Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom
74 years of Independence necessitates reflections on the ‘tryst with destiny’, journey of the glorious golden bird, idea and imagination of India, second most populated country of the world. Largest democracy in the world, India currently stands at a 45 year high in 2017-18 Unemployment, increase in relative and absolute poverty, 94th out of 107 countries in Global Hunger Index, 131 in 189 in Human Development Report, caste based atrocities, sexual and domestic violence, communal violence, climate change crisis. This report card forces us to think: Is it time to write an obituary for democracy in India?
Democracy is derived from Demos (people) and kratos (rule). Reflections on democracy induce critical engagement with the state of India and its people. This article shall argue to re-present the people at the core of politics. The oft used synonyms of people involve citizens, masses, public, population used in different contexts with different connotations. Similar to democracy, ‘people’ is an ambiguous concept/category. People do not represent only citizens, population or public. This ambivalence is pertinent considering the exclusionary implications of other categories for instance citizenship misused to foster exploitative immigration policies.
As the former president of Brazil once remarked ‘Economy is doing well, people are not’. Modern democracies in their liberal representative form push people to the back seat with passive roles. Stifling voices of dissent and massive human rights violations in democracies pushes us to ask two central questions. Recent CAA NRC protests, Jamia students, Article 370 protests force us to think who are the people, democracy claims to represent? Where do we see the authentic substantive expression of voices of the people?
Institutional response to such questions indicate parliament, currently passing bills at the rate of rising petrol prices, shuffling reshuffling cabinets of ministers according to convenience, mainstream media eager to ask irrelevant questions. Do we see people in these assemblies? No, despite 75 years of independence, passing an act demanding reservation for women’s seats remains a Herculean task. Active judiciary asking questions on UAPA sedition, alternative online sources of media, civil society organisations, social movements and campaigns, people on streets ignite the ray of hope in this country
Reflecting the hopes and aspirations of people, the preamble reads as: We, the people of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India to a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, securing the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity assuring the dignity of individual and unity and integrity of the nation. We, the people in the preamble underlines collective responsibility, conscience and agency ending with ‘give to ourselves this constitution‘. The preamble creates the base for collective self rule of the individual and community in India. Interestingly, the farmer protests, students protests, social movements and streets seem to form the spaces that teach us these lessons.
Emphasis on ‘we, the people’ steers clear of populism practiced in countries worldwide. Populism reinforces the stereotypes regarding the masses and elites, used for political paternalistic purposes fails to guarantee or deliver power to the people. Liberal representative democracy exudes a certain degree of paternalistic moral populist authority where everybody claims to speak for the people. Academic debates raising issues and voices, attempts to make those invisibilized speak co-opts the voices and issues of the marginalised.
This is not an attempt to speak for the disempowered. This is an essay to re-look and re-present people at the core of these institutions and value systems associated with democracy. People speak, people think, people perform, people express not on the papers or speeches of politicians or policies made rather on the streets. We, the people truly reside on the streets. Streets as public spaces are associated with disorder, chaos and unruliness. Authoritarian descriptions of streets reduce people/citizens to unruly violent mobs with parochial needs. These streets hold immense potential. People on the streets work towards toppling the centres of power and status quo. . Spaces where they make their voices heard, spaces where they freely think, sing, reflect, act , dance and ask questions. .
Farmer Protests underlined solidarity, lessons of humanity, gender based leadership, student led and Shaheen Bagh protests teach us golden rules of liberty, equality and justice, Janta Faisla in Chhattisgarh taught us the supremacy of humanity, rights and dignity of migrant workers and authentic rule with, of and by the people, Kisan Sansads concretise values of deliberation, discussion and dissent. From Niyamgiri protests to Kisan Andolan, Sanitation workers in Hyderabad or domestic workers in Delhi, people unions are protesting to make their voices heard. These voices get subdued in the vulgar, loud noises perpetuated by the mainstream media discourses.
We, the People is a phrase often quoted from textbooks to speeches upholding the procedural than substantive values of a democracy. Scholars and politicians argue for differing definitions of democracy, conflating democracy and nation, reifying abstract conceptions and ideals than truly discussing the daily, ordinary and concrete realities of human lives.
We, the people, underline unity amidst diversity, heterogeneity and plurality against homogeneity, consensus and accommodation rather than coercive compromises. Envisioning India means embracing differences than assimilating them to a melting pot diluting and eliminating beliefs, cultures and knowledge systems. Collective conscience and collective self rule begins with re-imagining India. Re-imagination of the daily and ordinary abstract from traditionalism, historicism or utopian exclusive ideals. India as a nation should not fall prey to chauvinistic nationalism, blind patriotism or uncritical traditionalism. It is rooted in the concrete material realities/circumstances. It is rooted in the individual located within the community. Shift from hollow dull spirited, aggressive, parochial, violent nationalism it instead invokes critical love, care, responsibility towards the collective imagination of living together with tolerance, respect, empathy and dignity.
Independence in the form of Gandhi’s Swaraj expanded as self rule and home rule, individual and the community. We find similar connotations even in the Indian constitution. Fundamental rights highlight individual rights such as freedom of speech and expression along with cultural and religious rights for communities. Democracy is re-imagined beyond the electoral realm of politics. It forwards freedom in the home and the world, private and the public.
Covid-19 taught important lessons for humanity, exposed the dysfunctional institutional safeguards, perpetuation of socio-economic and political inequalities, rich getting richer while poorer sections left to die either of hunger or virus. Issues of liberty, equality, justice and rights emerge through deprivation of the right to freedom of speech and expression, sedition cases, UAPA laws, excess use of preventive detention, rights of political prisoners depriving the right to life and dignity, inequalities in access to adequate healthcare facilities, relief kits, protection measures to state the least. Devastating tales highlighting the precarity of life through the painful images of migrant labour walking back home, frontline care workers saving lives, crematorium grounds, people struggling for oxygen cylinders shall remain in the collective public memory of this pandemic.
Clearly, it is too early to write the obituary of democracy. However, it is time for people to rise up to the occasion. We, the people agree to disagree, We, the people disobey irrational acts, We, the people unite against sectarian and communal tensions, We, the people refuse to tolerate violence, We, the People refuse to tolerate hatred against certain races, castes, classes, gender and religion. We, the people demand responsibility and accountability of the institutions, We, the people refuse to be represented by partisan interests. We, the people re-present ourselves to work with the people, for the people, by the people and of the people.
Contextualising this radical equality laden concept, the pandemic reminds the precarities of existing inequalities and inequities in socio economic structures, poverty, degradation, hunger, employment, violence deprive the substantive realisation of democracy, right to life and dignity.
We need to listen to the streets, thrive in chaos, muffled dissenting voices, demanding for their rights and dignity, occupying public spaces, opening the doors of home and the world to liberate, emancipate and it all starts with the fullest realisation of ‘We, the People’.
I am talking about the community, I am talking about us together, I am thinking about the pandemic, did we also fail? Yes, we as a society and community need to embrace empathy and compassion, power within the community to hope and change. Amidst the hullabaloo, intolerance, immense hatred spewed on digital platforms, heartwarming pictures of students protesting with the farmers, feeding langars to the policemen on the borders, songs of protests from Delhi to Niyamgiri stop me from writing the obituary of democracy. Hope is the spiritual armour protecting those cherished values of liberty, equality, democracy, social justice, rights, sovereignty, tolerance and empathy.
Revisiting the Tryst with Destiny reminds us to redeem those pledges, challenges, opportunities and responsibility. Soul of the nation does not reside in symbolic rituals, rites and processions, it resides in the well being of the nation and its people.
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.
That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future ? (Taken from the Tryst with Destiny Speech)
It is indeed a long walk to freedom. Let’s hope that We, the People take charge and march ahead learning from the past, working in the present addressing the challenges of the future.
(Akashleena pursuing post graduation from the University of Delhi.)
