As the days and weeks move forward to usher in another Independence Day, the 75th anniversary of India’s freedom from British rule, I can’t help but reflect on the freedom/s I have lost.
Freedom to browse hundreds of TV channels, or watch the news on TV.
Freedom to read and trust the morning paper.
Freedom to visit my relatives in towns that played a large role in my childhood.
Freedom to uphold and enshrine the idea of an inclusive India, where the life of each individual Indian mattered.
A shrinking life…
Don’t get me wrong, none of these freedoms have been snatched away by any statute. They have just become impossible to live by. As the years have rolled on after 2014, it seems as if life is shrinking, and pushing me and others like me into an ever-smaller corner. Worse, those who have selflessly served this country and her most disadvantaged people, whose lives of simplicity and sacrifice were visible to all, have spent years in prison, and one has even died in custody. Courts have become an arena for such people to be reviled and arraigned for all manner of unproven charges and crimes, and prosecutors for the government spare no effort in tarnishing their name, memory, or enduring contribution to our 75-year-old democratic republic.
As my level of discomfort in the land of my birth has increased, it seems as if it has become a lot more comfortable for others. That is what makes it so much harder to bear.
Thinking about the relentless “debates” around manufactured themes of religious discord, and the armies of media professionals led by anchors cocooned in their studios, I am happy to have made the decision to do away with my satellite TV connection in January 2019. In February 2016, I had just begun the process by refusing to watch certain channels and anchors. But that was not enough to shield myself from the waves of announcements and accusations around every election (and there were elections all through the year in some part of the country), the endless framing of every debate into questions that pitted Hindus against Muslims, the saturation coverage of the PM’s inauguration of every tunnel and temple, and the non-stop noise that hid the silence around what really mattered to me – the security, peace, brotherhood and prosperity of my fellow Indians.
However, even as I am happy with my decision to close off the electronic media, I do wonder, at how the anchors and reporters, even the people typing the sensational tickers on TV screens, how do they sleep at night? Does it mean nothing to them that people can die as a result of some of their “debates,” and some actually have? Are they content to feed their families and prosper from a diet of so much hate and falsehood? How much are they earning, and what cost is our country and its people paying for such earnings?
Print brings no relief…
No answers arrive for any of these meandering thoughts, but meanwhile, I have to shield myself from the newspapers and print media, too.
I congratulate the human beings of such stout heart, that they can read every day, news only of injustice, lies dressed up as claims of innocence or truth, loss posing as profits and humiliation touted as honour. I, for one, have long lost my appetite for opening the paper past the gigantic first page ads to read more hurtful headlines. Today, my “freedom” consists of the choice to read only the cartoons and skim hurriedly through the rest of the paper.
It is not as if the publishers of the paper themselves are responsible for the events they report. The hurtful headlines are not something new to me, either. Having turned sixty-one in 2022, I was a teenager when the phrase “aaya Ram, gaya Ram” described party hopping politicians through the period of 1977 to 1980. I had heard of the capitulation of a President forced to declare an Emergency, and the imprisonment of leaders of the opposition. In spite of this, the present subversion of functioning governments through coups featuring chartered flights, luxury hotels, and the gubernatorial and judicial somersaults that provide endorsement for such coups, bring me distress.
Again, I wonder, how do such “representatives of the people” justify their actions to their family, friends and voters? What is keeping their conscience silent and assuaged, apart from the offered riches whose value is being estimated by many? Moreover, political adventurism that favours the ruling party at the centre gets lauded in print. Gone are the days when stern editorials pointed out the morally repugnant nature of such coups and takeovers.
Home towns turned distant…
Born into a family with ancestors in Hindi-speaking central India, I have had the good fortune of living in towns and cities across the country, partly because of my father’s transferable government job, and later, by my own adult choices. Going home to visit grandparents, aunts and uncles was something I treasured and looked forward to.
This freedom too, has virtually disappeared. The blessings of my elders have been coming via WhatsApp, with their inevitable consequences. I was forced to speak up against the rumour-mongering by an aunt that suggested that gangs of child-lifters were roaming our streets dressed as “fakeers” or even, as “raddiwallahs.” I protested at such messages casting members of a minority community, or poor ragpickers as kidnappers. My aunt’s children hotly defended their mother, and I was unable to resume normal relations with her till she died a couple of years later. One of my favourite first cousins, a decorated veteran of the Army, routinely shared naked hate messages and posts on Facebook, which I ignored. But when the same person began sending me unsolicited comments and observations after the Bengal elections about how Ajit Doval would soon “fix” Mamta Banerjee, I told him never to speak to me again.
In 2022, eight years after whole branches of my extended family voted the BJP into power, I find that no other yardstick applies in my desire to talk to them. I wish I could have some sort of a dialogue, but doubt its efficacy. I look at them, having grown up with the educational and social privileges that go with being born into upper caste families, and I wonder – did they learn anything at all, in an earlier, freer India, other than hatred for Muslims, indifference and contempt for the poor, and an obsession about being robbed of their “rights” by reservation in education and jobs? If this is the extent of that education, then we have failed on a gigantic scale.
I feel nothing in common with these people, many sharing my surname, or my family elders. In the last few years, our relations have atrophied from disuse.
Fear – the new religion
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the independent #NewIndia is the silence that sits like a blanket over all the things that matter. It covers the loss of our sovereignty with the significant intrusion and settling in on Indian territory by the PLA of China. It covers the discovery of hundreds of tons of heroin repeatedly from a port in Gujarat, destined for…? Indian streets? Indian youth? It covers any discussion or debate about the use of surveillance software by a government against its own citizens. It covers the awful allocation of funds for universities based on their labels – a reduction in funds for Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia, against a doubling of funds for Benares Hindu University. It fails however to completely cover the price rise of essential commodities, or the soaring unemployment, because these are now cutting close to the bone of every Indian.
With the government agencies like ED, CBI, DRI (and a lot more such collections of the alphabet) ever ready to do the regime’s bidding by raids and “investigations” against any known dissident or critic, even those with considerable clout in the minds of the public, like sportsmen and entertainers, are silent on pressing issues. It is clear that fear rules hearts and minds in India today, or at least, whatever space in those hearts and minds that is not occupied by hate.
For yes, in a country now led by a government under whom talk of a “Hindu Rashtra” has become commonplace, whose leaders are seen in saffron robes, and at a time in our history where “Dharam Sansads” happen every few weeks, the biggest casualty of course, is faith itself. How is one to believe in the existence of a higher power, if those who screech his name, do so armed with swords and abuse against their fellow humans? How can the devout raise their voices in slogans that have been used at the time of killing, or lynching, without feeling uneasy or anxious? Believing in divine justice, or a compassionate and caring God, have become more difficult today, than ever before.
Proliferation of processes
It has often seemed to me, several times in the last few years, that every time I go to sleep, powerful think tanks are drafting new anti-people policies that they will announce when I get up in the morning. Nothing has become more convenient or more people-friendly. In fact, endless spam e mails warning us about new rules for using banks and ATMs, new fines for motor offences, new charges being levied on a multitude of services have become a feature of life since 2014. These warnings only underscore the dread that has become my near constant state of mind.
I have learnt today of a rule that makes it necessary for students writing 10th and 12th board examinations to get their results from a digi locker that they cannot access unless they provide Aadhaar for verification. I have yet to confirm whether this is indeed the case, from parents of 10th and 12th standard students. But it strikes me as just the kind of policy that is suddenly flung in our faces every day. Why should Aadhaar, that porous and suspect identity document, be necessary for accessing examination results? Wasn’t it meant as a means to prevent pilfering of subsidies and welfare schemes? Haven’t there been thousands of instances where it has been shown to be a means of exclusion, much more so than a means to ensure inclusion of those in need of welfare?
Getting ambushed by sudden changes in rules, that we became introduced to in the weeks after demonetization, has continued in many other areas. Think GST, think changes in interest rates on bank deposits, rules for depositing and withdrawing money, selling stock in mutual funds, booking railway tickets, sleeping time in trains…anything at all can be the subject of warning e mails. Apart from the annoyance of being spammed, I have discovered the inconvenient truth about these changes often only after their implementation.
And so, on our 75th Independence Day, I am sitting, retired hurt, like a soldier with grievous wounds, in my home, my country, and amidst my people. I wince at every fresh assault from the propaganda machinery. I cringe at every fresh rejection of international rankings of India that evaluate the freedom of our press, our religious freedom, and other parameters about the quality of our lives, by strident government spokespersons. I can’t take comfort from the fact that our best and brightest, like Umar Khalid, are in jail, and those who have recommended the large-scale murder of fellow citizens, are roaming free.
More than any sadness a political party, or government, or its propagandists can bring me, what brings most sorrow is the fact that the law has passed into the hands of criminals, that all arms of the state are manifestly malevolent towards the people, and Indians seem to have accepted this as their destiny. Some Indians are profiting in this period, it is true, but they are doing it at the cost of the blood, sweat and tears of millions of others.
Is there to be any healing, any end to hate, and the cycle of deprivation as we begin the march to our century as an Independent Republic? For my children and theirs, for future generations of Indians, I devoutly hope so.
[Scharada Dubey is a communication consultant. She is the author of ‘Portraits from Ayodhya: Living India’s Contradictions’ (2011), and ‘M for Minority: Muslims in #NewIndia’ (2020). She is also known for her books for children.]
