DEMOCRACY, DEMOGRAPHY AND DEMONOCRACY ... 1

DEMOCRACY, DEMOGRAPHY AND DEMONOCRACY ... 1

Democracy must exclude exclusivity but that makes it undemocratic. Hence, bigotry flourishes in a democratic polity using democratic protection of such ideology in the name of well-intentioned pluralism. However, with progressive change in demography by encouraging higher fertility rate for a certain group practising extreme intolerant faith, democracy is slowly subverted till it exists no more. This is an existential threat that we are facing today as a nation with our millenia-old pluralistic spiritual culture tending to get gradually undermined by democratic protection of undemocratic ways and means and the intended end of such explicitly stated scriptural ideology. Where democratic tolerance of such intolerance is leading us to is every sane person's guess. Democracy thus will end in demonocracy, as the saying goes, and it has already done so in two of our neighbouring countries and elsewhere in the world. One must ponder the consequences of liberal democracy that thus allows the free flourishing of a doctrine that is its stated enemy by way of divine mandate received in a bygone age. Democracy must have its limits of toleration and must not tolerate the intolerant if it has to survive. 

Written by Sugata Bose