By Justice Markandey Katju, former Judge, Supreme Court of India
Many people say that I have negativity as I only criticise the state of affairs in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc but have no positive solution to suggest. This article is being written in response to such allegations.
Yes, I criticise a lot, because I find the state of affairs in our countries disgusting. Our leaders are mostly crooks who have no genuine love for the people and are only interested in power and pelf. Our people are mostly intellectually backward and with feudal mindsets, full of casteism and communalism, which the leaders exploit. There is massive poverty, unemployment, farmers distress ( leading to over 3 lac suicides in India ), malnourishment, lack of health care and good education for the masses, discrimination and atrocities on minorities, women, Dalits, etc in our countries.
I criticise this state of affairs because there is no construction without destruction, and this state of affairs must be destroyed so that our people start enjoying a high standard of living and get decent lives.
But what is the positive solution? Here I come to the basic issue.
We have adopted parliamentary democracy, borrowing it from the Western countries. But in India parliamentary democracy really means appealing to caste and communal vote banks. When most Indians go to vote they do not see the candidate’s merit but only his caste or religion ( or the caste or religion which the party of that candidate represents ). Casteism and communalism are feudal forces which must be destroyed if India is to progress, but parliamentary democracy further entrenches them.
Parliamentary democracy rests on a majority vote, but the vast majority of our people are intellectually backward. How can they decide what is good for them? That is why I have no faith in parliamentary democracy.
In my opinion, it is a dictatorship of a small number of leaders with modern scientific minds who ruthlessly abolish and crush feudal laws, customs and practices and religious extremism, and rapidly industrialize and modernize the country, giving the people a high standard of living and decent lives.
The test of every political system is one and only one: does it raise the standard of living of the people? It is wholly irrelevant whether that system is the parliamentary democracy or military rule or socialism.
We may consider 3 examples in this connection:
1. Turkey
Turkey was earlier ruled by the feudal-minded Sultans, who kept the country backward, because of which the people were very poor, and Turkey became known as ‘ The Sick Man of Europe’.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) who was an army general, seized power in 1923 and abolished the monarchy and the caliphate, making Turkey a secular republic. He realized that the ills of Turkey were all because of its feudalism and backwardness, and he immediately set about modernizing and industrializing the country and encouraged people to adopt a Western way of life.
He abolished sharia law and the religious courts, replacing them with Western laws. He suppressed the religious schools (madrasas) replacing them with modern secular schools. He banned the burqa and wearing the fez cap. Women were granted equality with men, and polygamy was forbidden. The Arabic script was replaced by the Roman alphabets. Thus Kemal rapidly modernized Turkey, brooking no opposition. As a result, feudalism was rapidly destroyed in Turkey.
2. Japan
Till 1867 Japan was ruled by the feudal Tokugawa shoguns, and the Emperor was only a figurehead. Below the shoguns were the daimyos (feudal lords) who were landholders with their own armies of the samurai class.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 (see online) abolished the shogunate and feudalism in Japan, and thereafter the country was rapidly modernized and industrialized.
The leaders who then came to power in Japan were modern-minded and determined to rapidly modernize and industrialize the country. About 50 top officials went to Europe and America to learn about the industry, trade, military etc and they came back with many modern ideas. Western engineers and scientists were invited to Japan to help the industrialization of the country. Technical institutes were set up in which Western professors were invited as the faculty. The govt created an infrastructure of railways, roads and shipyards, telegraph and electricity lines, etc and itself set up many industries such as shipyards, iron smelters, textile mills, mines, sugar, cement, chemicals and glass industries etc which were later sold to private entrepreneurs.
The domains of the daimyos were abolished, and so were their private armies. In their place, a modern national army based on universal conscription (and not limited to the samurai class) was created.
Free and compulsory elementary education for both boys and girls was established throughout Japan.
All this resulted in the destruction of the feudal order and rapid modernization of Japan, so much so that it could defeat a European power, Russia, in a war in 1904.
3. China
China was a very poor and backward feudal country ruled by the Qing dynasty which fell in 1911. Thereafter a period of chaos and war with Japan followed, culminating in the revolution of 1949.
The leaders who came to power after the revolution were modern-minded people determined to modernize and industrialize China.
They were communists, but their communism was of a very different kind from that of the Russians. It was basically anti-feudal, and indeed feudalism was smashed under their leadership.
Today China is, in fact, the second superpower in the world, a seemingly miraculous transformation in less than 70 years of a poor country which was once booted around by Europeans.
In all the 3 examples I have given, the modernization and industrialization of the country were not done by democratic means but by modern-minded dictatorships. What was common in all these 3 examples was the destruction of feudalism forcibly, and not by votes.
Also, the military played a prominent part in all these 3 instances. Mustafa Kemal was himself an army general and he was supported in his drive to the modernization of the country by his top army officers like Ismet Inonu (who succeeded him as President on his death in 1938).
In Japan, a new national army was created after the Meiji Restoration based on universal conscription, and the armies of the daimyos were abolished. This new army was firmly subordinate to the new modern-minded leaders.
In China, the Red Army created by the communists was a new kind of army, led by the same persons who were also the political leaders.
It is important to note that the military leaders in all these 3 countries were modern-minded patriotic people. Had they not been so the countries could not have been modernized. So it is not any kind of military leaders who can modernize the country.
Having related examples of how 3 countries modernized we come back to the central question posed at the beginning of this article: how can India and its neighboring countries become modern industrial states with their people enjoying a high standard of living?
For that our main objective must be to forcibly destroy feudalism in all its forms, including feudal mentality and feudal customs and practices.
I have no ready-made answer for how this is to be achieved, but it is evident from the above discussion, and the 3 examples given above, that parliamentary democracy, far from bringing about a radical transformation, will ensure that progress of our countries is blocked and feudalism in various forms e.g. casteism and communalism, continues.
The only way out therefore is for the modern-minded patriotic section of our people to use their creativity to find out an answer and an alternative to parliamentary democracy which can destroy feudalism and enable us to rapidly move forward, industrialize our country and give our people decent lives. That is their historical duty and task
