Veteran Socialist leader Mrinal Gore passed away last week. A devoted social activist turned politician who remained glued to her activism even at the pinnacle of her political career, she was a rare breed of politicians supposedly extinct as per the views expressed by many observers. For someone whose socio-political innings spanned five decades or half the century and saw her meteoric rise from being being elected to Panchayat to Municipal corporation to leader of opposition in the states legislative assembly that saw her pulling down a Chief Minister (A. R. Antulay) or laying a scathing attack on the Sharad Pawar Government for the policies it adopted to being elected to the Lok Sabha and finally calling it a day at 60 where-after she turned down a cabinet berth offered by the V. P. Singh Government, it would be least surprising then that the very same politicians she so bitterly criticized or gave jitters with her calls for peaceful demonstrations should felicitate her a few yeas back. Sharad Pawar remarked respectfully that it would be difficult to have someone with the kind of devotion, understanding and character that Mrinal Gore had in present day politics while Bal Thackeray whom she so bitterly criticized for his brand of communal politics remembered her as 'the lady who ruled the battlefield' but like Sharad Pawar he too believed that she was the last of the selflessly devoted and importantly clean politicians. In other words they both agreed that there would be no other Mrinal Gore !
I wondered why? Why should our politics be bereft of selflessly devoted clean politicians? Why have we come to believe that activists can no longer have any place in politics and factually speaking why should the political parties be reluctant to admit activists or why should politics be the last arena that an acticvist or a selfless person should think of entering? Is it the reason why the common man has increasing been unable to relate himself with the present day politics ? In any case, I guess if anyone is to be blamed for this pathetic scenario wherein a democratic sysem is slowly but surely mutating into an ugly system that seems more oligarchic than democratic, it is we the people – the common man! The very fact that the cremation of an activist like Mrinal Gore, with full State honour's was not covered by the electronic media too obsessed with reporting the demise of Rajesh Khanna and the pre- funeral procession, without a squeak of protest from any quarters, speaks volumes of the priorities of the common man today!
Bhushan Sarmalkar (JAI - Just Another Indian)
Mumbai 24th July 2012.
