By Don Aguiar
Mumbai, Jan 30, 2020: Every Republic Day I switch on the TV, grab my breakfast and watch the parade on Doordarshan. I have been following this routine for the past many years. But this year, it was different. This year, Republic Day was not just about watching the parade or standing up for the national anthem as it played on the TV.
This Republic Day we celebrated our Constitution. We celebrated the diversity of our country, we celebrated the real meaning of words like equality, justice, liberty and fraternity and how these core values are holding us together as a nation.
When we celebrate Republic Day, we have to think seriously whether we are really happy and prosperous, whether all communities are dwelling in this country peacefully, but the present condition does not look so good.
Because when there is no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there is a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. We must hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives.
Over the past few months, we have been going through phases of despair and helplessness because of constant news about growing inequalities in India, our freedoms being curtailed, and delays in justice.
And every time we need hope, we turn to the incredible people who are fighting to protect and celebrate our constitutional rights by organizing sit-ins, flash mobs, campaigns and peaceful protests.
As the voices of protest on the streets get louder – and women and children join them across the cities and small towns of India in sits-ins and flash mobs to show their defiance against an unyielding government that insist on a Citizenship Amendment Act that nobody asked for, nobody wants – we hear the regime’s apologists demanding an open debate. At the same time they want the traitors – read CAA protesters – to be shot at sight.
What debate do they want? What debate is possible when non-violent protesters are abused, intimidated, beaten up and arrested?
Whether the government succeeds or not, one thing is clear. The man on the streets has refused to fall in line with the divisive agenda of the right. His wife is at the sit-in. his kids are missing school. His collage going daughter’s facing the baton and bullet. But he will not yield. And therein lies the regime’s challenge. How long can the government keep fighting its own citizens as the world watches India’s economy fall apart?
Our country is going through a difficult phase now; unfortunately, it is even worse than when the country was ruled by the British. At least they were more practical and grasped the situation of the nation.
People are now afraid to talk as threats are the language of today’s majoritarian politics. The general feeling is that there is no guarantee when one will be arrested and put in jail for no fault of one’s own, which is very dangerous for a democratic country like India.
Will we be able to maintain our democracy or will we lose it by the infidelity and treachery of some of our own people? Will history repeat itself? It is this thought which fills us the citizens with anxiety and makes us most anxious for the future. This anxiety is deepened by the realization of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds.
Will the present government place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? But this much is certain that if the government place creed above country, our constitution will be put in jeopardy and probably be lost for ever. This eventuality we the people are resolutely guarding against and are determined to defend our constitution with the last drop of our blood.
It is quite possible in a country like India that there is danger of democracy to retain its form but give place to dictatorship. In fact if there is a landslide, the danger of this possibility becoming actuality is much greater.
In the maintenance of democracy, John Stuart Mill says, not “to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions.” There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness.
Irish Patriot Daniel O’Connell says, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honor, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country.
For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequaled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.
We must not to be content with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.
It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.
The sooner we realize that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the world, the better for us. For then only we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means of realizing the goal. The realization of this goal is going to be very difficult – In India there are castes.
The castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life and also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste. But we must overcome all these difficulties if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity can be a fact only when there is a nation. Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.
Democracy has thrown on us great responsibilities and the right wing government has lost the excuse of blaming the British, the past governments or the opposition for anything going wrong. If things go wrong, they will have nobody to blame except themselves. There is great danger of things going wrong. Times are fast changing.
People including our own are being moved by new ideologies. They are getting tired of government by the people. They are prepared to have governments for the people and are indifferent whether it is Government of the people and by the people.
If we wish to preserve the Constitution in which we have sought to enshrine the principle of government of the people, for the people and by the people, let us resolve not to be tardy in the recognition of the evils that lie across our path and which induce people to prefer government for the people to government by the people, nor to be weak in our initiative to remove them.