What am I up to?
By Justice Markandey Katju
My friend Irfan Ali, who is more than 30 years younger to me, and lives and works in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, and is a first-class person, spoke to me yesterday on WhatsApp. He said he does not always agree with me.
I replied that I never insist that people who read my FB posts always agree with me. I only request people to consider what I say.
Irfan mentioned my criticism of the film Pathan and said I was wrong.
My friend Wajahat Husain Khan, who is a senior advocate in the Allahabad High Court, where I was his colleague when I too was a lawyer there, ( he is a nephew of the great Urdu poet Majrooh Sultanpuri ), is a few years elder to me ( I am 77 ). He disagreed with me on my criticism of the Bharat Jodo Yatra of Rahul Gandhi.
I have given my views for criticising Pathan and the Bharat Jodo Yatra in my fb posts, so I am not repeating them.
I welcome criticism of my views and ideas, though of course in civil language.
I too am a human being, and may be sometimes wrong. If someone gives rational arguments in criticising me I welcome that, because he will be rendering me a service as it may result in correcting myself, if I get convinced by his argument that I was wrong.
But let me clarify what I am up to.
I have said repeatedly that our national goal must be to establish a political and social order in India ( and by India I mean India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which I regard as one country, only temporarily separated by that historical British swindle called Partition ). Where everyone gets a high standard of living and decent lives, with proper jobs and incomes, healthcare, good education, nutritious food, etc.
How is that to be achieved? Let me explain.
I have no army, no political party, I own no newspaper, Youtube or TV channel. I do not even have a group of people who help me. I am alone, and all I have is my fb page. But that does not bother me. As the great writer French Victor Hugo said, ”There is one thing more powerful than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come”.
I have ideas whose time has come, and my fb page is the powerful engine which will spread my ideas, sooner or later, among tens of millions of people. No doubt every Indian does not read my fb page, but if one is convinced that my ideas are correct, he/she will spread them to others, and those others will spread them to yet others, and so on. In other words, it will be a chain reaction.
I have said that the country requires a mighty people’s revolution to rid itself of poverty, hunger, unemployment, lack of proper healthcare and good education, etc, because the solution to our country’s massive socio economic problems lie outside, not within, the prevalent political and social system. In other words, nothing can be achieved by mere change of ruling political parties or political leaders by elections.
How is that revolution to be created?
Historical experience shows that an actual revolution is preceded by an ideological revolution ( which may last for decades ), e, g. the great French Revolution of 1789 ( which destroyed feudalism in France ), which was preceded by decades of ideological struggle by great thinkers of the European Enlightenment like Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and the French Encyclopedists like Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, etc.
India is currently in the pre-revolutionary stage, i.e. in the stage of an ideological revolution. The weapons which will be used in this stage will not be guns, bombs or artillery, but correct ideas.
So I am waging an ideological struggle which will lead to an actual revolution.
Some people may say what can I achieve all by myself? After all, I have no party or even a group of people with me, nor any newspaper, TV or Youtube channel to disseminate my ideas among Indians. Newspapers and journals, and even so-called ‘liberal’ online portals, to whom I send my articles explaining my ideas refuse to publish them, probably thinking that they are too radical.
My answer is: when the Polish scientist Copernicus propounded his heliocentric theory that the earth goes around the sun ( published in 1543 in his book ‘ de revolutionibis orbium coelestium ‘ ) he was all alone in Europe, whose people then believed in the Biblical geocentric theory ( that the sun goes around the earth, and the earth was the centre of the Universe ). Initially, and for several decades, Copernicus’ theory met with fierce opposition, but since it represented the truth, it was eventually accepted all over the world.
Similarly, if what I say represents the truth, I am confident it will be gradually accepted by all Indians.
Today I may be alone, but gradually a group of patriotic people will be created who will spread my ideas. I will certainly not be alive when the actual revolution takes place ( since I am too old ), but I will have helped creating the leaders of that revolution.
That is what I am up to.
