Personal Attacks Hijack Public Issues

With the 2019 election campaigns nearing its end, the political parties are in full swing chasing their goal of winning. The campaigning started around the second week of April. It was held in seven phases which are to end on 19^th May 2019. Throughout India’s post-independent history, political parties have campaigned intensely to find a place at the ruling position in the country. It is also very often, that political parties have discovered new levels of low to stoop to, while shaming the members of opposition parties in the most unethical way.

The people of India have been left with a very difficult decision, that is to choose between parties that prefer to abuse and slander their opposition, rather than talk about their vision, goals and plans. On what basis is the citizen of India supposed to choose his/her next Prime Minister? The narrow and cheap mindset of one political party comes to oppose the intellectual but unwilling personality of the other. Debates are held on public forums almost every day, where political spokespeople go back and forth about two issues that they have against each other. Today, on one such news channel debate, I heard a young, BJP political candidate talk about how his party talks to as they talk to them, in order to teach them a lesson. It comes off almost as quite sad, to think about the young minds of our country being politically brainwashed and corrupted.

While the opposition party does not seem to have a stand strong enough to even defend itself. As one political party raves about its connections with “Nationalism”, the other does not seem to understand how to correctly counter that claim. Indian politics has become more about being louder in a room full of people who have no idea what they stand for. To think about the struggles our freedom fighters had to face to build a nation that’s secular, secure and sovereign, just to come to this day where communalism has reached its peak in the 21^st century. When did things become so bad? What do our politicians and our leaders lack? Plain, simple ethics. The Father of our Nation once said, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”. Have we forgotten our Indians morals and ethos? Do we not understand that hate is not the answer to hate?

India was supposed to be a country where freedom was given the utmost priority. As a minority in today’s day and age, I do not feel safe. Isn’t democracy supposed to give us freedom of speech and religion? Or are those just some ambitious ideas of a few old men from the 20^th century? I do not stand for any particular political party, I stand for betterment of the nation, and so does every citizen of India. No one dreamed of a country where there is violence and hatred in the name of religion. How did we get here? Indian politicians need to find a way to get their ethics back. It isn’t about who said what, or who did what. It is about who decided to make a change for the better.