In the previous episode, we had witnessed the continuation of Bhishmachaarya’s important accord on “Raaja Dharma”, wherein he is now talking about the “Ganatantra Raajyam” (Democracy). For a “Ganatantra Raajyam” to be successful, two things are important – Firstly, the people should be united as a society. There should be no cracks that are happening in between. Secondly, people of the society / country should have a common goal to achieve. People should be willing to work together as a unit, rather than working in xylos every time. Moreover, if people have conflicting goals which might be contradictory with the others’, chances are extremely high that the unity will collapse, thereby paving the way for external invaders to start ruling over. This exactly happened with our “Akanda-Bhaaratam” over the past few centuries. If we look at how the Muslim invasions and the Western invasions happened, it was not that they were extremely powerful and were able to defeat us easily. The problem was with us – Our kings weren’t united and were not ready to put up a collective effort to oppose the external invaders. Instead of being united, some of them were willing to work as spies for the invaders for their own personal brownie points, and as a result, the country’s interests as a whole were compromised! Thus, we can see here clearly that if we do not have unity and a common goal amongst all of us, invaders can easily pitch in and succeed. We should never allow this to happen.
Even in today’s context, as I had mentioned in my previous episode, all of us who are ardent followers of our “Sanaatana Dharma” should stand together and put up a face of unity. Even though we might be from several parts of India and we might have differences in cultural practices, language, etc. we should never forget that all of us are proud “Sanaatanis”. Only when we put up a brave united face, will we be able to keep the other divisive forces at bay. If we do not stand united, other divisive forces / religions will start entering and dominating us in the name of “Secularism”. We should first develop and cultivate the realization that India is never a secular country. We are the land of “Sanaatana Dharma”. Of course, having said thus, I’m not saying that other religions should not be practised in India. Everyone has a space, but as a country, we are a land of “Sanaatana Dharma”, and we should never compromise on this, no matter whatever happens!
Moving on thus, Bhishmachaarya explains how people in the top echelons should be. He lists down three important characteristics for them. For instance, in today’s context, we can equate these people to be ministers – Both in the Central and State governments, top bureaucrats in the government setup, etc. Bhishmacharya explains thus, “Oh Yudishtra! People whom you have as ministers should be scholarly in nature. They should be well-educated and should be able to understand real-life problems in-depth within a split of a second. Secondly, your ministers should be selfless in nature. Their only goal in life should be to serve the people of the country and nothing else. They should not run towards personal glory, name, wealth, etc. Thirdly, these people should be an epitome of having all their senses under their control at all times! Only if people satisfy these three conditions, they should be ministers in your cabinet!”
This is an extremely important point that Bhishmachaarya is explaining here – If we’ve to equate these three points to our current-day ministers, many of them won’t even qualify in one amongst the three criteria! In the setup of the Central Government, of course many of them will qualify in terms of education and the goal of public service. However, there is a big doubt whether these ministers would satisfy the third criterion – Controlling of senses and not going after money, name and fame. Whereas in the state setup, it is very unfortunate to see in many states that a vast majority of the people who are ministers do not even have basic qualifications in education. Secondly, these ministers come to power primarily to loot government money and nothing else. It is because these people lack basic education, they want to earn money via short-cuts – taking bribes, commissions, etc. from contractors who perform government projects. This is where corruption in India starts and this is exactly what Bhishmachaarya is explaining here – If the leader is selecting such uneducated brats as ministers, corruption is inevitable. If the basic education is not there, people will not be able to control their senses and thereby the intention of “public service” never arises in their minds. They will only work towards filling up their coffers and wardrobes with money!
So the point here is that, while being in power, a leader should be judicious enough to select those who are well-educated, highly qualified and capable individuals, who really have the sense of serving the public selflessly. Of course in today’s context it is quite rare to get such genuine people, but a leader’s main job is to scout for such people who will be able to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements. So for today, let us understand up to this point, and in the next episode, we shall continue this discussion further! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 