The World We Stand In

I find myself living in a world of the wildest extremes.
At one end, a breathless race of technology
where the earliest runners gather the richest rewards.
Great powers now command corporations
whose worth eclipses the GDP of most nations.
The future they forge stretches unevenly,
widening the distance between countries and classes,
and between ordinary lives
and the vast, opaque systems that hold them.
Those who cannot keep pace

are left standing at the edge of the path,
carrying the quiet of exclusion.
Yet I do not despair.
We can catch up.

At the other end rises a bewildering medievalism,
stirring with old blood, old fury, old unreason.
The chants roll like rough waves in the night.
The roars silence the murmurs of thought.
Voices clothed in the likeness of calm,
whether in disapproval or approval,
yes, even in approval,
reveal a trembling joy,
a dark pleasure that settles in the air like smoke.

With the benefit of hindsight
we can say that some of our founders foresaw this shadow.
We needed a constitutionalism with a known and proven history,
and a constitutional life that breathed in rhythm
with our conditions,
our sensitivity and traditions.

This is bewildering, and it is despairing.
Yet hope is not extinguished.
The democratic process has a tenacity of its own.

At the global level too,
the early makers of modernity
kept much of the world in a long half-light,
far from the ideals they apparently espoused.
But karma is patient.
And consequences return
to those who shaped the harm.

Yet, here, I am most despondent.
No light on the horizon.

For democracy to be real,
it must be a human undertaking in its fullest sense,
open to all.
It must be held by honest intention,
by a mind capable of clarity,
and by a sensitivity to dignity
that honours every life.

Niraj Kumar Jha