The beauty of our country lies in its diversity, we get to see so many shades of life within the borders of India. We are diverse in terms of ideas, opinions, traditions, social customs, dressing, language, food habits, etc. We have always celebrated differences of all sorts and decided to adopt representative democracy as the form of government in India.
Democracy is not just a form of government as a whole. It’s a culture, a way of living in a particular society. It is about celebrating differences of opinions and views. Dissent and disagreement are very important for a healthy society. Political philosopher J S Mill had said that it is only through debate and disagreement that we arrive at the best possible solution.
For the last few years, the culture of dissent has been dying and people are not ready to accept differences. We see a lot of intolerance among the people. This is evident on social media platforms, where we see people abusing each other just because they follow different ideologies, political parties or religions.
The media is playing a very important role in this. The content that the news channels show is prejudiced and spreads hatred, which conditions the viewers’ minds. Apart from this, political parties have their vested interests in promoting division and hatred.
We as citizens are becoming so aggressive and passionate about our thoughts that we cannot tolerate and accept that someone might differ from us or not agree with us.
If we observe, we might conclude that very slowly and steadily, not only India but the world is moving towards majoritarianism, in which people are forced to accept the views, opinions and thoughts of the majority. This trend is not healthy for us as citizens and for the nation as well.