By Justice Markandey Katju
Casteism and communalism, which are keeping India poor and backward, are features of feudalism, and can therefore can be abolished only when India becomes highly industrialised.
But to create a highly industrialised India requires a long, arduous, people’s struggle, led by modern-minded, patriotic leaders, like Mustafa Kemal in Turkey, or the leaders of Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
Where are such leaders? Where is such a people’s struggle? I don’t see anything.
I can only say like Ghalib :
“Zulmat qade mein mere, shab-e-gham ka josh hai
Ek shama hai daleel-e-seher so khaamosh hai.“
(Markandey Katju is an Indian jurist and former Supreme Court judge of India who served as chairman for the Press Council of India. He is the founder and patron of the Indian Reunification Association (IRA), an organisation that advocates for the peaceful reunification of what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh with India under a secular government.)
