APNOT A CRIME: Fishing being one of the most instinct-driven livelihood avocations, we should devise a system where trespassing by fishermen becomes impossible by definition. Photo: AP
GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
India and Sri Lanka are a distinct people, but a connected peoplehood; a distinct citizenry, but a connected civilization
India and Sri Lanka are within touching distance of each other— positively and negatively — in their tending of their democratic ecologies. A valid electoral mandate creates and celebrates a political majority. But, if that political majority has been gleaned not from political logic but from apolitical emotions, the democratic text gets grossly distorted by an undemocratic subtext. An electoral verdict political in name but ethnic in nature, democratic in name but majoritarian in character, constitutional in name but manipulative in its operation, is a travesty. When a democratically valid electoral majority is teased out of a democratically invalid ethnic majoritarianism, we get democratic deception, democratic tyranny.
