Power

If you abuse power, you are powerful. A person who obeys rules, respects constitutional provisions and acts accordingly has no power. Only when you defy, disregard and disobey, you emerge as an alternative center of power. Had Indira Gandhi obeyed the Allahabad High Court order disqualifying her election, she would have been an ordinary mortal. But she, defied, punished the judicial authority by political power and emerged as a very powerful person. She perhaps, illustrated Lord Acton’s statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but to my mind power is basically a defiant energy which does not accept a superior authority under which we bow down our heads. If god is the most potent authority or the limit of all imaginable things it is tempting to challenge him. Lucifer or Satan therefore is equally feared as God because the power to harm is more in Satan.

But in all religions we are taught, the most powerful is the most benign, generous, kind and loving. That powerful being is God. This power which we call divine is a moral power. The moral power decimates the ruthless physical power and creates an order of peace, tranquillity and even joy. But this order is always an unreachable goal perpetually chased yet never reached. Heaven and god are imaginaries of possibilities. Any person who displays qualities of a superior moral force is seen as god by us. The Buddha, Christ and Gandhi gave us concrete blueprints of a divine order, reachable and practicable. But Christ and Gandhi were killed by the alternative energies demonstrating that political- physical power is tangibly more powerful. The kings wielded political and (physical) military power as the chosen agents of god to rule over the earth,i.e, their area of command. Rama, perhaps, is the greatest symbol of moral power in poetic imagination. In history we read of Ashoka, Bikramaditya and Akbar as kings who wielded moral authority. But one may ask with a straight face without being cynical, how many have they killed with their “moral power?”. If you have to kill to enforce morality, the other kings or so called leaders can also justify mass killing in the name of ideology. Stalin, Mao Tse Deng - if not Hitler and other dictators-can also justify the power of ideology, killing the opposition to establish their sense of order. Can we therefore ever accept power as an order force? No, power negates the virtues of compassion, love and charity which are basic human values expected in the person enjoying a position of power.

 Power is a divisive force. It divides people into two groups- the ruler and the ruled, the master and the slave, the wisest and the most foolish. In modern democracies, be they the Presidential or the Parliamentary forms, the moment we utter the word ‘power’ the country is divided into two groups: the power group or the ruling class or the Treasury bench and the opposition. The ruling group is also not a homogeneous unit. Internal conflicts, aspirational rivalries, competitions to be number one goes on in the ruling group and also in the opposition. The man at the top is always tense to retain his power for there is space for only one man at the top. Power also compels a further division between the person wielding power and his conscience. Power at times prompts the authority to sign an order or resolution against his own better judgement. Thus power creates a threefold division. It can never unite. The so called unity comes under threat of power, out of fear not love.

If power is a moral force, it envisages an Order where the master- slave division does not exist. Democracy is nearest to this moral power creating an Order. But here too we see vaulting ambition manipulating the order. Power personalises, privatises the world. If the man in power uses power as a sacrificial energy a moral order can be established. But man always abuses power, he should learn to renunciate and use power with love. Power should be a creative energy in the hands of a man of love. The aristocratic value equation is Power= Good. The good of others, the good of all. But man tends to move centrifugally towards his own perceived values.

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty