India’s secularism has been hot-headed ever since the Indian Constitution got framed. On the glorified occasion of Dr. BR Ambedkar‘s reminiscence, let’s just not celebrate his birthday but follow the democracy he envisioned for India. Over the past decades, we have been belittling the Ideologies of our icons. These icons have created a pathway to envision and go forward with their directions. But alongside we have treated them as hotheaded rebellions, which is unjustified.
The approach needs to revamp and it’s time that we recover the prestigious ideas of our icons. Following his envision, we could regain our lost track of transforming India into a leading democracy. Babasaheb Ambedkar was the first Indian, and arguably the only Indian in the 20th century, who offered a theory of radical democracy, a theory that can make India surging again on the path of reforming democracy in the 21st century.
It is significant to remember his impact on framing the Indian Constitution. We have been following his long-standing approach and it is prevalent even today. It is compelling a reminder today when India’s democracy is being dismantled by those who preside over Ambedkar’s birthday celebrations. The complexion of India is changing from the World’s largest democracy, and it is forming the shape of autocracy under Narendra Modi’s regime.
Although Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was not the first thinker to reflect on Democracy, he answered three major answers that a theory of democracy must address.
The first one, a theory must set out a norm, an idea of what Democracy should be like. In today’s scenario, those norms have faded with the government’s dominance in interfering with the private working of the industries. Ambedkar’s answers were the virtue of his understanding of India, and what India could look like in the 21st century. The transformation hasn’t been so great as so many of his reforming ideologies have been dumped at bay by the Indian citizens. Since the time the Constitution got worked, critics arose from the left, who thought that the democratic experiment in India was a sham. They resembled it to a rule of the capitalist class cloaked in procedures of democracy.
People have sided their paths with the current government and it is prevalent in the way they praise the Prime Minister for transforming India. But it doesn’t show the staggering loophole it has created. The critics of the veteran reformers have increased and they have turned against the iconic stars.
We turn Gandhi into a naive Saint, a harmless preacher of non-violence, Bhagat Singh into a hot-headed rebellious nationalist, and Charan Singh into a caste leader. The thinking hasn’t differed in the case of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar’s intellectual legacy. So we have perplexed our ways moving into the 21st century. It is inevitable as we downgraded the icons massively, and it isn’t a satisfactory sign for a democratic ruling like India.
The substantive ideal of democracy
Ambedkar offered a substantive definition of Democracy, radically different from the procedural definition that dominated the existing theories of democracy. Ambedkar believed that the monumental elements of election and parliament were there for a purpose: “to bring about the welfare of the people.” A democratic nation is about creating a healthy strategic space for the people, but lately, it has been forgotten with passing times. Ambedkar went on to offer a radically unique definition of democracy, which wasn’t the case before.
For Ambedkar, democracy was “a form and a method of government whereby revolutionary changes in the economic and social life of the people are brought about without bloodshed.” Ambedkar’s ideologies had planned to make India a success across the international circuit. Wordings have been praised unprecedentedly by the Indian political leaders, but they have sustained to claim they are the ones who revamped India’s structure and not them. The roots of democracy are to be searched in the communal society, in terms of associated life between the people who form an integral part of India’s democracy.
There hasn’t been an emphasis on focusing on the societal problems that India has been facing in the 21st century. Rather the current government has rallied in becoming a prosperous leading party and has exaggerated the sufferings of the citizens. The difference in ideologies has surfaced throughout the journey of the Modi government. Where the one says to focus on benefiting the society, the other one asserts to enhance power in concentrated hands.
Path to Democratic Future Collapsed Miserably
Ambedkar had an unusual approach to making the transition from the present to the desired future. His envision wasn’t followed and the path to Democratic Future has collapsed miserably. Unlike the social disparities at the time, he didn’t reside in a particular synopsis as he believed that both paths could have caused conflicts across the state. We don’t need to stretch our imagination far to anticipate what Ambedkar might have said about the continuation of inequalities.
What needs more careful attention is that these fragments should form part of a coherent story and be sustained in India’s democracy pathway. The envisioned democratic future to untether as it has failed to be instilled into the ideologies of the Indian citizens. The concept of radical democracy needs to be inculcated in Parliament’s work. It needs to be far-fetched and the theories that may have worked wonders needs to integrate back.
This is a task for those who take Babasaheb Ambedkar’s intellectual legacy seriously, beyond birthday celebrations. The forces need to cooperate to revolutionize the Indian democracy, but that’s easier said than done. So let’s compare whether the current government has enhanced India’s democratic recognition or the standard has been dropped.
Has Narendra Modi’s Government shown signs of rallying the Ideologies of social reformers?
When the Indian command changed in 2014, there was a hope across Indian citizens that the country would move towards growth and better global recognition. Lately, Narendra Modi‘s ideology has been to focus on administering its troops by rallying towards success. But the revolutionization is nowhere to be seen. The regime has shown India’s reality hidden in remote areas. The primitive reason for the revamp of the Ruling party was to scale the progress in the deprived sectors of the nation.
However, the government has not only clanged the hopes of the Indian citizens but also degraded the valuable efforts of the existing reforms to change the dynamics of India. PM Narendra Modi wasn’t confined with the Ideologies of Babasaheb Ambedkar and felt his propaganda only focused on caste injustice. Thus, he didn’t particularly automate policies into efficient strategic decisions, which could have turned India into a prestigious democracy.
The critics of the previous role models grew with Modi upending them on his side. Promises were made along the way that during his time India would be a global heritage by the end of his term. No signs have been observed as of yet. So to say that Indian democracy has succeeded to give freedom of expression to Indian citizens is a fallacy. Views of the government have shifted more towards helping the colossal conglomerates that help the funding rather than addressing the protracted recession that has crippled India in depth.
The pathway forward for changing the norms
The citizens who still stick by their decisions of changing the Indian picture should get more involved in leading campaigns. The varying fact is that it needs an urgent reconciliation from the government. Whether the government changes its reclined focus to adhere to the propositions of the community is in doubt. The social reformers were affirmative that the Indian democracy would need a magnifying personality to sustain their ideologies in the 21st Century.
The valiant efforts of the prolific revolutionary leaders at the time have got inked into the deep chores. The citizens have triggered their approach towards violence and adhering to that, India has been restless and hyphenated since 2014. The politics have gone dirty, and the level of freedom for the remote area’s community declined as longer the reign goes on. In the present scenario, Narendra Modi has hailed his efforts in transforming India to combat recession. It seems like they are just apprehension of words as he is a public attention seeker and knows how to handle the criticism.
Loopholes have been hidden to overshadow the government’s incompetence to raise their expression for the Indian citizens. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s radical democracy theory had one characteristic aim to improve the cast injustice. But under Modi, it appears that it has apprehended and disparities have emulsified. The future looks grim if there isn’t an enlightening change of thoughts in the current policies and laws under the Modi government. How Indian policymakers are moving the time is near when the community’s deprived societies in India become non-existent.
The economic disparity has not been able to bridge the gap that existed years ago. When the comparison is getting done, the democracy pattern that existed during the 1960s was more focused on the low-class groups. The condescending fact is that when the coronavirus cases surged during their inital phases, The Muslim minority was accused as Corona Jihad and were contemplated to be the prominent reasons for transmitting the Covid-19.
But that contradicts the visuals of recent times. When thousands of people attended the Kumbh Mela last week, the argument was that why such discrimination across castes and religions. So the potency of Ambedkar hasn’t sustained, and not following his envision has cost India a lot. Hadn’t it been for Ambedkar Indian Constitution wouldn’t have had the impact it has had until 2014? After 2014, the perplexion increased, and there were more complicated programs inaugurated. There was a lack of awareness spread across India, and the integral policies stayed within the Parliament.
India’s situation could change, and we are not denying that, but for revamping the whole collapse, it has to go back to amend on the envision of the 20th century. Going back to the golden days is now only a dream for the vast majority of Indian citizens. The government isn’t changing a sniff in its motion in the coming months, and the adversities are going to creep higher and higher.
The stand needs to be taken up as a union. Thus, the government will pay attention to our heeds, but that too begins with a Big IF. The Indian citizens should enthrall spirits from the national icons to keep the fight for their rights surging until the very end, and one day they will get prospered.
