The sense and triumph of civil culture that has unfolded before us in Egypt has shown up the prevailing suffocation still rampant around us in the World. The ability and steadfastness of people’s desire to break away from shackles and chains has brought down another of the dictators ruling under the falseness of an empty democracy. We are lucky to have witnessed the rise of civic sensibility and it’s ability to outlast the suffocation. This episode has shown the wrong policies and narrow vested interests of the western democracies, who over decades have misled the world and helped create a less peaceful existence.
Nizar Qabbani, an eminent Arab poet and thinker has rightly stated that everywhere in developing societies:
“Our shouting is louder than our actions
Our swords are taller than us
This is our tragedy.
In short
We wear the cape of civilisation
But our souls live in the stone age.”
This is even more so true for the Sikh people. The existing struggle and it’s fallout has depicted that the desire and deep wish is to build a civil culture with a sense of pride and dignity. To achieve this, the challenge we have before us in these deeply show-oriented religious societies, devoid of values and without a sense of personal responsibility and integrity, is to find a path which can lead us away from suffocation and the shackles of false democracies.
President Obama spoke after the resignation of Mr Mubarak and said that humanity has created a new way to achieve a change by peaceful means. A balance between individual rights and religious identities is the task ahead of us. Politics in India and particularly that of the Sikhs, as in other developing societies, is to play off populations – small tribes, castes and religions against each other to keep peoples attention away from day to day issues. In India I have seen that politics is entrenched fully in the family base; similarly with Sikhs. To find a path and a bridge to bring the population, individual people and the governing elite closer is a major task. For this, the suffocating hold of family rule over extending bureaucracy and their mantra of security and stability must be shed so that it can never be used to stifle any rightful dissent and difference of opinion.
This is one of the best ways to achieve any rightful conclusion to never-ending struggles everywhere… so that people as a whole can at least have a better sense of civil culture and individual rights with self responsibility… so that humanity can feel real change around them and witness development and progress.
