Too early to seeka second freedom struggle

Enough! said the People

But caution before one gets carried away with the rhetoric of a second freedom movement"

John Dayal

The problem with revolutions is that no one can predict how they will end up. That is as true of Cromwell’s in England’s hoary history as of Jose Marti and Bolivar in South America, and not forgetting Napoleon Bonaparte and Lenin in Europe. The jury is still out in the Indian subcontinent which saw “revolutions” in 1857 and 1942. The last one, a so-called “peaceful” one, led to Independence five years later in 1947 in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest unclassified religious civil wars in the history of the world, with at least a million dead, and tens of millions displaced in what are now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

And if you are of a religious bend of mind, the revolution started by Martin Luther. Not many would dare write about moral revolutions started by Jesus Christ, Mohammed and Nanak, which today face charges of paedophilia and prosperity doctrines, terrorism and xenophobia. Hinduism escaped a study because of its unforgiving allegiance to Brahminical exclusivity, and the Manu code, both proof against mere social, political and religious revolutions and analysis.

Retired Havildar Kisan Baburao Hazare, better known to TV news-channel audiences as “Gandhian Anna Hazare”, yoga teacher and tele-evangelist Ramdev, and for that matter Arya Samaj breakaway sect leader and former Haryana Minister Agnivesh, each promise India a new revolution which will cure “Bharat Mata”, the mythological icon common to their rhetoric, of such ills as corruption, hunger, mal-governance and homosexuality. Millions of middle class innocent and lumpens have sought instant nirvana in their arguments, “satyagrahas” and fasts unto death. No one has died for the cause so far, barring perhaps the death of credibility and a diminishing of a faith in parliamentary democracy and its instruments.

Faced with food shortages and corruption, rising prices in uncured inflation, a shortage of jobs and a rapidly widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, it is not spurring that in both the poor and the middle classes – who are not starving, but do feel the pinch of rising prices of fruit and television sets -- there is a desire to see the system change. For want of any other argument, they mistakenly also see the omen of systemic failure as a failure of democracy itself, and then seek solutions and instant cures outside the perimeter of Parliament and its structures. They lose faith in judicial institutions which, as wheels of justice are wont to, grind exceedingly slow, even if they occasionally grind exceedingly fine and do deliver justice. It remains to be seen if justice delivered in the rare judgments of the Supreme Court has the inertia to change systems of governance and of democracy in a permanent manner. Because such judgments are rare, as are the infrequent piece of legislation, they remain tantalizing in their hope. But they do not have the strength to reassure the masses, and stop them from pursuing mirages of permanent revolutions, and “new independence struggles.”

Early in the 1960s, a mere 15 years after the dawn of Independence, one of the grandsons of Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, launched the Moral Rearmament Movement. Raj Mohan Gandhi, one of the three celebrity siblings – the others were his elder brother and philosopher Ramu Gandhi and the younger Gopal Gandhi who last was Governor of West Bengal – had reinvented for India a version of the MRA birthed as a moral and spiritual movement in 1938 from the Reverend Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. This was a response to the first indications of the second world war and the militarisation of Europe. The slogan was that moral recovery was critical to economic recovery. MRA was, in Europe at least as well as in emerging free nations after the second world war, important in bringing unity between groups in conflict, and helping ease the transition into independence.

In its initial phases, Rajmohan Gandhi’s MRA attracted the youth, and as a student of Delhi University, this correspondent participated in some of the meetings together with hundreds of others. MRA however failed to take off as a major social movement in India, fast losing even its youthful participants. But it did leave an impact on the discourse on politics and critiquing the state apparatus in a non violent way.

Ram Manohar Lohia, lifelong critic of Jawaharlal Nehru’s eliticism, and articulating a socialism of his own away from the Gandhi-Nehru brand of Congress politics after 1947, had even earlier attracted the young, together with the socialist elements in the Congress such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Aruna Asaf Ali and others who flirted with democracy, socialism and Marxism of the Russian variety through the early years of Independent and democratic India.

It was perhaps left to Jaiprakash Narayan, working in the economic and political crisis after the euphoria of the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971 and India’s transient victory over Pakistan -- remember the 90,000 Prisoners of War from the Pakistani army captured by India – had ended, to launch another, and the most powerful, movement in contemporary history. His version of a “sampoorna kranti”, or total revolution, based on morality, rebelling against all forms of corruption and dynastic rule, would perhaps have taken another route if it were not for Indira Gandhi losing a court case against her election to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. Instead of accepting defeat and bowing to the judicial ruling, Indira chose a drastic way out. Believing that the people would eventually back her up, she suspended the Constitution, and imposed a state of internal emergency. Narayan, in hindsight, played into her hands, calling upon the army to revolt. That was the last straw. Opposition leaders were arrested overnight, the media shackled and democratic discourse banished. With no checks and balances, power, as it is wont to, soon passed into the hands of a apolitical coterie led by her younger son Sanjay Gandhi.

This was an extra-constitutional centre of authority. A vicious governance became the norm.. More people filled jails. Bulldozers cleared off slums an millions were banished to far off resettlement camps. Muslims rebelled in town after town in Uttar Pradesh, seeing a design to disperse them and disenfranchise them. Forcible sterilisations were the norm, but Muslims again saw themselves as the main targets. There was much violence. Obviously, a police state of this sort could not last long and Indira Gandhi had to lift emergency after 22 months and call for elections. A grand coalition in which the RSS was partners with the Marxists and all sorts of middle parties, many of them break way groups of the Congress, came to power as the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai. But JP's movement was quite dead in that government.

By the way, two major evils of today have roots in that rule of the Janata Party. One is the legitimisation of the Sangh Parivar [and what was then the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and is today the Bharatiya Janata Party], in its members’ shared incarceration in several jails with Marxists and rebel Congressmen. The second is the infiltration by RSS cadres into Media, the Police and other administrative and judicial structures which came under the control of this motley bunch in their brief “raj” or governance between mid 1977 and 1980 when Indira Gandhi swamped Parliament once again in a powerful resurgence.

It is always, therefore, good to remember a bit of history as one sees, or imagines, seeds of a revolution in the Hazares and the Ramdevs, Kiran Bedis and sundry self appointed leaders of civil society.

The people are today correctly and legitimately questioning the dispensation of the day. The IMF-ordered liberalisation and globalisation that the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh unsheathed in India has not brought about the desired impact on the economy as it is visible at the grassroots. It has created thousands of Dollar Billionaires in India. It has sired a 200 million and expanding middle class, estimates say. But it has had a terribly negative impact on the poor in the villages and the small towns, and in the slums of the metropolitan cities.

Writing in a rent edition of the Tehelka magazine, that bright young journalist Revati Laul – who defied the trend by switching from satellite news channels to the print media – wrote “The Indian growth story has been written with the blood of famers and tribals” She is referring to sell-outs to big land mafias and multinationals such as Posco and Mittals, but also to home grown giants such as Reliance and Tatas.

India’s education, food and employment records – the so called quality of life index – make it shrink from a economic powerhouse to a pigmy not too far ahead of new Africa.

India’s record as presented in its UPR – the Universal Periodic Review that nations have now to face in the United Nations once every five years – makes for dismal nod tragic reading in just about every segment – from gender and dalits, farmers and landless peasantry, all the way to police atrocities, custodial deaths, miscarriage of justice, and the xenophobic treatment meted out to religions memories, specially to the Muslims and Christians.

At a recent hearing in Geneva, NGOs spoke at length of the “exclusion of the most vulnerable – Dalits, adivasi communities, the rural poor – being perpetuated by the current economic growth model”. The vast majority of India’s working population are employed in the informal sector as “flexible labour”. As a result of this, the vast majority of India’s working population has been reduced to further poverty – about 77% (850 million) of the working people of India subsist on Rs. 20 per day. With no social protection, their rights are totally denied to them. The “social cost” of India’s growth was also discussed, particularly the mass displacement of millions of families due to purported “development” projects. With the displacement, traditional livelihoods are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale.[Data from the NGOs document for the UPR]

Although the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Parliament of 6,000 communal riots [mostly attacks on Muslims, but also the Kandhamal atrocities against Christians] in the last decade, the Indian state has failed to acknowledge this. Or to address human rights violations, including: large-scale displacements resulting from development projects and communal violence; enforced disappearances in conflict areas, deaths through encounters. widespread use of torture and increasing attacks against human rights defenders. The curtailing of human rights in the state’s response to terrorism, and the need to interrogate this response and its impact on human rights, was also discussed in the UPR.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the international associate of the All India Christian Council, specialising in religiousfreedom, told international for a of the widespread abuses in India, and the infringements of religious freedom, particularly that of the most oppressed castes, the Dalit Christians, “which are symptomatic of the extremist nationalist agenda of Hindutva.” It noted that the issue of caste lies at the heart of many of India’s human rights problems, including prejudicial violence, discrimination, labour exploitation and religious freedom infringements. “It should be considered as the main prism through which to view and interpret these problems; and the means of addressing these problems should involve reference to caste. The hierarchical caste system continues to dominate and shape Indian society to a considerable extent, detrimentally affecting the social status, treatment and socio-economic prospects of the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who comprise the ‘lowest’ layer of the caste system and represent 16% of the total population (at least 167 million), according to official 2001 census data. Dalits often bear the brunt of religious freedom violations in India, owing largely to proponents of Hindutva.

It is not just international agencies that have noted the extremist nationalist manifestation of Hindutva, which encompasses a vision of India as a Hindu nation in which minorities must assimilate to and revere the Hindu religion, race and culture and which, in practice, seeks to preserve and defend the cultural hegemony of Hinduism at the expense of minority religions.

CSW and others note that the chief victims of human trafficking, bonded labour, sexual slavery and other forms of labour exploitation, are Dalits or members of ‘low’ castes. The implementation of laws to prevent such exploitation is extremely poor.

Freedom of religion is infringed by legislative means: specially through religious discrimination in reservation policy and through state-level ‘anti-conversion’ laws. It is also threatened by religiously-motivated violence against the minority Christian and Muslim communities, which is typically committed with impunity.

Former Delhi high court chief justice Rajindar Sachhar, author of the eponymous report on the social and economic status of India’s Muslim community, recently noted “The cynicism of political parties is shown by the facts that inspire of warning in recent state elections which show another trend to criminal nexus in elections, thus of 824 newly elected MLAs of recent elections in the States a total of 257 have criminal cases pending against them. As is well known the politicalization of criminal is a stark and dangerous reality. Even in Parliament there are nearly over 100 MPs having criminal cases pending against them. There has been demand that tainted persons should not be allowed to contest elections. I feel that the law of Lok Pal should provide that the legislator has to be prosecuted for his misdemeanour, he should be deemed to be ineligible to continue as legislator till he is proved innocent.” Justice Sachhar was commenting on the controversy raised in the formulation of the Lok Pal, or Ombudsman Bill, with government keeping the Prime Minister, the senior judiciary and Members of Parliament out of its purview while the Hazare led group not only wanted all these groups to be coved by the Bill, but also demanded that government have no say in the choice of the ombudsman.

The furore over the Bill is an indication of the rot that has sent in. But the debate also shows that the voice of the pretty well off middle class – the same group that does not want affirmative action for Dalits in education -- has swamped the voice of the men and women in the village, the bonded labour, the homeless.

What sort of a second Freedom Struggle can we envisage for the poor. Not a freedom from Direct taxes, and certainly not the freedom to profiteer in the guise of free market economy.

Aruna Roy, perhaps one of the more sober human rights activists in the country – like many others, she too was a member of the elite Indian Administrative service, but resigned long before she would have become entitled to a pension – came up with some telling comments in recent reflection. “We have warned that in its current form, the Lokpal could become a Frankenstein Monster, concentrating power in a few, new, hands. Our key argument is over democracy itself. You know how easily one can become almost fascist in this country under its democratic overlay. To prevent that, one has to make sure he parliamentary process is strengthened, cleansed. But if you bypass the institution, you create very serious worries. Tomorrow, if three lakh RSS workers want a joint committee to look at changing the Constitution to make India into a theocratic state, will there be space for the/”

There is absolutely no question but that India needs reforms. Sensible economic reforms that put food into the mouth of babes and ensure cash transfers to the poor and the marginalised for all sorts of things, from education to clothing and a roof.

There must me a multiple pronged attack on corruption – the institutionalised payolas of the ministries and the nexus between the tycoon and the minister as exposed in the 2G scam have to be stopped. So also the corruption in the educational sector, and even in the private sector. It is common knowledge that in the entire private sector, including schools and colleges run by famous groups, the employees including teachers sign one certain amount as salary and get a substantially lesser one. There must be an end to the corruption which sends a soldier to the Siachin Glacier clad in ill suited uniform, and an end to the racket in coffins in which some of these soldiers return home.

Above all there must en end to the corruption – the bribe giving and the bribe taking – which impinges on the common man back in the village, in the small town, over every facet of life – from the making of a ration card to the money that comes from the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme.

It needs a commitment and a political will to contain this corruption. It can surely be done. That is the sort of revolution that can bring a second Independence. Independence from the tyranny of corruption and the moral and physical poverty it breeds.
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