There are two kinds of politicians — Gandhian politicians who strictly adhere to truth and morality and Machiavellian politicians for whom these do not matter. The tragedy of our times is that the latter variety of politicians thrive and the former is virtually extinct.
It is not far-fetched to say, "Hypocrisy, thy name is politics." If politics means serving the people, how do politicians earn enormous sums of money? And do politicians really serve the people? Most of them pretend to be serving the people and use the power and privilege given by the people to make themselves and their kith and kin prosper. Of all professions of the world, politics seems to be the most unscrupulous one.
I have read the perfect definition of politics by a commentator in Jawaharlal Nehru’s autobiography: "Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign fund from the rich by promising to protect each from the other." Everybody knows how the politicians practise this "gentle art" consummately. Though they promise both the poor and the rich to protect each from the other, invariably, the protected ones are the rich.
And politicians are the masters of not only hypocrisy but of volte-face too.
In his autobiography, the Mahatma says: "Truth has drawn me into the field of politics." The present-day politicians are drawn to politics by anything else but truth. The 18th chapter of Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous work The Prince is titled "How a Prince Should Keep His Word" and it begins thus: "How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word…nevertheless the princes who have accomplished great deeds are those who have cared little for keeping their promises and who have known how to manipulate the minds of men by shrewdness." It seems that the nature of all our politicians and rulers can well be explained by the words of Machiavelli.
He further says, "It is not necessary for a prince to have all qualities, but it is very necessary for him to appear to have them. Furthermore, I shall be so bold as to assert this: that having them and practising them at all times is harmful; and appearing to have them is useful; for instance, to seem merciful, faithful, humane, trustworthy, religious and to be so; but his mind should be disposed in such a way that should it become necessary not to be so, he will be able and know how to change to the contrary."
That is why Jonathan Swift in his scathing satire Gulliver’s Travels expressed his opinion about humans and their politicians through the words of the emperor of Brobdingnag: "But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."
