Revolution! The very word sends jitters down the spine of Indian 'intellectuals', these 'heroes' who strut about our national stage like vainglorious peacocks, and preach homilies to our gullible and largely ignorant public.
It horrifies and petrifies them, and they see looming before them the spectre of a guillotine, which may chop off many heads. They run from it, like cockroaches running from light, or like perceiving Banquo's ghost or Caesar's spirit at Phillippi.
But I perceive it as something inevitable in India.
Consider the facts:
Everything has collapsed in India. Our state institutions have become hollow and empty shells, and our Constitution reduced to a scarecrow, whose only purpose is to deceive the Indian people that they are ruling themselves.
There is often tall talk of India having the fastest growing economy in the world, and rapid growth in GDP, but the truth is very different.
1. Every second child in India is malnourished, according to Global Hunger Index.
2. About 57 per cent of our women are anaemic, which means they are not getting nourishing food.
3. Twelve million youth are entering the job market every year, but only half a million jobs are being created every year in the organised sector of our economy. What happens to the remaining 11.5 million? They end up as hawkers, street vendors, stringers, bouncers, criminals, beggars or suicides. If a single government job of peon is advertised, there are often 10,000 to 20,000 applicants, many having Ph.D, M.Sc, MBA or engineering degrees.
4. Prices of essential commodities like food, fuel and medicines have skyrocketed in India.
Is it not obvious that the situation has now become explosive, and we are coming closer to some kind of French or Russian Revolution, which were triggered off by bread riots in Paris and St Petersburg?
It is true that at present there is no actual revolutionary situation in India, but it will gradually and inevitably develop, as things worsen.
Most of the present Indian politicians, of all parties, are a bunch of cunning, selfish, shifty, slippery, smooth tongued deceivers only interested in power and pelf, and experts in polarising society by inciting caste and communal hatred to secure their vote banks. Don't such people deserve to be thrown out?
It is obvious that parliamentary democracy is not suited to India, as it runs largely on the basis of feudal forces like casteism and communalism, forces which must be destroyed if India is to progress. Our Constitution has exhausted itself, our 'democracy' has been hijacked by feudal minded people who are incorrigible.
On the other hand, the socio-economic distress of our people keeps mounting.
I submit that the solutions to the massive problems of India lie outside the system, not within it. No amount of reforms will do, and what is now required is a revolution.
What form this revolution will take, and how much time, who will be its patriotic, selfless, modern minded leaders determined to create a political and social order under which India rapidly modernises and industrialises and our people enjoy a high standard of living and lead decent lives, cannot be predicted, but what certainly can be predicted is that it is coming.
Also read: OPINION: The future of India
Justice Markandey Katju retired from the Supreme Court in 2011. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
