(Editor-in-Chief)
Shiv Sena legislators` political tourism to Assam, that too within a 5-star hotel, named Radison Blu, has generated special national interest across the country. The Shiv Sena legislators led by Eknath Shinde have exposed the hollowness Indian politics and Indian democracy. What ought to have been the model form of democratic polity in our nascent self-rule, we have less access to the fundamentals of self-governance. Some basic questions arise in our minds. Have we ever been democratic at all? Look at Indian history of last three thousand years. India was a medley mix of about seven hundred sovereign kingdoms, ruled by different dynasties. Even if we don’t go too far, and fix ourselves only within last one thousand years, our democratic testimony will be nothing more than a cipher. Pre-Muslim period was also autocratic both in letter and spirit. The Muslim kings ruled the major part of India for about four hundred years. Thereafter, the British colonial rule started in India, and it continued for two hundred years. So, we had to have royal authorities in our country for last thousand years. Our expectation for democracy within the last seventies, after our national independence, might be too high. In reality, we are yet to recover from the fever of autocracy or oligarchy, or anything of the kind. Even today we use words like raja for the legislators, and praja for the rest of the society. It expressly implies that we are yet to get into the philosophical foundation of democracy. We use the word democracy, but behave anti-democratically. Our outer voice is for democracy, and the inner voice is for alien to the principles of democracy.
The hotel tourism of the Shiv Sena MLAs is something different. Initially, the legitimacy of the BJP was subverted by a concocted form of coalition politics by the Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP, commanding only 56, 44 and 54 MLAs respectively. Today, for obvious reasons, the Shiv Sena legislators might be thinking of coalescing with the BJP. That might be the objective of the hotel tourism worked out by the major section of the Shiv Sena legislators. Who instigated them to come to Guwahati for a political objective is not a material point. Instead of coming to Guwahati they could have gone to any other place for hide and seek conclaves, we call hotel tourism. Nowadays, marriages are performed in hotels. Birthdays are also celebrated in hotels. Official and social get-togethers are also done in the hotels. In this light, the hotel tourism for political ends cannot be our focal point. Let us wait and see, what happens next.
Also Read: Hotel Politics: Will Assam Redraw The Political Map Of Maharashtra?