The early signs of the secular Republic of India becoming a theocratic state with an autocratic leadership is in the horizon! The next general election in March 2024 is likely to be a referendum on this issue!
I watched this Kingfisher perched in a post, looking left and right and forward! To me it became a symbol of hope.
I wish that people of India would choose the way ahead to stay as a secular republic and not take a path to the left or right.
Listening to a commentator yesterday, I saw an exasperated leader overwhelmed by fear and dismay over an impending change in the constitution of India, for which the ruling party is electioneering to achieve two third majority of membership in the parliament.
We find similar instincts of authoritarian political orientation in Russia, China, Israel, United States of America, France, Maldives, Bangla Desh...! I feel disturbed that the political parties, who oppose such a political climate, are still in hesitation to come together to fight against this traction for authoritarian rule in India.
It was an evening time and the darkness was about to fall, when I noticed this Kingfisher pondering over its flight path for the night perch. This pondering look in her body posture gave me hope that people of India would ponder before they give sanction for authoritarian rule and consenting to be a theocratic state. It looks like the history of 75 years of being a secular republic, where all are assured to be equal, is in peril.
The bottom pyramid of people, who are still disadvantaged socially, economically, and educationally, which constitute about seventy percent of the population of India, is at a loss. The agenda of a capitalist economy and theocratic society as envisaged by the ruling dispensation in India is thrust upon people, whose ability to resist it is weak!
The political morality in India was characterised since independence, by the call of bringing welfare to people, in the bottom of the pyramid of population. Now there is a turning towards promoting the able and well to do to make them even more prosperous, that there is concentration of power and control in the hands of the privileged few.
I needed this image of a Kingfisher for my own consolation. We live among people, who would ponder and choose the way forward for this nation of India!
There are some indications of awakened responses and movements towards that! However it is feeble, fragile and faltering!
As for me, the Kingfisher is still a symbol of hope! It looked left and right for a good bit of time, and then turned to look forward and flew away in that direction. It did see the path as forward movement!
The forward movement for India in my dream, is to turn its attention to those who live at the bottom of the pyramid and enable them to find their path in a democratic and secular republic of India.
I grew up and lived in a secular and democratic country for the last seventy-five years.
Let me present this rose flowers as a symbol hope to those in the bottom of the pyramid, that you too would live with the freedom, liberty and equity, a secular democratic republic would offer even in the future!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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