Free India: Between joy and fear

Recently I had the privilege of attending the convocation ceremony of MBBS students at a reputed government college in Maharashtra. As the newly-minted doctors walked on stage, one by one, to receive their degrees, a diversity of backgrounds was self-evident.

Going just by their surnames it was clear that many castes and religions were represented.

Among the Muslim women graduates, some wore hijab and some did not. Among Hindu women graduates, some wore a bindi and some did not.

Later, over dinner, observing the parents and grandparents of many graduates it was clear that several families came from a rural, perhaps even lower-income, background. This rough approximation of equal opportunity for caste, class and faiths — in an atmosphere of free choice and free expression — is the essence of the India that was reborn on 15th August 1947.

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And yet, even as I cheered and applauded at that convocation, many anxieties lurked in my mind.

Does the young girl in the hijab face harassment because she is a Muslim? Are the Muslim girls who don’t wear a hijab facing harassment from fundamentalists in their community? Will any of these freshly graduated doctors join a public protest to defend their democratic rights or are they afraid that even peaceful dissent will land them in jail?

How many of these young people are aware of laws that allow people to be arrested on flimsy charges and denied bail for years as they rot in jail without trial?

Fear and joy are in stiff competition as India completes its 75th year of freedom from British rule. Joy because we do have historical, cultural and spiritual resources to build upon. Fear because the ugliness of some current events and trends can seem overwhelming.

There are tangible reasons

There are tangible reasons feeding the fear. One close friend has lived with police protection for over four years because his name is on a hit-list the police uncovered during the investigation into the Gauri Lankesh murder. The same investigation has found links between Gauri’s murder and the killings of other intellectuals who have opposed Hindu right-wing extremism.

In some parts of India, there are frequent reports of police officials themselves threatening and intimidating individual citizens — either because they are Muslims or they are activists fighting for human rights.

These problems have been seen earlier, over the last 75 years, but not on such a pervasive scale or in such an intense manner. More importantly, the atmosphere of samaj or society has changed.

In January 1948, on the day Gandhi was assassinated, in millions of homes across India meals were not cooked and people fasted because losing Gandhi felt like a death in the family.

Today it is common to find the fourth generation, in the same households, spouting lies and misinformation about Gandhi and speaking about him in an abusive manner.

In the aftermath of the Emergency when Jayaprakash Narayan founded the People’s Union of Civil Liberties a wide range of people from all walks of life — including well-known professionals and even a few leaders of industry — became life members.

Today, similar people would be reluctant or even afraid to join because they fear being labelled as anti-national or, even worse, ‘urban Naxal’.

From the 1950s till the first decade of the 2000s the ideal of communal harmony was a powerful undercurrent of popular cinema. By 2015 when Kabir Khan made ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ he faced a storm of opposition because the story depicts a Hindu, a worshiper of Hanuman, who affectionately cares for a lost Muslim child and risks his own life to reunite her with her family in Pakistan.

In this situation it may be vital to recall the truism made famous by Gabbar Singh, the iconic Hindi film villain: ‘jo dar gaya vo mar gaya’ — that is, to give in to fear is to die. So how can we defy fear?

One, by accepting and respecting that we are afraid. To be in denial saps energy and feeds delusion.

Two, by focusing on the larger issue of violence vs nonviolence. The specific individual who is hurt by a hate crime is unquestionably important. But if our focus is primarily on the identity dimension — be it Hindu vs Muslim, or Upper caste vs Dalit, etc — then the core issue of violence itself tends to get side-tracked by the complexity of identity politics. This is when many people feel forced to take ‘sides’ on the basis of identity, not values.

Three, hold on to the awareness that most of those spreading hatred and fear are bullies. It is the law of human behaviour that a bully thrives only as long as its victims cower in fear but may turn around and flee if faced with defiance.

In the everyday reality of life, there is thankfully no limit to the forms this defiance may take. We do have reports of countless acts of defiance to hate and violence that have saved lives and mended bridges in situations of conflict.

But it is also true that there are moments in history when such individual and small-group acts of courage and goodness become side stories in a larger tragedy — such as the orgy of violence that engulfed India during Partition.

This is why I experienced fear even as I celebrated that convocation ceremony. For I know that some of those graduates want to leave India because they see a dark cloud of communal conflict hovering over the future of this country.  

Isn’t it wrong, you may ask, to feel any joy in this context?

On the contrary, nothing is more important than finding and loudly celebrating every reason for joy. This includes all evidence, tiny or large, of human goodness, brotherhood, and community that is not limited to inherited identity.

What about the stress many people feel when some friends and family members openly advocate hatred and violence?

These exchanges within the family also offer us important clues about the ongoing tussle between joy and fear. When we simply condemn people for their hate, we push them more deeply into that trap. When we seek to understand their anxieties and find ways of together exploring, and finding answers, we strengthen the roots of free India.

(Rajni Bakshi is a well-known author and founder of ‘Ahimsa Conversations’.)