From 1947 to 2022; from the dream of a decolonized, egalitarian and oceanic India to the violence of militant nationalism and fragmented religious identities; and from the ideals of Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru to the cacophony of Jai Shri Ram—what a journey we have passed through! Yet, the festivity of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav is all around. Is it the celebration of freedom—the freedom to think and act with reason and conscience, the freedom to live with dignity, and the freedom to protest against injustice and inequality? Or, is it only about the visually attractive and demonstrative patriotism to boost the ego of the ‘messiah’ of the nation?
Well, with the clever play of statistics, it is always possible to showcase India’s achievements—the mathematics of ‘growth rate’, the rise of Indian billionaires, the emergence of the software industry, the spectacular gated communities in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, and above all, the might of the Indian Army. And then, there are Nobel laureates from India; the rise of cricket nationalism is hypnotizing; and above all, as the media houses repeatedly remind us, we are ‘secure’ because we have a 24*7 Prime Minister endowed with superhuman qualities!
Yet, the fact is that we are decaying. Apart from the violence implicit in the widening gap between the rich and the poor, we live in contemporary India amid multiple forms of violence—the aggression of majoritarianism; the politics of hate campaigns, mob lynching and cow vigilantism; and the tsunami of FIRs and sedition charges.
See the decay in the realm of culture and politics. For the new middle class, selfishness seems to be the new virtue. With the seduction of consumerism, the craving for the IIT-IIM-America road to ‘success’, and the regular dose of culturally regressive soap operas on television channels—this class seems to have lost its touch with Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India, the literature of Munshi Premchand, or the cinema of Satyajit Ray. As the instantaneity of the social media messaging becomes the order of the day, and loud/noisy television anchors become our public educators, who can resist the fall in the realm of culture and aesthetics? And the practice of religion is devoid of the spirit of the religiosity of love, compassion, wonder and inner quest. Instead, it is nothing more than the noise of demonstrative ritualism, or the ugly politics centred on identities and walls of separation: ‘I am a Hindu. You are a Muslim. And never can we meet, and experience the fusion of horizons’.
Where is the democratic spirit—the nuanced art of debate, dialogue, conversations and nonviolent mode of conflict resolution? The arrogance of the ruling regime, the castigation of every dissenter as ‘anti-national’, the systematic attack on the practice of critical pedagogy, and the widespread network of the surveillance machinery—what else do we need to experience a severe blow to the spirit of democracy? The irony is that the entire political culture—including the politics of the opposition parties—is wounded. The death of ideology, the lure of money, the naked use of brute force, and the normalization of defection have damaged the political sphere. Is it that we are destined to live with the criminalization of politics?
Is it the time to think of yet another freedom struggle—freedom from the all-pervading decadence, and freedom from the rising authoritarianism?
