So what is to be done? This political
monoculture, the husbandry of a tradition exotic to this land is what we are
stuck with and while we twist and contort we cannot seem to learn this game.
In our previous political incarnation through the 50’s and 60’s this charade
continued; myriad attempts of liberal democracy were attempted and
discarded, parliaments were convened and adjourned, parliaments became sites
of uncivil melee, parliaments were taken hostage by gun-toting soldiers.
These sideshows themselves became such spectacles that no one was even
asking anything about why all these complex processes were there in the
first place.
It is of course done in the name of
the people who know precious little about these deliberations. The
publicised intent is always the text book wish list of liberal democracy.
Individuals inalienable rights for life liberty and pursuit of happiness,
right to own property. And rule of law, states intervention to alleviate
sufferings, rights of the minorities, women, children, and now in the 21st
century, the rights of the environment, the rivers, the air, and the flora
and the fauna to live in health and diversity. Who could disagree with these
intents? Who doesn’t like morning dew accumulated on a rosebud?
I want liberal democracy. I want that
flower to bloom in my land. But maybe we are tending an imported flower
rather than doing some creative breeding to find one suitable to our
problems and temperaments and needs. A stable system of governance must
originate from the tradition and aspiration of the land; it cannot be
imposed from outside. We have been aping the ritual process of liberal
democracy for a long time now; we must now take stock of where we stand. In
our history there are ingredients of liberalism and governance with mandate.
Our ancient system of village governance that pre-dated our colonial history
can still be our inspiration; ownership of property was enshrined in Islamic
law, and government was thought to be a sacred trust on behalf of the
governed; an idea not dissimilar to that of Locke. Even with our Westminster
style parliament we should still invoke our ancient electoral and
egalitarian legacies as much as possible and derive inspiration from them. A
budding nation needs to fashion its myth as much as it needs to surge
forward.
In the supposed bastions of liberal
democracy the rose doesn’t smell so good either. While the political science
textbooks give Joe Bloe and Rupert Murdoch the same theoretical power only a
naive fool would equate Citizen Rupert with Citizen Joe. Citizen R
manufactures consent, citizen J either doesn’t vote or is too busy minding
his own business to even notice that his consent has been delivered on his
behalf to forces that shape his life but about whom he knows little. True,
he has certain rights; he is happy that he can own guns and curse people in
public but in other areas the circle that defines his rights gets narrower
with time and unelected people are increasingly drawing that circle. Elected
lawmakers or corporate masterminds, who is ruling the political powerhouses
of the western world? I refer the readers to Noam Chomsky. And in the
globalised world with long arm of corporate power dwarfing most nation
states, what is the actual significance of liberal democracy anyway?
Meanwhile in Bangladesh we are
receding into a primitive vendetta-prone, increasingly rascalised political
culture. In the garden that we call home we are being swamped by noxious
weeds in the form of, inter alia, theocratic thuggery, rustic-ethnic
chauvinism, cronyism and nepotism. We have to find our own pristine flower,
a robust fragrant one; one that will withstand these creeping weeds, will
neutralise the foul stench emanating from the open sewers of our
blood-lettings and fratricides and will grow profusely and boldly in our
soil and flood plains. Identifying and nurturing that special flower is the
challenge of our land and no foreign expert, no matter how erudite or noble,
can help us in that. Finding and growing that flower is a defining minimum
criterion of our coming of age as a nation and we must begin this task with
unity, solemnity and the timeless tenacity that I believe still hasn’t left
us. Our own liberal democracy let us find that Bangali rose. |
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