Since the augment of human race and the introduction of civilization wars have raged among men and clans for but one reason, the quest for power. History has seen the rise of numerous barbaric dictators who went on to conquer a large portion of the world and were said to possess so called ‘power’. This hunger for power has been and still is quite a common phenomenon amongst our kind, but then I have a question, what is the source of this power? When Genghis Khan went on to bring all of Central Asia under his command or when Atilla the Hun conquered a sizable portion including Europe and the Middle East, wasn’t it actually their armies that had conquered? A possible argument could be that the armies served them, so all I will agree to is that a great source of power served them, or that they could wield power, but to say that they possessed power would be wrong. The point is that they derived power from the army loyal to them. Such power can be tapped upon but not owned. This power is undoubtedly, we, the people.
A dictatorship is where one single person called the dictator believes that that he is above the people and starts unjustly ruling them against their will. There isn’t any surprise then in the fact that the dictatorships that came up in the form of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Musharaff in Pakistan came crashing down. The source of power for the leaders of any group or organization, are its people, and to betray that power and oppress it and then to force it to turn against you is a sure shot method of committing suicide. Power doesn’t mean a person has the independence to choose to do as he wishes; in fact power makes him dependent on those to whom he owes his power. King Louis xvi of France or Saddam Hussein had to learn this lesson the hard way and had to pay for it with their lives when found guilty of betraying their people. Same goes for the imperialist regimes which were thrown out of their colonies after the ire of their populace became too hot to handle.
Yet it’s another fact that we, the people, aren’t aware of our own capabilities as a group. How else can one explain one man called Saddam Hussein oppressing millions of Iraqis for almost 24 years? Or India with its vast population being a colony belonging to a comparatively measly British population for more than a century? It took somebody with the vision of Mahatma Gandhi to realize this and to launch the Non-Cooperation movement, that is to simply stop contributing and cooperating with the British, that is to say, to stop being the source of their power. A simple thing such as that shook the foundations of the British Empire in India; nobody had to pick a finger, all they had to do was nothing! The moment a states populace gives up acknowledging its ruler the ruler has nobody left to rule, that’s just so easy an end.
Thus the only proper form of government or rule is democracy, a government which in Abraham Lincoln’s words is described as a “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Sure democracy has its drawbacks but the one thing above all that is essential for any regime to function is the cooperation of their subjects. In any other form of government a law passed or a bill declared wouldn’t be significant unless accepted by the masses. To confirm this belief what better source do we have to look at other than history? After all the ages of wars and development the world has finally come to a state of stability and the system adopted almost worldwide is Democracy. It’s just another testament to the power of we, the people.
