The loss of nobility and idealism
among the world leaders is a greater threat to humanity than coronavirus.
I am reminded of the German legend of the
Pied Piper of Hamelin which comes more like an allegory of our situation. The
city of Hamelin was plagued by rats. Then came a colorfully dressed enchanter
who asked the town to hand him their gold and he would rid the city of the
rats. In distress, the people agreed and the enchanter played his bugle and
took the rats to the river to drown them. But when he demanded his share of the
town’s riches, the people thought it was not commensurate to his efforts. He
started playing another tune now and led all of the town’s children into a cave
never to be seen again.
Some leaders come like the Pied Piper
and show gimmicks and enchant the people with an eye to loot the country for their
benefit. There are no noble ideals up their sleeve and they fail in their
pretensions of nobility miserably.
The point of writing this occurred in
the background of Turkey’s Hagia Sophia, a Christian church that was converted
into a mosque by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Babri Masjid,
a Muslim mosque converted to a temple at the watch of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi. An analysis of the political exigencies of doing these acts of
embarrassment for secular humanity could console the people who could not agree
with the erection of such monuments of shame.
Why do democratic leaders resort to
gather religious majority? The poverty of a developmental agenda and/or the
failure of the political nerve to execute a developmental agenda forces them to
turn towards wooing an existing religious majority and converting them into an
electoral majority. The strongest push for swinging opinions of the majority to
their favour is the creation of an imaginary enemy and particularly a religious
enemy. By inciting violence they make the majority feel that they are under
threat and there is a moral imperative to support these new pied pipers for a
just cause. Once a religious majority is established and the minority constructed
as enemies, a democracy degrades into majoritarianism, where the rights of the
minority need not be respected. They change the constitution, legal framework
and all the checks and balances provided in a vibrant democracy. In a mature
democracy, votes swing based on the development of the country and there are no
permanent electoral minorities. By establishing a religious electoral majority,
permanent minorities are created. The decadence becomes complete when the pied
piper emerges to dictate his terms.
So, it is
a spineless political leadership, incapable of gathering a majority on their
developmental planks, that begs for the support of an existing religious
majority. Hagia Sophia and Babri Masjid are used as instruments to galvanize an
emotional political game. Make no mistake, these leaders do not believe in the values
of the gods for whom they claim to fight!
Erdoğan, Modi, Donald Trump in the U.S.
The list is definitely not limited to these names. The pied piper leaderships
have a common factor of narcissism in varying degrees. Their typical nature
includes a proclivity to defame and belittle other leaders when they realize
that they do not match the standards of the figures that they might be compared
with. Another typical nature is the compulsion for propaganda and staging
events meant for self-promotion. They easily transfer the blame of their
failures to others. The exaggerations that they make of themselves, I
originally thought, they themselves did not believe. Now, I am growing into the
realization that they are not aware that they are lying!
Ultimately, these ignoble, unimaginative
leaders are leading their countries into cave lives like the Pied Piper of
Hamelin.
(Published on 10th August 2020, Volume XXXII,
Issue 33)
