Trial of Socrates

Ish Mishra Thanks, Ahmer sahab for beginning discussion on the crisis of democracy in its historical Context. Inn fact we are talking from the same pemises, similar concerns and social aspirations. I just wanted to point out the ironies of an exclusi...onist classical democracy based on slave labour, (the only model of a participatory democracy ) and look for the continuities of those ironies. The crisis in Athenian restored democracy arose due to fear of political insecurity in the minds of the democratic leadrs and lack of vision resulted into restricting the freedom of expression and crushing the dissent. Demogogues and "free from vision" leaders were able to paly upon the fear-cum-insecurity- psychosis of an Athens wrecked by long drawn 2 wars and internal strife. The crisis of democracy witnessed in Ethens around 300 BC had been imanently innate in modern democracies proved by legislation of "extra ordinary laws" due to exceptional situation in all the modern democracies. If Arundhati Roy or Varavara Rao talk about inhuman barbarism meted out to Kashmiri people at the hands of Indian security Forces, she becomes a traitor and large sections are demanding her prosecution under the colonial acts of sedition. On certain links peope have demanded vrious kinds of punitive actions against her to the extent of stoning her to death. One girls dared them by standing with Arundhati to riducule RSS kind of thinking she was immediately condemned as a Pakistani hacker. if you talk against Muslim obscurantism you will be leveld pro-Hindu and if I talk against Bajrangi lumpenism and RSS kind of "modern' obscrantism, will be immediately turned pro-pakistani. That is why we, folloewing Marx, call it a formal democracy with innate contradiction of praxis, in the sense that it never does, what it says and never says what it does. Utising this contradiction, we have to move on towards raising a scietific conciouness to carry on the march to the final goal of "human emancipation." Lal salam.