When will the US and India learn to defend democracy?

Years of working in a newsroom, handling tragedies of different magnitude and nature on a day-to-day basis harden a journalist's sociopolitical consciousness. He is then fondly called a seasoned journalist. He deals with news, not emotions. Nothing moves him. That's why an experienced Indian editor, desperately seeking a front page lead story on a lean day, screamed, "Good George, I got the lead", when the tickers flashed that India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was no more. That fourth estate joke passed down generations of journalists in Indian newsrooms manifest the professional mindset of a hardened newsman.
For such journalists, events of cyclical nature and political melodramas become stale and irrelevant. "Next time we take anything about Chandrasekhar (the late Indian politician) should be when he turns a corpse. He is politically dead, already," one of my former editors had told me, referring to the irrelevance of this chameleon in the fast-changing political map of India in the 90s. Seasonal catastrophes like American hurricanes, Asian cyclone, South Asian earthquakes, or African drought thus become photo opportunities. Their death counts become mere data journalism.
Then there are occurrences that tug at even a seasoned journo's heartstrings. He doesn't shed a tear, but they haunt him day and night. They make him sit and analyse. They make him wonder why? Two of such recurring man-made tragedies are gun deaths in the United States and the communal killings in India. Why should they happen every time? Are they not learning lessons? In a classroom, students are typically segregated into two sections: Quick learners and slow learners. Then there is this notorious group of backbenchers called non-learners. They would fail every exam, every year and eventually drop out. If the same criterion can be applied to geographies, the US and India would come tops in the non-learners category.
When you are in Germany, try and ask someone to guide you to a Hitler bunker. Chances are they would give you a blank look. Don't be surprised if they ask you back, "Hitler, who?" That differentiates Germany from other nations. It's a land of quick learners. The death of around six million people in the Holocaust, or the systematic persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945 opened their eyes to the blood on their hands. They said enough is enough and took resolute actions to turn the page on one of the darkest chapters in world history.
Germany is one of a dozen European nations who have criminalised Holocaust denial. They did not take a millennium to make the U-turn. Soon after defeating the Nazis in 1945, the Allied powers banned all that's associated with the Nazi party, including the swastika and the Mein Kampf, the notorious anti-Semitic bible written by Hitler. And in 1949, the new West German government legalised all anti-Nazi measures in order to prevent any backsliding by millions of Germans who had been part of the Nazi party. In 1960, the German parliament voted to make it illegal to incite racial hatred.
Foreign policy writer Sarah Wildman attributes this success to "defensive democracy". The idea is that democracies might need a boost from some illiberal policies, she explains. "Our German law centres on the strong belief that you should hinder this kind of speech in a society committed to principles of democratic coexistence and peace," she quotes Matthias Jahn, a law professor at Goethe University in Frankfurt, as saying.
That explains why the gun killings in the US and communal violence in India will never end. These two are intentional non-learners who have failed before and are going to keep failing because they simply don't want to learn. Which means they have an agenda in not learning. Historians say up to two million people died in the communal violence during the 1947 partition of India. Despite a secular constitution and broad religious representation in various aspects of society, communal violence takes a huge toll in India every year because there is a political agenda behind it. When violence becomes a tool in vote-bank politics, law and lawmakers turn a blind eye to the endemic issue. In hindsight, defensive democracy would have been the right course for India in its transitional stages. Gandhi would have lived a bit longer. Two million deaths during the partition would have been enough for even an average leadership to put in place a system that would have prevented recurrence of such tragedies or to inculcate a sense of belonging in all segments of society. Today, India is the fourth-worst country in the world for religious violence as per a Pew survey.
On an average day in the US, 96 Americans are killed with guns. Since 1968, more Americans have died from guns than in all the wars in US history. But that sounds just not enough for any US administration to introduce tougher gun laws. While Germany has banned neo-Nazis, all hate groups roam freely in the US. Students go to schools with automatic guns in their bags and maul down teachers and schoolmates. Still, the Supreme Court endorses gun ownership as an individual's right to self-defence. Over 150 years after the civil war, the Americans still haven't come to trust each other. The conundrum has reached such a comical proportion the president is suggesting to arm schoolteachers. Germany has come a long way from its Holocaust days, welcoming millions of refugees since 2015, whereas the world's two biggest democracies are stuck in a vicious mindset. Let's not Hail Modern Hitlers. Let's Hail Defensive Democracies.
 - suresh@khaleejtimes.com