We must be happy as a nation

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates compares the government to a shepherd. The government takes care of the citizens as a shepherd takes care of his sheep. Thrasymachus, another philosopher and a character in Plato’s book, rubbishes the analogy. The shepherd does take care of his sheep, says Thrasymachus. But for what? (1) To fleece them, and (2) to eat them. In the discourse that follows Thrasymachus argues that what passes for social justice is in fact a collection of laws and customs maintained by the ruling class for its own advantage.

Cynical as I am, I would not have given much credence to Thrasymachus until Mr Modi and his team started governing India. Many governments in India prior to Modi’s were also marked by corruption of all sorts. There is little that is surprising in that. Corruption is an integral part of politics. Even governments which were supposedly guided by divine revelations – like the Christian ones in the West or the Islamic ones in the Middle East – were marked by remarkably brutal levels of corruption. Even God could not safeguard governments from corruptibility.

Perhaps, God adds to the problem. The secular governments in India – or, for that matter, anywhere in the world – were far less vicious than the religious ones. Today India is governed by a political party whose principles emerge from a religion. And the results are more disastrous.

Millions of Indians are likely to end up in what BJP’s India calls “detention centres”. As many as ten such centres are already functional in the country and many more are being constructed. Are we moving in the direction of Hitler’s Germany? Possibly. The government calls this justice.

This is precisely what Thrasymachus meant. The justice practised by the BJP is safeguarding the interests of one group of people in the country. That group is the majority of citizens and they are happy. If they are happy the nation is happy. Because we are a democracy. The government can be certain to get the support of the majority because of this one reason alone. People are selfish and the government is exploiting that selfishness for its own political purposes. The government calls it justice. It sounds nice.

What happened in Delhi last week will prove beyond any doubt that it’s nothing about justice. The people who enjoy the government’s support looted the properties of the others and ejected them from their own homes. These people think that they can slowly appropriate everything belonging to the other people. New social justice!

But don’t forget that the government is not magnanimous to let you take it all. The government is the shepherd. Fleecing and killing will come to you in the due course of time. Just wait.

Plato’s Thrasymachus went much beyond this. I’m not going into all the details. But just one more point. Justice, as a moral principle, is purely an illusion.  Yes, the Greek philosopher says that in Plato’s Republic. It is an illusion invoked by the weak to protect themselves against the strong, whom otherwise they would be only too happy to imitate.

In other words, injustice, exploitation of others, grabbing their property, is what most of us will practise given a chance. The pre-Modi governments gave that chance to less people. Now more, a sizeably significant section of the citizens, have the chance. So we must be happy as a nation!