By Nilotpal Basu
79 years ago, we were celebrating the spring of hope. It was the best of times. Our collective mood was voiced by the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, at the stroke of midnight – “we must redeem our pledge” to fulfil our “tryst with destiny”. Our destiny demanded us to create a new nation, to realise the evolution of a huge and diverse India, united as never before. Breaking the colonial yoke, we were destined to be united, overcoming the forces of division and tragedy of Partition.
People all over the world were marvelling at the gigantic task we had undertaken. The size of our population and their diversity were monumental challenges. Our freedom fighters who served as the members of the Constituent Assembly came up with the simple solution, the chosen instrument was citizenship. The diverse people ridden by differences of religion, language, caste, culture and regional disparities would all be equal and common citizens of India. Today when we look back, compared to that spring of hope we find ourselves afflicted by the winter of discontent. Our overwhelming majority are struck by what can be described as the worst of times.
We are struck by a reality which suffers the highest economic inequality in the world. A handful, including corporate cronies of the government, enjoy an astronomical concentration of earnings and wealth. The one per cent own 40 percent of the country. The other half is living the life of an orphan, below subsistence level, with diminishing access to education and health. Despite their able bodies, they are idle without jobs, or underemployed. India perhaps has the highest population where graduates, post-graduates and doctorates queue up for the ever-elusive opportunity for employment.
One does not need to understand rocket science that this situation will trigger irreconcilable frictions, accentuating the internal structural complexities in the country. Such conflicts and even tensions can be managed and stabilised only through more openness and dialogue.
The idea of the democracy that we decided to evolve and refine in our constitution is not shared by the present dispensation. It is understandable. The ideological forefathers of those who claim to run the show had always abhorred democracy and democratic rights of the people. They were adherents of unilateralism and centralisation, with marginal powers to the people and provinces. The RSS had asked for India with 100 small units, obviously to push this unitary direction and implicitly ignoring the inherent diversity that the Indian society manifested.
After having created the economic mess which imposed inequality and hardship for the vast masses of the people, they believe in dividing the people to stay in power. Therefore, the independence and political sovereignty of the country is threatened by the absence of the economic and social wellbeing of those who are at the receiving end of the growing inequalities, and a fertile ground for divisive engagements.
At the time of our independence, to strengthen our sovereignty we had charted out a path to decolonise and pursue an independent foreign policy. That approach came out in flying colours and we found ourselves at the forefront of the aspirations of newly liberated countries suffering from poverty and underdevelopment. It was not a coincidence that the core of that policy was to fight against imperialist domination and for peace.
But today, the BJP government led by the RSS has abandoned that approach and drifted towards siding with US imperialism more decisively. One of the routes chosen is by having a tight embrace with Israel. Israel’s genocidal activities in Gaza and annexation plan of West Bank and Jerusalem, has come to face stiff resistance, including from some countries who concurred with Israel and the US-Israel axis. But the situation has changed substantially with US-Israel joint war on Iran. The level of Iran’s military resistance and hitting back not just Israel but military installations of the US in the entire Gulf, has challenged the long-standing US hegemony in the region.
Had India been pursuing an independent foreign policy, it could have played a diplomatic role in the resolution of the military conflict which has started affecting India’s energy security, both in the supply of oil and gas from Iran and Russia and transportation through the Strait of Hormuz. This is affecting our kitchens, but the subordination to US and willy-nilly to Israel has put us incomplete jeopardy. With political sovereignty in such dire conditions, we are subjected to further pressures, essentially by US imperialism on the question of tariff and trade policies, seriously affecting our exports and access to our domestic markets, with adverse consequences for our working people particularly the peasantry.
The RSS was always advocating majoritarianism as ideology and practicing Brahmanism in social outlook. Despite the abundance of diverse identities in the run up to our independence, the attempt was always to integrate and include. The RSS approach has been to divide and exclude. With the current level of political hegemony through the BJP and with control over almost every constitutional office, the internal frictions are reaching a crescendo. Tribals, Dalits, Muslims and women are the worst sufferers. Justification for the current policy goes back to old mythologies even with further distortions to suit the ideological straitjacket. Therefore, this Independence Day beckons us to rededicate ourselves to a struggle for unity and inclusion of our people.
Majoritarian policies imply domination, principally by force. This dominance would come through manipulation of institutions supposedly independent as enshrined in the Constitution. But the logic of the present domination does not believe in such independence so long as they do not reinforce dominance. The biggest site of such manipulation has been the Election Commission of India (ECI). The manipulation of the electoral rolls has progressed to a level where electors will not elect the government of their choice, but the government will indirectly choose their electors. The cost is the people’s assured right to vote.
Dominance also is by creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear with full-fledged setting in of neo-fascist characteristics of this ideological framework. We are witnessing the silencing of opposition and criticism, physically and by the numbing of the minds through the corporate mainstream godi media.
We are confronted with the necessity of opposition and resistance as an unavoidable eventuality. It is on this question that we have recently witnessed the young people’s GenZ protest. With examinations as the last opportunity to redeem their situation, the protest emerged from a social media space. The protest largely emanating from digital platforms, with songs and reels and jokes and memes, completely lampooned the governance which threatens the very notion of independence and our Constitution. Hopefully, the coming year will see a hundred flowers blossom to realise the freedom that we had conceptualised79 years back. The challenges are monumental, but a ray of hope beckons us. (IPA Service)
