Democracy and culture

Democracy has numerous advantages over non-democracy. Perhaps, the greatest advantage is that a democratic habitat is more congenial to the growth of social crimes than a non-democratic environment. A democratic country is a free country. It guarantees every citizen an inalienable right to choose any profession he fancies to choose. Exercising this right, some of the citizens choose social crimes, as their lifelong profession. Of course, there are criminals in every non-democratic regime. But there is a vital difference between the criminals of a democratic regime and the criminals of a non-democratic setup. The criminals of a democratic country are criminals by choice. On the contrary, the criminals of a non-democratic country are criminals by compulsion. This is the reason why there are more crimes under a democracy than under a non-democracy. For example, America, the richest democracy of the world, enjoys the richest crime rate; whereas China, the richest socialist regime, has the poorest crime rate. Crime flourishes under a democracy because democracy loves to deal with crime indulgently. But crime finds it hard to flourish under socialist, monarchical and military regimes, because crime is dealt with ferociously there. If a criminal of a socialist or monarchian or military regime were to migrate to a democracy and were to practice his trade in his new motherland, the punishment that he would receive for a heinous crime would be caviar and champagne, as compared with the punishment which he would have received for committing the same offence in his ex-motherland. Democracy punishes leniently so that crime could be made attractive. Non-democracy punishes mercilessly so that crime could be made repulsive. Millions of our voters are stark illiterates. They cannot distinguish a monkey from a monk. Yet, our democracy has given them the power to elect the supreme rulers of the country. What a supreme stupidity It would be like asking the caveman to fly an F-16 fighter bomber. No wonder, all our democratically elected governments have been supreme disasters. A civilised country is a country which has practically the same culture for the rulers and the masses. The greater the cultural gap between the two classes, the greater the barbarism with which the country is infested. The contemporary world has two kinds of countries: The countries where the rulers and the masses have roughly the same culture and the countries where the two categories have radically different cultures. Lets call the countries which have a uniform culture mono-cultural countries and the countries which have two fundamentally different cultures di-cultural countries. Generally, all the Western countries are mono-cultural countries. For example, the American President and the American ice-cream vendor have the same culture. The British Prime Minister and his chauffeur have the same culture. The French President and his cook have the same culture. On the contrary, there is nothing culturally common between the Pakistani rulers and the masses. The two classes belong to two different universes. The Pakistani masses cannot understand the rulers lifestyle, nor can the rulers understand the lifestyle of the masses. They often meet each other, but they never recognise each other. The culture of the Pakistani rulers is as different from the culture of the masses as Islam is different from atheism. Every Pakistani street dog knows which of the two cultures is a true representative of Pakistan. There has never been a change of government in Pakistan. Ever since Pakistans birth, it has been governed by one and the same government. Only the functionaries have kept changing. The government has always been the same. The so-called various governments had one common ideology, one common mission. They were absolutely indistinguishable from each other. Their only common pursuit was exploitation of the masses. In this common mission, they all won glorious laurels. If two governments govern ruthlessly identically, it is erroneous to call them two different governments. They are one government. In this sense, Pakistan has always had one government. When a king changes his dress, does he become a different kind? Every change of government in Pakistan has been a change of dress. The organism inside the dress has always been the same. Pakistans real problem has been a problem of tailoring. The writer retired as professor of the Department of English, Government College University, Lahore.

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