DEIVATHIN KURAL # 83 (Vol #4) Dated 07 Oct 2010.

DEIVATHIN KURAL # 83 (Vol #4) Dated 07 Oct 2010.

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by Periyaval of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, over a period of some 60 years while he was the pontiff in the earlier part of the last century. These have been published by Vanadi Padippagam, Chennai, in seven volumes of a thousand pages each as Deivathin Kural. Today we are proceeding from the second para on page number 456 of Vol 4 of the Tamil original. The readers may note that here in 'man/he' includes 'woman/she' too mostly. These e-mails are all available at http://Advaitham.blogspot.com updated constantly)
94. If there are some uneducated brilliant brains, they can only be exceptions and not the general rule! That is why this condition of being educated was kept as a requirement for election to the Sabha. The intention is not to leave it to chance but fix it clearly. When the Constituent Assembly was being formed, Babu Rajendra Prasad who was the convener (later the first Independent India’s President!), wanted that members to be selected for it should be well educated and said so. Let us take the lower and higher courts in each State. The Lawyers and Judges have all got to be educated with a university degree in any subject and then be legally qualified! The job of the Legislative Assembly in each State is drafting and evolving the Laws of the land! Now, is it not equally logical and necessary that the persons as members of these Legislative Assemblies and the Central Parliament, should also be educationally qualified, to be able to know what they are doing while forming and evolving the Laws of the Land? By the same logic, is it not also essential that the voters electing the members of these assemblies have at least that much knowledge to be able to make sensible selections? Under these conditions, if nobody can keep on sticking on to ones job for more than one year, with a gap of three years; many of the inherent pitfalls such as, the tendency to adhere to the position, establishing oneself firmly by sending down roots, being attracted by power and position and becoming a parasite on the society; will be obviated. The political party should be bigger than the individual and the society’s welfare should be greater than the party’s popularity! To see to it that single individuals do not over dominate the society, 70 years as the cut-off age is necessary for membership in the Sabha.
95. There is an adage which says that ‘the government that governs the least is the one that governs best’! Instead, nowadays the tendency is for these governments to poke their nose anywhere and everywhere! It used to be that Governments were responsible for protection of the country from foreign interference and maintenance of internal law and order. But today, there is not an area not permeated by governmental control or influence. I do not have to list them all. Especially in India as a third world country, the Government has had to enter in to every area of agriculture, industry, mining, trading, commerce, services and what not to be able to create the infra structure for all sorts of industries, in the name of Research, Development and Welfare! That impinges on the individual and social life of all citizens in some way or the other. Thus the government today virtually is entering into every nook and corner of man’s life, enacting laws. These laws get passed mostly on the basis of simple majority! In this situation now, please exercise your own minds as to how important it is for the members of these assemblies to be having the basic knowledge for the application of their minds and discretion and not vote en mass based on the whip of the leader of the house! Is it not important for these members to have some basic education, to be able to sensibly assess the intrinsic value of such enactments? In such a situation when Babu Rajendra Prasad objected to certain enactments regarding provision of Divorce in Hindu Marriage Act, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru threatened as though he was going to resign and forced the issue. Today it has become a methodology to use all sorts of arm twisting to make people vote to suit their whims and fancies! Let this new story be set aside, let us go back to the story about the old story of Uttara Merur! Let us look at the next requirement of qualification of an aspirant for the election to the Sabha! (Relate this to the state of Democracy as it exists in India today!)
96. For all the clauses in the Uttara Merur Saasanam, the most important life line is that the aspirant should have ‘Artha Suddhi and Atma Suddhi’, meaning that he should be monetarily not embarrassed and morally upright! (I have italicised and underlined the clause for obvious reasons!) It is the courage of convictions that this clause gives a man that, from the time of Megasthanis every visitor to India have sung encomiums of praise for the Indian Nation! They have to maintain this Artha Suddhi and Atma Suddhi not only while standing for elections but also after being elected, while in office! Otherwise, their membership is forfeited and they and their relatives cannot hope to stand for elections! I will come back to this point later. Make a note of it!
97. Now, except for those who have been openly and legally proved and declared as culpable for an offence, everybody else can stand for elections and become a member of any Assembly or even Parliament. There are many Known Delinquents and criminals who are members of the Indian Parliament today! They exploit two legal loop holes. One is that, till proved any accused is considered as innocent! So by avoiding being tried by various means, they can endlessly postpone their legal proceedings as well as their being declared as culpable! The second factor that they exploit is that the benefit of doubt is always given to the accused till proved beyond any reasonable doubt! Money plays a major role in corrupting the witnesses in a poor country like ours, abetted by threats by organised criminal elements! Even blatant crimes like raid by armed thugs, open murders, trains being derailed or the rails being removed are not proved due to paucity of witnesses! Similarly, on the civil side, there are crimes galore such as collection of funds without any accounting known as hawala transactions; allotment of lands to so called poor people later sold off after some time; peddling of influence and so on; which cannot be clearly identified as to which rule or law if any was transgressed!
98. Possibility of Corruption of the Common Man! So far we have been talking about the aspirant’s Artha Suddhi and Atma Suddhi. Let it be aside. I am now concerned about the possibility of Universal Corruption as a result of Universal Suffrage that is likely to happen! It pains me to think as to how by making simply age as the criteria, we are opening new avenues for mass corruption of the poor man who was afraid of giving bribes till date, will suddenly be receiving bribes for his votes! The risk is being taken to further new levels of a quantum leap of corruption of the Artha Suddhi and Atma Suddhi of the common man! He was poor, but was honestly poor. Entering into all aspects of a man’s life as the Welfare State, by following the principle that the voter does not need to have any other qualification than age, I am seized by great fears of two types!
99. One fear is that unworthy persons will be elected and they will be cause and bring into being an atmosphere of corruption in all walks of life as can only be done by people in power in a supposedly Welfare State! They will look for bribes for anything and everything that they are required do as well as what they are not supposed to do. The people who could afford to pay them like this are likely to be only a small percentage of the general public. The second fear is worse. In a country like ours, where 90% of the people are poor, aspirants would lure them with lucre! When I think of this possibility, I shiver as to what could happen to our land praised till now as ‘Punya Bhoomi’! As a result of ‘Adult Franchise’ every poor man is going to be corrupted to sell his vote and every political party of any hue is going to compete with each other in this act of corruption! It is this likelihood that has become a nightmare for me! To be competing against each other in this venture, every politician will have to sell his soul to the Devil! This is the Quantum Leap that I am worried about! Once the common man is corrupted, He would take bribe from all of them and play them against each other. Instead of some officer in some place being corrupted, we will end up making politics a business of corruption in our ‘Punya Bhoomi’ and make the common man party to untruth ‘Asatyam’! This is ‘Jana Nayakam’ where everyone is the King of Corruption!
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.