In praise of democracy

I recently read an article that said many Pakistanis were mad that their state was being called a failed state. The reporter interviewed some students who said their preferred form of protest was raising awareness through Facebook (a social networking site). The reason given was that they were women and it has become increasingly unsafe for women to participate in protests outside their homes.

Now, it seemed strange to me that these students did not realise there is a co-relation between their lack of safety and the failure of state. The very fact that the country is becoming more fundamentalist makes it more unstable and prone to failure. So a few people joining protest causes etc on Facebook is hardly going to make a dent in that country's path to destruction. The only thing it will do is mislead some people about the reality of Pakistan.

I have never understood how a country can be theocratic and claim to protect the rights of all its citizen equally. A theocracy is fundamentally unequal because it privileges one religion over all others. To top that, if religious laws govern the land, there can be no pretence of equality of any kind -- of the sexes, of religious minorities, of vulnerable sections. That is why the best form of government is a democracy with separation of church and the state. In a democracy there is space for dissent, unlike a theocracy.