By Justice Katju-
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman of Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)
“It is surely contrary to the laws of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitudes are deprived of the necessities of life “
Rousseau: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
One is reminded of the above statement of the great French political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau on seeing pictures and reading accounts of the wedding of the son of probably the richest businessman of India, in which about Rs 5,000 crores was spent.
I am not, and have never been, a Communist, but such events disgust me, and reminds me of the above statement of Rousseau.
To my mind they are the first signs, a harbinger, and the surest recipe, of a coming revolution.
For how long will the Indian people tolerate such huge and rising gaps between the wealth of a handful of big businessmen and the vast Indian masses? For how long will they tolerate such vulgar display of wealth?
As was the case before the French Revolution of 1789, when in France, only a few hundred aristocrats were rich while the vast number of the 25 million people of France were desperately poor. So also in India only a handful of big businessmen are extremely rich, while the vast number of 1,400 million Indians are desperately poor, unemployed, suffering from malnutrition and lack of proper healthcare and good education
Talleyrand said that the French Bourbons saw nothing, heard nothing, and forgot nothing.
The same can be said of the Indian big businessmen, who will not realize what they are in for, until it will be too late, like the French aristocrats before 1789.
