Sikh-ing from Obama

Five days after the birth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama will be installed the President of the United States of America. It will be a truly significant day in American politics. And now that the initial euphoria is over and we are all waiting for tons of confetti to rain on us, let\'s take a moment to analyse the ground realities. India today has an upper-caste Hindu woman as President. A dalit as chief justice of its Supreme Court. A Muslim for Vice-President. A Sikh for Prime Minister. And the leader of its biggest - and ruling - political party, the Congress, is Sonia Gandhi, a Catholic from Italy. The Speaker of Parliament is a godless Communist. As P Sainath recently pointed out, India\'s most famous war hero Sam who died this year was a Parsi. Incidentally, the last President of India was a dalit.

What does this prove? Was Indira\'s years at the helm helpful particularly in improving the lot of the women? The US may be an awful latecomer to the party where self-representation is being celebrated, but the hopes on Obama are no less than that he will enter the White House walking on water.Years after King Jr fired a million men\'s hearts, Obama has been able to fill with zeal and zest and took on the Race question full frontal when he finally did in Philadelphia. Obama represents a historic shift. One that altered America\'s political arena on November 4. A small step for the world, a giant leap for America. But the burden that Barack Obama is saddled with is daunting. He inherits two wars that are going badly, a $ 10 trillion debt , unprecedented job losses, a reputation of US in tatters, and new enemies in Wall Street and Corporate US.

Obama has a King Jr to look up to and learn. With all its flaws, the democracy in US is also propelling the cause of democratisation of all procedures, values and institutions. As Diaspora community, the Indians and the Sikh nation must learn its own lessons from the Obama phenomenon, must revise the ones that King Jr\'s legacy has to teach us. India\'s own political Obama, the much respected B.R. Ambedkar was once asked, \"What are the prospects of democracy in India?\" He was quick to underline that linking Democracy with Parliamentary Government or elections was corrupting the notion of democracy. With Congress and BJP, the country\'s two main political parties upholding the caste system, there is little chance of India ever pushing the democratisation process. India\'s best and brilliant, many in the Left domain, have also tried to put the Class patina on caste, but this was akin to refusing to see the 800 pound gorilla in the bedroom. If stratification is stunting the growth of the individual then deliberate stunting is a deliberate denial of democracy.

Obama and King Jr both used their understanding and knowledge to push for democracy for all. In India, we see the best and brilliant among the brahamanical classes using their knowledge to push strange logic of postmodern skepticism that delegitimises all fight for the have nots. Instead, young and upcoming generations in India are being fed the development mantra as if it could be the end all of all problems.

Both King Jr and Obama's message is a message of Hope and Change. But the beauty of their message is that they say something that is doable. Do-able because it is completely in our own hands. The Change must start from Self and then go on to Society. Obama has shown that he started from Self. From Jan 20th, he will go on to change our world. As for us, have we already started. My God, we are late, because we did promise to ourselves that we too shall start effecting the change, and who better to start than the Self? Last time we made this promise was on November 4. We renew it on January 15, and we shall repeat it on January 20. And then every single day, and soon we shall have some progress to show.

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