During a fervent debate swirling across social media regarding the absence of Muslim representation in the current NDA Government at the Centre
Today there is a debate raging on social media about the NDA Govt. at the Centre not having Muslim representation in Cabinet. On this issue, I personally believe that this debate only addresses to the idea of identity and the issue of power sharing in a democracy and I find both contradictory to the idea of a vibrant democracy.
Identity will lead to majoritarian democracy and power sharing can only happen when we have liberal values intact in democracy and that only comes with ingrained human consciousness. This ingrained human consciousness which is inherently liberal travel without formal human communication as centuries before as Mayans and Aztecs in America, Egyptians, Chinese, Mesopotamians, Harappans or Aborigines in Australia were doing similar liberal civilizational activities for it's advancement on Earth at similar time without any information of each other.
Here in UP a similar liberal activity of ingrained human consciousness was noticed in this election, when Hindus of all castes voted for a Muslim in Saharanpur and made him MP in a Loksabha constituency where Muslims are in the minority then almost 1200 kms east in UP in Ghazipur again Hindus of all castes voted Muslim to be an MP where Muslims constitute less than 15% of electorate, so those who question the government on the issue of identity they should satisfy themselves that society which is Hindu majority gave it's the verdict in electing these MP's as theirs, so govt. is secondary to societies verdict.
Further, those who question the idea of power-sharing must be aware that vibrant democracies remain vibrant when they are pluralistic. The US, the most powerful democracy in the world has two parties and has an ethnic minority to almost the size of the largest religious minority as in India, there Republican Party in the last Trump presidency had only 6% votes of Afro Americans where rest 94% went to Democrats in spite that Trump gave representation to Afro-Americans and even made one Secretary that is Ben Carson. India has a history of oldest democratic traditions and we should give a model of representative democracy to the world with our plurality as a showcase.
Athar Husain, CORD
