The bygone generation – The old fashioned generation of Indian villages is now at the stage of dwindling down that once had had its own kind of existence.That generation happened to live with its own parameters and political convictions. And these convictions once permeated into their heart and mind, whole through their life they lived with them. Simply meant, the political wagon once they boarded on, never they shifted on to another wagon. Even without realizing, the political wagon they mounted, had with the passing of time now turned up into a rejected, shattered heap of scrap into political arena. Perhaps, for this concept of loyalty to one party the term “personality cult” has rightly been coined since political party basically run by powerful supremo.
The next coming generation of them kept on changing their political conviction as per the necessity and circumstances, but they old people remained glue to their original political party. In every village, people had their own liking to some major national political party. And their conviction and attachment were so emotionally deep rooted to the party concerned. In the sense that if in a general election their favorite party lost the game never did they blame to bleak election management or ill-canvassing or bad policies for the defeat. In stead, they tried carping the imaginary ill practices played by the opponent party in the election battle.
Conviction of people – The nature of political conviction of that generation had a format of having their own like minded “cluster” of people versus another political “cluster”. But this format never effected adversely the man to man cordiality of village ecosystem. In their personal life, any trouble, be it financial, physical or pertaining to agricultural hazards to any member of the opposite party, it was taken as their own. The entire village lent a helping hand to the victim, to sort out the problem. Generally, the man of influence in the biggest cluster was destined to be elected as the “village chief” or “gram pradhan” in the local body election.
During that period of time, the regional level political parties used to estimate their political influence, by counting the number of “village chiefs” of their ideology. If so many “village chiefs” in number were in hand, meant so many villages as the vote bank in majority.
Infrastructure –That were the time when every village had had a perfect conventional infrastructure. Apart from big farmers and peasants, every village had its own barber, Carpenter cum blacksmith etc… as permanent resident. They were supposed to provide the services to the entire village accordingly. The political “cluster” mentioned before, contained all kind of village residents as per their predilection. Starting from the farmers of big holding down to barber, blacksmith, carpenter, laborer etc. But all they performed their individual duties ineffective of their ideological inclination.
Although kidding, repartee and retorting quibbles in day to day life were common. For instance, a farmer going to a blacksmith cum carpenter to get his spade repaired, would taunt at him, “make it perfect friend, I have to dig the pit hole in the election for your party.” And blacksmith smilingly would have a retort, “Don’t you worry brother about my repairing skill. But think of your digging skill, it needs muscular power which you don’t seem in possession of.”
Evening gatherings – An interesting phenomenon that often took place at the evening time on the main square place of the village was to invoke people, from every ideology. Just to make a crowd on the square. Amidst them a few would be drunkards. Such every day’s dialogue would start with some inflammatory news scraps. That was destined to be followed by arguments and counter arguments. But after some lapse of time, the reins of dialogues were bound to come in the hands of tipsy alcoholic participants. And then a disaster of flurry political debate was bound to run for hours. This sort of debate ever displayed a miracle of “long and short term memories” of drunkards.
They, by citing the examples of past political events and mentioning of statements made by their political leaders, from national level to down to the local level would try to prove their case.Today’s TV political debates are lack-luster before those discourses of bygone era. Those were the old days when no electricity was in villages. In that pitch dark, a “din” in the form of “uproar” kept on engulfing at least half of the village surrounding vicinity. This pitch darkness was to be disturbed intermittently, when, some member of the crowd tried to light a matchbox spoke to provide a fire to cigarette or bidi (indigenous Indian cigarette) .
In the darkness when they inhale the cigarette puff, which, in turn blink on the cigarette tip like a glow, happened to give an imaginary inkling, as if, a group of ghost hosting a party there.The political adventure of this kind never proven to solve the local problems. Like that of installing or introducing the electricity, transportation facility or alike. But one significant deed, it succeeded in shape of sowing the seeds of democratic values. Those sown seeds, today helping India to maintain a status of matured nation, with democratic values at the global level. Penned by–Vinay Pharasi…
