Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani, Malayalam weekly

Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote.

Bernard Shaw defined democracy, with his characteristic cynicism, as “a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b)² which should be equal to a² and b². There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine leaders turn out to be far worse than the human master. Their exploitation of the other animals is absolute and they employ much more ingenious instruments for the exploitation than Enforcement Directorate, CBI, Income Tax raids, Electoral Bonds, and institutions such as the judiciary. In the end, the pig-leaders of the nationalist republic of animals are seen to be sitting in a conference room having a summit with men from the neighbouring farms. It’s more than mere crony capitalism now. “The creatures outside,” concludes Orwell’s novel, “looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; it was impossible to say which is which.”

Orwell was very familiar with the British Raj. He was a part of it. And so he knew the Indian mind pretty well. Is India the inspiration for his Animal Farm and 1984? Looking at what is happening in my contemporary India, I’m tempted to think it was.

There is a donkey named Benjamin in the Animal Farm who knows that Mr Jones, the master before the nationalist revolution, and the pigs who are the masters now, are no different from each other. He knows that whoever sits on the throne, life will go on as it has always gone on – that is, badly. His only consolation is that God has given him a tail to keep the flies off though he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.

I am Benjamin the donkey now. I lived with Tweedledum for long. Now I have been living with Tweedledee for ten years. I have seen many Tweedledums switiching allegiance and becoming Tweedledees overnight. Only the colour of the coat changes. They are all the same inside: essentially criminals.

I’m not going to vote this time. Not because they are all criminals. I’m not going to vote because I don’t want to be as foolish as a fish that goes to vote for what will be the best fishing net.

Whose government is Mr Modi’s government? A particular religious community’s. No, more precisely, it is the government of a powerful section of a particular religious community.

A lot of citizens are like Boxer the horse in Orwell’s Animal Farm. Boxer gives everything from his sweat to his blood to the nation. He is a sincere nationalist. More loyal than the ruler himself. He sheds the last drop of his sweat for the welfare of the nation. He believed all those beautiful slogans and melodious jingles coined by his smooth-tongued leader. He spent his life for materialising the dreams presented in those alliterating slogans and jingles. Now He is going to die before his time. And what does the government do with him when Boxer hs become too weak to shed his sweat for the nation anymore? They sell him to the slaughterhouse and buy whisky with the money. Well, his price wouldn’t buy a Mercedes Maybach, you know.

My problem is that I am not even a Boxer now in the present system. I am an unwanted outcast. I am made to feel every moment that I don’t belong here. This nation belongs to a particular group of people and I’m not there in that group. I won’t ever be allowed to join either because of my birth conditions. Why will I vote for a system which is increasingly becoming a threat to me? Why be a fish that votes for the most entrancing fishing net?

And there is no other choice to vote for. All other choices have already been decimated with the help of the ED, CBI, IT and what not.

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