Across the world, democracy is seeing a fast decline. Now one may deny, dismiss or raise unwarranted doubt over this at one’s own risk but it is an observable fact across the globe.

“In Turkey and Egypt, Hungary and Poland, the Philippines and Venezuela, we are witnessing pseudo-democracies taking hold. Meanwhile, democracies that once inspired — South Africa, Brazil — are now marred by depressing stories of corruption. For the 12th consecutive year, Freedom House released its annual survey of democracy being pushed back: between 2000 and 2015, democracy broke down in 27 countries; 71 countries suffered ‘net declines in civil and political liberties’”, said former director of BBC news, James Harding in his Hugh Cudlipp lecture.

Propaganda is fast becoming the chosen tool of politicians and what more, we are seeing that it is working, authoritarianism is on rise everywhere, people especially the young are losing their belief in institutions, citizens no more believe in politicians, press freedom is increasingly being curtailed across the borders and, worse, the journalists (well most of them) are fast lining up to be mouthpieces and firefighters for those in power forgetting the core tenet of journalism — to ask question of the authority, to hold people in power accountable. These are well known facts or opinions (if you prefer them as such) but there is one more aspect that is fast corroding the democracy as we know it. The common citizen who is at the heart of any democratic nation (at least in spirit if not in real) is busy paying obeisances to his/her dear leader. Today by and large they have given up their right to be citizens for which their forefathers so valiantly fought against colonial masters and have again gone back to being subjects or more like robots for the authoritarian regimes.

The world across we are seeing a trend of authoritative figures occupying high offices but also the rise of civil obedience where people flock to their dear leader; they are following what their leader wants them to do (said and unsaid) without applying any rational thought to their actions. They aren’t just helping their leaders with extending their bases and spreading their propaganda but there are cases where these followers have caused grave damage to the society including killing of those citizens who dare to question the status quo or those who practice a faith different from their leader or those who eat what they want them not to eat or just because of rumors. We have come a long way from our ancestors when killing was not considered a bad thing as much as it is today. We have ‘progressed’. In fact, in all the nations of today, by and large, citizens do not have the right to kill; in fact, they abhor killing. In democracies, only the army has been given the right to kill for various valid (?) reasons of course. No one else is supposed to kill; it is criminal to do so. But have citizens really given that up in a democratic state? Consider these incidents form ‘largest democracy’ — India — Only in June, 14 Indians have been killed in lynchings, two people each in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Telangana and one each in Gujarat and Karnataka. That’s just the count from deaths that were reported in few of the papers that still report them. The attacks that took place in Dhule on 1st July in the western region of Maharashtra, saw five people bludgeoned to death over rumours. As the deaths due to rumours rose in numbers, Sukanta Chakrabarty was sent by the Tripura government to stop lynchings. He had been travelling from village to village, dispelling rumours about child-lifters appearing on social media. He was speaking through a loudspeaker asking people not to get swayed by rumours. But he was himself lynched by villagers. He was beaten to death and two men with him were assaulted badly.

Akbar Khan, Jatin Das, Mohammad Azam, Mohammad Riyaz, Sindhubai Gire, Gajanan Gire, Aappa Ingole, Bharat Malve, Raju Bhosale, Bharat Bhosale, Dadarao Bhosale, Binoth Vihari, Gopal Sahu, Sukantha Chakraborty, Zahir Khan, Shanta Devi, Shamiuddin, Qasim, Murtaza Ansari, Sirabuddin Ansari, Shivaji Shinde, Bharat Sonavane, Abhijeet Nath, Nilotpal Das, Chandraiah, Kaluram, Siraj, Rukmani, Pradeep Rathod, Ajay Jatav, Neeraj Jatav, Madhu Chindaki, Mohammad Afrazul Khan, Mohammad Momin, Abu Bakr, Mohammad Israr, Mohammad Gulzar, Ummar Khan, Wasim Ahmad Tantray, Siddharth Solanki, Diganth Maheria, Jayesh Solanki, Neelam Ahirwar, Ahmed, Hafizul Shaikh, Anwar Hussain, Lal Hussain, Mandevi, Salim, Kartik Ghosh, Asgar Ali, Otera Bibi, Usman Ansari, Nasir, Samiruddin, Nasirul Haque, Hafiz Junaid, DSP Mohammad Ayub Pandith, Ainul Ansari, Rehan, Asif, Zafar Khan, Sushil Jatav, Aravindaraj, Karuppaiah, Balamurugan, Prabha Vala, Sooraj, Sheikh Siraj, Sheikh Sajju, Sheikh Naim, Apuda Malviya, Kalu Baghel, Riazuddin Ali, Abu Hanifa, Saima, Nazakat Ali, Naseem Bibi, Shoib Chowdhary, Irshad Khan, Pehlu Khan, Nilesh, Sangeeta, Ali Hassan, Hafiz Abdul Khalid, Mohammad Ayyub Mev, Praveen Poojary, Lazar, Mokati Elisa, Salma Mevati, Ashok Devsi, Ramesh, Balu Sarvaiya, Mukhtiar, Kaushik Purkait, Inayatullah Khan, Shabeer, Naseem Bano, Mohammad Hussain, Noman, Zaheed Ahmad Bhat, Mohammad Akhlaq.

These are but few names who were brutally murdered in the Republic of India by citizens, and not by the army. Many people on social media might want you to believe that it is one particular side of the population which is the victim but just a glance over the names and you will understand that the victims are not separated by any religion or caste. It is blind hate and bigotry that is at play here and people who feel suddenly emboldened to commit such heinous crimes. Some of this cases were caught on camera, many were perpetrated in full public glare but police who are responsible for maintaining law and order, sorry to say, has done nothing to stop their recurrence. Forget police, we had cabinet minister recently garlanding a particular lynch mob who were on bail. There are regular people on social media who directly call for the death of others who speak against the government, who give out rape threats and worse are followed on Twitter by none less than Prime Minister of India. You could say it was an innocent error on his part, well it could have been but even after pointing this grave mistake by many publications and people at large, Mr Modi continues to follow them. That is, we have ministers felicitating lynch mobs and Prime Minister following foul mob — With that kind of theatrics at play, it would be wrong to say this violence isn’t sanctioned from the top. They want it, they want this narrative to continue and mobs at large are too happy to follow it. The mobs aren’t explicitly given orders, they probably aren’t paid for this violence but they do it despite all this because even they want it.

They repeat what their leader says in leaps and bounds, they believe and then provide arguments in favour of their leader’s sometimes illogical and stupid sayings. In short, they act as his/her amplifiers. These aren’t the people who get moved by a crying man or seeing the face of a woman covered in blood. It is not that they know their victims personally. They do not. So we have a mob that is not paid, a mob that hasn’t got any explicit instruction, a mob that does not know its victims, a mob that only seeks blood. That should shiver your body and send chills down your spine for we all have the red running our veins. We have in us what the mob is so terrifyingly seeking on streets. Do not console yourself of your goodness, do not assume they won’t get you because you are good and you have hurt no one in your entire life, they just don’t care. They do not stop to reason out. They do not listen. They will have none of it. They want blood and sadly my dear, we all have it. We are potential victims, corpses running down the streets for potential mobs to rise from any corner and get lynched one fine day. No one is safe from their eyes for they are everywhere. They aren’t made of any special material, they do not live at places where we do not. They are us. The mob that forms tomorrow, the one that might come to murder you, might be comprised of your own neighbours, someone you know. The mob that kills people, the one they refer to in TV studios as lynch mobs may sound different. They might seem to be robots let loose by their master. For a sane mind, it is so hard to imagine anyone of conscience going out and killing people. But then this isn’t new. I found this passage in, Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on The Shore,

I pick out a book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. I have a vague notion of him as a Nazi war criminal, but no special interest in the guy. The book just happens to catch my eye, is all. I start to read and learn how this totally practical lieutenant colonel in the SS, with his metal-frame glasses and thinning hair, was, soon after the war started, assigned by Nazi headquarters to design a “final solution” for the Jews — extermination, that is — and how he investigated the best ways of actually carrying this out. Apparently, it barely crossed his mind to question the morality of what he was doing. All he cared about was how best, in the shortest period of time and for the lowest possible cost, to dispose of the Jews. And we’re talking about eleven million Jews he figured needed to be eliminated in Europe. Eichmann studied how many Jews could be packed into each railroad car, what percentage would die of “natural” causes while being transported, the minimal number of people needed to keep this operation going. The cheapest method of disposing of the dead bodies — burning, or burying, or dissolving them. Seated at his desk Eichmann pored over all these numbers. Once he put it into operation, everything went pretty much according to plan. By the end of the war, some six million Jews had been disposed of. Strangely, the guy never felt any remorse. Sitting in court in Tel Aviv, behind bulletproof glass, Eichmann looked like he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he was being tried, or why the eyes of the world were upon him. He was just a technician, he insisted, who’d found the most efficient solution to the problem assigned him…

How cold might his heart have been? How cold are people who kill other people they never even have interacted with before? This got me into thinking.

Do these people know what they are doing? Why do they more often than not blindly obey the orders? Are their brains wired in a special way unlike you and me or there is more to this?

I mean, can I tomorrow for some reason do what Eichmann carried out? Was I capable of it? Are you? Turns out I wasn’t the only one who was wondering over this.

A psychologist at Yale University, Stanley Milgram in the year 1961 pondered over the similar set of questions three months after the trial of German Nazi soldier Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem. Most of the SS soldiers who participated in the Holocaust didn’t know the people they tortured personally, they just followed the orders that came to them. In fact, most of the times they acted even before there were any orders to kill, they just assumed what might please their leader. Milgram wanted to find an answer to a specific question,

Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?

To find the answer to this question, he devised a psychological experiment. He sent an advertisement seeking ‘participants’ for a University experiment. All the 40 males (aged from 20 to 50) who turned up received $4.50 each just for their participation. At the beginning of the experiment, each participant was introduced to another ‘participant’ who was a confidant of Milgram. After this they were made to draw straws to determine their roles — learner or teacher — this event was fixed — the confidant was always the learner. Apart from learner and teacher, there was the third role, experimenter, played by an actor who too was aware of the experiment and was confidant of Milgram.

The experiment was carried out inside two rooms of Yale University. In one room sat the ‘learner’ on an electric chair and in the adjacent room sat both the ‘teacher’ and ‘experimenter’ with electric shock generator. Before the experiment began, the learner was given a pair of words to learn. During the course of the experiment ‘teacher’ was supposed to test the learner by naming a word and asking the learner to choose from the four options its pair word. Teacher (the participant who came via advertisement) was asked to administer an electric shock to the learner if he gave a wrong answer. 30 switches were provided where each one increased the amount of shock from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger — severe shock). The teacher was to increase the voltage with each wrong answer.

As the experiment was a setup to test the ‘teacher’, the learner (who was a confidant of Milgram) primarily gave wrong answers and obediently teacher applied him the shock. There wasn’t any shock applied in reality but it was just learner acting with screams and body movements. If and when the teacher refused to apply the shock, the ‘experimenter’ was supposed to order and persuade the teacher with four pre-defined orders in a particular sequence. If the teacher wouldn’t obey at first then the second order was pronounced and so forth.

Prod 1: Please continue.

Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.

Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.

To his surprise, Milgram noted that two in three of the participants (‘teachers’ who volunteered after seeing the ad) continued up to the highest level of shock i.e. 450 volts. And all participants continued until 300 volts of shock. Milgram concluded that “Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up. People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.” In his article “Perils of Obedience” written in 1974 he summarized that, The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations.

I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.

Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.

The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding an explanation. This experiment was later reproduced by Milgram and other scientists across the world with similar results. That explains how obedience comes so easily to us for it is ingrained in our psyche at an early age in our formative years. And it takes an umpteenth amount of courage and power in our command to fight that urge to obey and resist authority. Timothy Snyder in his remarkable 128 odd page book ‘On Tyranny’ writes, Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. He further cites an example from Nazi Germany. In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the SS took the initiative to devise the methods of mass killing without orders to do so. They guessed what their superiors wanted and demonstrated what was possible. It was far more than Hitler had thought. If you observe carefully, all the repressive regimes, dictators, empires, authoritative leaders; how much in numbers is their closed circle? How many people are there in that circle who are in it for personal wish fulfilment, who have personal goals? It is a tiny congregation compared to the large mass of people they rule or command. Why do you think a Hitler like figure was successful to kill so many of Jews, why do you think any blood-hungry dictator or monarch who ever walked on this earth was able to do what he did? They weren’t magicians or gods nor did they drug the people into zombies that moved with their head bent down. They did so because a large number of people obeyed, people gave up their freedom and dignity on their own. It is because they didn’t ask questions. No participant (teacher) in the Milgram experiment knew the ‘learner’ yet they applied the deadly shock to him. Both of them had never met in person before, there was no enmity between them, they were complete strangers until entering that room. It was a stranger torturing another stranger just because the authority asked him to do so. Would the experiment had continued had the ‘teacher’ asked the morality of such a deadly punishment? Why do we not ask questions of authority as often as we are supposed to do? Why do we bow and nod our heads in obedience as and when authority commands? Why do we walk in queues like a flock of sheep whenever the dear leader asks us to do? Why are we so slave like? From the USA to India to elsewhere, authoritarian figures are rising every day and with them is rising an army of ‘Yes Sir’ — people that pump power into these despots. This army is growing in all corners of our neighbourhood with recruits sometimes from our own closed friend circles.

Recently a state in India had its legislative body elections. Most of my school and college friends are voters in this state. I have WhatsApp groups with these people, I follow them on Instagram, I’m connected with them on Facebook and likes. Leaving one or two, I knew most of them as politically disinterested people. Every time in past when someone has posted some political post in a WhatsApp group they would come and lecture how this group is non-political one etc., but as elections were announced and politicians started their election campaign, like a sleeper cell getting activated they suddenly started behaving weirdly. They started posting politically charged memes, messages, accusations, stats, news articles and more, all targeted against everyone but the dear leader and his party. It was as if an orchestrated drama unfolding around. I was wondering what is happening to this people, what happened to ‘we are non-political’ lectures? Were they paid to post all this? Were they asked by their beloved leader to malign his opponents? Did they come in contact with any of the close confidants of dear leader? No, absolutely not. I do not think so. They were doing this on their own. Nobody asked them to do this. It was silent obedience. Their docile instincts kicking up. I count myself as a politically aware citizen, I post my thoughts openly on social media and receive lots of flak for it. I was posting against the government before the current leader was sworn in. In fact, before his swearing in, I used to admire the current leader and post against his adversaries but now that he is in power, I mostly post opinions critical of him. To me, nothing has changed in my approach. I have not shifted my focus. My focus was and continues to be the people in power. Yesterday it was someone else and today it is someone else. Tomorrow it might be someone new. Would that make any difference in how I post things or criticize? No. To me, it would still be someone in power who in my belief should be held responsible and accountable for the immense power they command. But some people think it otherwise. Many on the social media and elsewhere have recently got politically active. They have started to read everything now, and they think everyone who criticizes the government and their leader are doing it for some ulterior motive which they are shielding their leader against. For instance, as the elections drew close in my home state, I posted a non-partisan call for voters to go out and vote their candidate without thinking about the parties they belong to or which leader do they support. I asked them to vote just on the basis of an individual candidate’s character.

“It’s voting time for Karnataka.

Dear people, remember you are going to vote for your candidate. The EVM machine where you’ll go and press the button will not have names of Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi; except for their constituencies, it won’t even have Siddaramaiah, Deve Gowda and Yeddyurappa’s name on it. It will have your local candidate’s names. Vote for them without thinking about their parties and these chopper-flying leaders from top. India is a representative democracy. Choose your representative wisely.” I expected that for this one at least I wouldn’t get any harsh comments but I did. People responded with memes immediately in groups and their stories attacking this idea with ‘Our leader is here to save our religion… In a fight to save religion, sometimes you have to choose the wrong candidate’, ‘What is this? A ward(think of municipality) election to select a candidate? Vote for xyz party!’, ‘Vote for dear leader for he will solve all the mess’. All sorts of defence and counter-arguments were out there. It was as if they had this material ready with them. They knew someone would come up with something like this (which unfortunately I did). At least it felt that way. Have they been told by anyone to do so? I still guess not. It is their instincts kicking up, they genuinely feel the leader belongs to them, they feel he is here for them, they feel he is their man. They are fighting his battle by themselves. It is their obedience reaching out. They rise up as and when their leader needs them. They hold rallies and marches for things that people would have felt disgusted to support some years ago, they beat up people who do not agree with their leader, they shout the most racist and bigoted views which until recently we thought we as species had left behind for good. Their leader would not condemn their acts but if outrage catches stream he would tweet or send out a statement with vague sentences and oh-too-general lines that convey nothing substantial or help stop the tide of hate and propaganda which is spread by the army on the ground. Many of these people on the ground have never seen their leader in person, they have received no direct or indirect order from their leader but they do do their work nonetheless. They feel they have a duty to carry out. They want to please their dear leader. They want to obey. They want to act even before the orders are pronounced. They think instinctively what their leader wants. But they fail to ask themselves why do their leaders do what they do, they fail to ask themselves why are they torturing people they didn’t even know, they fail to listen to their moral calling, they fail to stand up to authority and ask ‘why’ and if this is right, is it moral? So next time, when you defend those in power, play devil’s advocate in your own mind and ask yourself some questions- are you defending the person (in power) who has taken that decision for their decision or is your support only because of the person taking that decision, would you support that decision if it was taken by a politician you dislike? Check if that policy or rule helps the people at large or does it help the handful? Listen and concentrate what people in power are saying about their new decision — are they talking about the good and bad about their decision or are they asking you to obey their decision for no logical reason at all? Are they pitching one community or set of people against another? Are they asking you to suffer the pain for larger good? Are they questioning those who criticize government’s policies and decisions? Are they labelling critics with anti-national tags? Do you get where this is going? People in power, whoever they are, they do not want to be questioned. They want you to obey. They want you to crawl like slaves. There are people out there who are already fighting their battles without being paid; they think they are doing it for their country. If only they introspected and meditated on the difference between ‘for the nation’ and ‘for the party/leader’, they would understand what they are doing. They do not understand that governments change, nothing is permanent, no one is immortal. Today they are supporting their leader when he weakens the institutions, kills the free press because they think he is their man. But they do not understand that these same weakened institutions and the spineless press will be inherited by the next government which might not favour them. What then? If institutions are weak, you won’t be spared from the new government’s wrath. You won’t have your saviour. What then? The question was and is still is, will you ever stand up to power and ask the questions that matter to people at large or will you buckle down and just obey like a robot taking orders from his master — the choice my friend is all yours. Thanks for reading so far. Please help this piece reach wider audience. Like and share widely. Thank you.