By Don Aguiar

Mumbai, Jan. 17, 2020: It is not an insignificant fact that most of the tall leaders of India’s freedom movement — were formatively influenced by the Christian culture via their exposure to the West.

Sri Aurobindo lived with a Christian priest-family for several years in England. Gandhi was influenced by Ruskin and Tolstoy, both of whom were ardent and well-informed Christians. Gandhi’s acceptance of truth as the paradigm of his spiritual and political life — was, to a large extent, due to Tolstoy’s influence.

A significant meeting point between the Constitution of India and the Christian faith is the value both attach to life per se. In the Indian culture, life as life had no value. The worth of life depended on a person’s caste and social standing. The purest form or example that Christian faith introduced into the world is centered on the absolute value of all human beings based on the divine origin.

In a country where obedience to elders is all but enshrined in law, young Indians are demanding the right to be heard, protesting against everything from university fee hikes to most recently a new citizenship law criticized as anti-Muslim/Minority which was passed last month.

Every country will and should define its borders, protect national security and set immigration policy accordingly. In democracies, that is something that the people and their governments will debate and define within these boundaries. Legislation alone will not transform the country. The transformation of the individual — is the key to social transformation and national regeneration. When this is left out, the law itself assumes an unjust and oppressive character. The flavor of law depends very much on who handles it and for whom it is handled.

Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in demonstrations nationwide, and at least 25 have been killed in clashes with police. It is sad to see violence by the government against its citizens for voicing their opinion through peaceful protests.

We must not dilute our citizenship responsibilities but maintain a higher standard of right and wrong, of the idea and practice of justice, and commitment to the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity. In all of these, we must exceed the norms prescribed.

The Preamble to the Indian Constitution lists four fundamental principles, the foremost of which is justice. The centrality of the ideal of justice to the protesting students and we the people is too obvious to be argued.

A dangerous aspect of the corrosive and widespread social and political confrontation we see in India today is the absence of true dialogue. Consumed by the correctness of their thinking and cause no one is engaging anyone on the opposite side. All are busy talking past the other. Their messages and postures are not directed at finding solutions, but at shoring up their credentials with the likeminded.

A couple of Sundays ago masked attackers went on the rampage at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, injuring 34 people and sparking yet more protests.

The ruling alliance and the opposition are only exchanging harsh words. In this context it is worth recalling that Rajnath Singh once said that while he could not agree with many of Nehru’s policies, he could never doubt his intentions.

The debasement of our public debates currently, their aggression, hostility and the ‘other-ing” of anyone who disagrees with you is at least partly a consequence of the odious descent of TV news media.

Inordinate media focus on Left vs Right battles have taken the eye off larger, more important issues – student protests, CAA, NAA – counterproductive in my view. These issues have nothing to do with Left vs Right student politics. They are about the constitution & nationhood.

The constitution is to a country what the scripture is to religion. It sketches the destination for a people and roadmaps the journey in a minimalist sort of way. Insofar as a nation is an entity in a state of continual evolution towards the goals espoused by a people, its constitution too is bound to be in perennial modification. The most obvious meeting point between the protesting students, we the people and the Constitution of India is the ideal of freedom and its emphasis on justice and secularism.

India is vigorously engaging the world but it is ironic that the same impulse is lacking among leaders in different sectors of national life to dialogue with those with differing views on domestic issues.

In an age ruled by social media, even movie stars are not insulated from the issues that matter to their fans. Why would they want to alienate them or cannot stay neutral?

None of this would be happening without social media, Bollywood has faced so much criticism on Twitter for not being politically engaged, and much of it from young people who are their target audience.

Ultimately the film industry is a microcosm of society, and images of bloodied students do not go down well with middle-class Indians. They cannot stay neutral in such issues.

In contrast to Bollywood’s younger generation, the old guard including superstars such as Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan have not commented on the protests.

They perhaps have learned the hard lesson that sticking your neck out is a dangerous business, risking film boycotts, the loss of lucrative sponsorship deals, or worse.

Padukone’s last release “Padmaavat” came under fire from religious radicals linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who objected to her portrayal of the legendary Hindu queen in the epic.

Mobs attacked the director and vandalized the set. One BJP politician even offered a bounty for the actress to be beheaded, and a Molotov cocktail was lobbed at a cinema. A cabinet minister Smriti Irani accused Padukone of being unpatriotic and standing “with people who wanted the destruction of India”.

For years it’s been easy to malign those of us who spoke up and write it off as a publicity stunt, so to have the biggest female star in the country do it is a huge win in the perception battle.

Ultimately though, this moment belongs to the protesters and the students who have awakened this country’s conscience.