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Freedom, Independence and others

By Anit Singh. Dated: 8/17/2017 1:11:03 AM

The many ways in which our country differs from the erstwhile British colony makes a study in contrast. Independence Day was celebrated for the seventieth time. For millions that moment never arrived, for millions more it arrived and went without having much of an impact. Two decades after the economic liberalisation changed some of the scenario, the masses are still waiting for the India imagined while they wrote their school essays, the India they cheered, they celebrated and felt cheated out of.
Amongst the ones left behind, the foremost are perhaps the dwellers of the forest, the non-Aryans, the people of the forests, who are now sitting on untold mounds of wealth through the complicity of history and economics that converted their centuries long coexistence with forests and de-facto environmental protection into a potentially exploitable resource. For districts which have more than two-thirds of their parts covered with forests, 51 out of 58 such districts are predominantly tribal and some sixty percent of iron and eighty percent coal is located in their lands. A veritable treasure, only the tribals don't see it in that way. Their way of life, their relation with the nature and spirit of forests is far more important to them than becoming the aperitif of a rapidly commercialising world.
The mainstream ideas about the tribals are so distorted that they don't deserve mention. Through these, however, what can easily be gleaned is the clear and persistent sense of superiority that the 'civilised' people presume at the cost of tribals. This sense of pushing the tribals as 'others' is crucial in two ways. One, if the tribals are merely a nuisance, people without refinement of culture and economical culture, then it suits them well to be dispossessed of their resources. Two, it makes it easier to use violence against 'others' if they are not deserving of your sympathy.
Untold horrors of government officials, moneylenders, businessmen abound in the forest. Young girls being raped, whole villages maimed, detractors killed in cold blood seem old news. What is shocking, however, is the placid response that people gave to these reports, seeking to dismiss them before they could establish any sort of permanence in their minds.
What can explain such lethargy and such a stony reception to sufferings of a whole section of our own people? It has to do with the psychological perception of the tribals, the image that perhaps the media has unwittingly propounded and our own historical underpinnings don't allow much sensitivity to deal with. We cannot be the evil ones, can we? We fought for the independence from the imperialists, we were the underdogs and this volte face seems so out of context.
Foreigners and sections of Indians working for the welfare of tribals are derided as being 'anti-nationalists', or downright crazy for their set of ideas. The root of such an attitude to our mode of socialisation, the peculiarly Indian way of bringing up, where the individual is so embedded in his family that right-wrong, values, principles are seen through the lens of that perspective.
This 'othering' is therefore not peculiar only to the tribals. We can see it being applied to the Muslims as well. The Muslims apply it to the Hindus as well, if that is any consolation. For Muslims, there is another set of variables at work. Interpretation of history by the right wing political class has labelled them as outright villains. An entire community polished in the same colour of 'otherness', which helps their party while gathering votes, but splits the nation. No one can deny that problems of Kashmir aren't related to the undertones of religious divides. If India cannot accept its Muslims, can it really hope to bring peace to Kashmir? Let's not forget that even without the Muslims, religious wars were going on in India, between Shaivites and Vaishnavites, Brahmins and Buddhists, Upper castes and Dalits and so on.
Dalits have the misfortune of bearing the worst of the biases, prejudices and burdens that any community has had to bear in the history of the world. None of them had to bear it for so long and with so much of virulence. Perhaps, the upper castes have a reason to fear then, of the emergence of a strong Dalit section who would take their 'revenge' for centuries of discrimination. Perhaps, that can explain the recent rounds of extreme reactions against Dalits, from Maharashtra to Gujarat and from the everyday pervasive tiny biases to the anomaly that despite all the reservations that have been effected for the SCs/STs, their numbers are still not proportional to their numbers. That the Dalits who migrated to other nations prospered and thrived should be seen as sufficient proof of the stupidity of the belief that one's caste can define one's destiny.
What will India's destiny be beyond these seventy years? We've gone through massacres and carnages, threats to our unity, wars and financial ups and downs and yet we have been able to remain united as a nation. There was a cost to keep the nation as a static idea, with only a set values which could define what was Indian and what wasn't. Media, Bollywood, celebrities, politicians end up defining the contours of our nationality. They are the ones who have a list of attributes for being on this side of the line or that.
Going by the popular trends; eating cow meat is un-Indian, having gay sex is un-Indian, sex before marriage is un-Indian, marrying a foreigner especially a black male is un-Indian, voicing dissent is un-Indian, individualism is un-Indian and terror by minorities is un-Indian. Violence is not un-Indian, neither is sexual crime of upper caste male, neither is corruption, neither is nepotism, nor any forms of irrationality/superstitions.
I have encountered these ideas in movies, articles, speeches, actions of people, in everyday existence of being an Indian. Am I a proud Indian? Sure, but am I proud of the way in which being an Indian is being defined? No. What you eat, who you love, who you worship shouldn't define these. Being Indian should be about the values, ideas, philosophies that define us.
All things said and done, India is not its mountains, rivers and deserts. India is an idea, an idea that is held by a very diverse group of people, people who are going to change as the times change and these changes will be traumatic, as they usually are. If we keep on putting the blame of whatever is wrong onto the shoulders of the weakest group of people, then we won't move too far, not economically, not morally, not even beyond the grasp of our history.
We cannot become a poorer version of USA, a Hindu version of Pakistan, a crueler version of China, a jaded version of our past. Let's start by being a little more compassionate, by being a little less servile, a little more moral. Let's welcome the changes this time round, after all, it's been seventy years since we first pledged that we would!