Tuesday 2 April 2013

Sikhism vs democracy

Likewise, a democratic stage of modern conception is unacceptable to Sikhism wherein the citizens are required to relinquish their rights by conferring them upon a ‘general will’ of a single and indivisible sovereign people. This ‘general will’, in practice, is only the will of the numerical majority. The omnipotence of the majority is the practical corollary of democracy, and respect for the rights of minorities loses all effectual sanction just because the individuals have forfeited all power to insist upon their rights, by conferring them bodily upon the state. The concentration of an immense power in the hands of an often fictitious and rigged majority is truly tyrannical. There is, therefore, justification to place democracy and despotism on the same plane, in many cases.
Again, where a state-community called, ‘the nation’, does not consist of citizens having a well-¬accepted uniform political destination and a common purpose, the Anglo-Saxon, ‘one head, one single non¬transferable vote’ is, verily, the devil’s device to degrade and liquidate a permanent minority by virtually annuling all genuine representation to such as the Sikhs are hardly one percent of the non-Sikh citizenery of India.The degradation and demoralisation which it entails for the Sikhs is worse than slavery and death.

- Sirdar Kapur Singh (Social implications of Sikhism)

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