Reclaiming the Republic

Profiles of a few freedom warriors who continue to be the voice of reason in the madness that is growing around us

The enemies of freedom are everywhere. They are straw-haired, orange-faced, self-styled billionaires fulminating against outsiders from proto-presidential pulpits in the US. They are hooded cowards beheading innocent victims from behind YouTube video screens somewhere in their fantasy Caliphate. They are men who can walk into a scholar’s home in Dharwad and kill him for asking uncomfortable questions about idol worship. They are brazen bullies attacking reed thin young men in Una for engaging in their livelihood. They are paranoid policemen who think the slogans of a few university students can destroy their fragile notion of nationhood. They are part of an angry mob in Dadri who can beat a man with bricks for what they think he has stored in his refrigerator.

It’s tempting to believe that lunatics have taken over the asylum. Or it could be, as Babasaheb Ambedkar had predicted all those years ago, before they reduced, as Arundhati Roy says, him to a statue with a copy of the Constitution, that we have always been a palace built on a dung heap. The argumentative Indian was perhaps a thin veneer for the Ugly Indian, unresolved conflicts tearing at his soul. The moral heart of the new republic, that Ambedkar’s great adversary Mahatma Gandhi thought would heal the wounds of centuries of oppression, is really just an empty core.

And the bleeding doesn’t stop. In Kashmir where soldiers have no choice but to shoot at their own children who crowd streets instead of classrooms; in the jungles of Chhattisgarh where young men and women fight for what was once their land; on national highways where gangs of bandits can rape without fear of punishment; in countless tinderbox towns where castes and religions live side by side, praying to their gods no one lights a match.

Is this all India has to show 69 years after Independence? Will the bloodletting Partition unleashed never end? Not if freedom’s warriors, celebrated in the next few pages of india today, have their way. These men and women, the youngest 17 and the oldest 89, keep the faith in the inclusive idea of India. Through their writing, their art, their humour and their politics, they renew hope.

There’s Ginni Mahi, a teenaged Dalit singer, who wears her untouchability like a badge of honour. There’s Mehattar Ram Tandon, whose community overcame its outsider status, by owning Ram, and tattooing his name on their bodies. There’s a trio of humourists who encourage us to laugh at our dark times and at our aisi taisi democracy. There’s Irrfan Khan, star of independent Mumbai cinema and big Hollywood blockbusters, who dares to question his faith in the Age of ISIS. There’s T.M. Krishna, a Carnatic musician who unravels the elitist nature of music sabhas. They—and many more—tell us what freedom means to them.

These are ordinary people living in extraordinary times. Times when tolerance for the other is declining and fear of the stranger is rising. The stranger could be a person of another race, religion, caste or community. It could be a neighbour, or it could be a refugee; it could be a person of another sexuality, or another faith. It could be in Nice or Orlando; in Una or Dadri. Freedom’s warriors allow us to believe we can be better editions of ourselves.

And few stories are as inspiring as that of Bezwada Wilson, this year’s Magsaysay Award winner, proud son of a scavenger, who now works to remove all social hierarchies. He speaks for all those whose voices ceased to be heard after Independence, whose liberation was taken for granted on August 15, 1947. The Dalits, the tribals, the oppressed women, the poor, the many minorities even within the majority. Wilson believes freedom is a work in progress, what we were yesterday and what we are today cannot be forever.

So this Independence Day, let greetings be done quickly. The time for pleasantries and platitudes is over. Yes, we were once great. But mere nostalgia will not restore us to what we were. It takes courage to admit to flaws, and perseverance to persist with efforts to change ourselves. Political freedom is not enough. The individual freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, the one Ambedkar helped draft, need to be realised, reclaimed, perhaps reimagined. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the greatest of his generation, never thought the tryst with destiny was anything more than but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.

“THE BLEEDING DOESN’T STOP. IN KASHMIR, OR IN CHHATTISGARH. OR IN INDIA’S TINDERBOX TOWNS”