Democracy and rationalism

In a democracy like India, much of the government’s decisions are guided by populist stances, and not rational thinking. Political parties cannot afford to loose majority support which is crucial for holding the office in a democracy. Whenever there is an issue, and if the majority is the creator and not the victim of the issue, our political parties tend to support the majority blindly.

For example, don’t we all agree that one of the essential prerequisites of democracy is secularism? Democracy provides equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their state, caste, class, ethnicity. Yet there is widespread use of religion, caste and ethnicity to appeal to senses of masses to gather support. Isn’t it ironic that in a democratic nation we use undemocratic means to elect our leaders, who in-turn try to establish democracy in state?

We have established ourselves as a secular state, but we are far from becoming a secular civil society. Politics must be free from religions as per as secularism is concerned, but this remains an elusive dream in India with religious pluralism. Caste in India is a different ball game, because due to its social circumstances, class struggle is almost equal to caste struggle here. But non of that should lead to petty violence bred politics.