From Depths of Despair, Vision 20:20

 

Sakuntala

 

The Face of Love

“My Country has another face,

Another set of people…” Lal Singh Dil

 

I

f there is any historic significance to the year just ended it must surely lie in the momentous journey Indians from across generations and communities and levels of privilege took to recover democracy from the illusory enchantments of the Vote, to appropriate agency through the expansion of the public sphere for questioning and action. The year started with a false dawn; with the illusory promise of elections as the epitome of empowerment and democracy. But it did not take very long for us to realize what was hidden in plain sight: the vote is an essential ingredient of a democratic engagement that in its effect, transfers the power of political engagement to our representatives who become the sole votaries and agents of politics. Having voted the NDA back to power our engagement with the social/political ended with what is in effect a ‘transfer of power.’Our brief fling with politics begins and ends with the Vote and all the performativity that turns its means and outcomes into a spectacle of power grab.We revert to becoming objects of rules and regulations, of the whims and fancies of the victors of the power-as-numbers game. We are no longer subjects of our own autonomies because that space in which we can exercise that option, a constitutionally mandated right, has been and is constantly being, restricted. That is why “subjects” are advised by the various arms of the State to be obedient, civic minded, do one’s duty and earn a living, to leave it to the government to do the right thing, to endorse the actions and policies of the democratically elected government, to defend the nation from external enemies waiting to wipe us out. Not to forget, as this government constantly reminds us the enemies within; the illegal migrants, the minorities whose ancestors defiled our religion and religion, who now destroy public property and disrupt the sacred environs of the university; pelting the guardians of the law with stones and abuses and anti-national slogans such as “aazaadi!

If the year gone by showed us anything in its spring and early autumn they were this: the whole exercise of Politics is its monopolization by the elected government and parliamentarians. The hegemonizing discourse that enables this monopoly is passed off down to the objects of that power as an act of nation-building; which is why one often hears people talk variously of politics being a dirty game, of leaving it to the government to sort our matters such as the “unrest” in Kashmir Valley or as was the case, authentication of “citizenship.”

Then in the wintry months of December, something happened. The protests against the NRC_CAA were not just a manifestation of the anger of students and ordinary citizens at the arbitrariness of power to rule with the luxury of numbers in Parliament. It was an assertion of the Political, of the idea mooted first by Aristotle that Man is a Political Animal that needs the space to argue, to dissent, to voice grievances, to assert the right to “publicness”, to affirm the Political as the public sense of living together: as Ramin Jahanbegloo put in The Disobedient Indian.  The protests were and will continue to remain, a rejection of the “privatization” of politics by self-appointed guardians of that public space. They are the most visible signs of the right to exercise freedom, or more pertinently in this case, a Gandhian “swarajya” with its manifold connotations beyond the ordinariness of rights to protest.

 

What the protesters, the privileged students of the various universities across the country and in Delhi expressed in their opposition to the CAA and NRC and any possibility of the NPR becoming the route for the exercise of that citizenship-by-exclusion was a rejection of that divisiveness. In tearing up the CAA upon receiving her convocation, Debosmita Chowdhury offered a fitting reply to the Modi government that had torn asunder the Constitution in its various “policies” not the least the abrogation of Article 370.

In that act, we saw a face of love; love for humanity for her sisters and brothers, in a gesture of what Tagore once called “disinterested love” a love with no expectations of reciprocity, a love born from the recognition of shared humanity.

And that perhaps is the biggest take-away from that winter of hope: an outpouring across the country of a distrust of Politics as an enactment of exclusion and the assertion of the Political as public space for the expression and retaliation of Swarajya, an ethical and moral freedom born of sisterhood, of what Tagore would have recognized as a ‘universal humanism.’

And more:

The autumn of our divisiveness turned into the winter of solidarity. The young girls and boys from across communities and castes and others opposed to the CAA who took to the streets, faced police brutality,were jailed or killed by a violent thirst for “revenge” by the guardians of the law, exposed an Emperor with no clothes. They ripped up those fault lines of a democracy that permits a set of rulers to use an electoral “majority” to turn the country into a ‘majoritarian’ state. The protests evidenced a public awareness of a systemic organization of hatreds that has been dividing this republic for five years in a way electoral democracy has never before.

 

“I have preplanned to do that because this CAA and NRC not only divide us in terms of religion, in future it will also divide us in terms of caste, creed and language…I will not tear my degree which I have earned with my own capability. But I should protest to increase the political consciousness of others. And I am proud to be a student of Jadavpur University which taught us humanity and equality”—Debosmita Chowdhury

The protests rejected and transcended this polarization. Too, they paved the way for a new polarization; one between the purveyors of that divisiveness and civil society, the victim of that toxic discourse. By asserting the right of dissent, to tear up the divisive set of legislation legitimized by the perversity of skewed numbers in Parliament, the ‘Winter Spring’ recovered the lost ground of debate, conversation , the historical right of civil disobedience. In a word, the Political.

 If politics is the organization of hatreds, the Political is the attempt to organize “publicness” the community of living beings. While the former is grounded in exclusion the latter affirms inclusivity.

It’s important to stress the fact that the protests rested on, were guided by the Constitution. In the words of The Preamble, the Spring in December found its validation. But more profoundly, it drew its sustenance however indirectly, unknowingly from the Gandhian discourse of civil disobedience. Barring some acts of violence, all of which would have been reactive and a response to police violence, the protests were non-violent.

They read the CAA like ideal readers …not to find answers to the insecurity and fear and paranoia and hatred among the peddlers and consumers of macho-aggressive Hindu chauvinism but questions: questions about the legitimacy of the words and meanings embedded in the legislations, the implicit [presumption of the authors that they were the masters and the rest simply blind followers.

The protesters were ideal readers and students of a multiversity called Life because they questioned.

Their protest constitutes the search for truth and the struggle for justice

 

The protests were not just an affirmation of the right to protest. There have been counter-protests with supporters of the CAA, earlier of the abrogation of Article 370 also taking to the streets signing petitions and using digital space to express their views. In a narrow sense they have the same right to that public space of the Political. What distinguishes the anti-CAA protests from other, counter= protests is their ethical content. These transcend the narrow Constitutional right to free expression that peaceful counter- protests would also enjoy. In their willingness to stake careers, and lives, in defense of the right of all immigrants to safe sanctity in this republic regardless of religion, the anti-CAA strikers assert the idea of universal humanism. Their voices express multiple registers of protest against the barbs and cynicism of the Home Minister Amit Shah who sneered:

“Whenever we talk about deporting the illegal immigrants, Congress says why will you deport them? Where will they go? What will they eat? I ask them are they your cousins?“

Yes, Mr. Shah, they are our cousins from a common humanity of suffering, of persecution and the yearning for a life of peace in which to procreate, prosper through work and partake of the publicness of our Political.That is what prompted Debosmita Chowdhury and her colleagues to ask the Governor of Bengal questions about the Act and to refuse him access to the University because he had not, on his own admission, thought about those questions; that act recalled Satyagraha.

The Winter Spring then had an ethical essence that must not be ignored for it is a potent force against the evils of the politics of power particularly at a time as this when politics as practiced by the rulers and their useful idiotshas this sole agenda of perpetrating hatreds by Othering minority communities.

The ‘Winter Spring’ constitutes the search for truth and the struggle for justice. By opposing the CAA the protestors express “solidary obligations” that transform egoistic individuals into conscious and committed citizens.

The Political sphere is a space whose grammar of discourse is located in resistance and cooperation; resistance to the organized institutional networks of Politics and cooperation among the expanding and diverse members of that publicness.

*****

The Ungloved Fist

“When I say a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I want it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master, that’s all.” Through the Looking Glass, Ch 6

As we move into 2020 we shall get increasing confirmation that words and language will be used to subdue, dominate and demonize along with bullets and stun guns. Consider the way the Prime Minster responded in the first instance when the protests broke out claiming at an election rally in Jharkhand that protestors could be identified by the clothes they wear. Such language provides markers for Othering the Other even further, branding them as anti-social elements and enemies of the Nation-State. True to the script the Uttar Pradesh chief Minster chipped in with his own branding by vowing “revenge” on protestors prompting Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to remind the Yogi, who definitely needed to be reminded of the clothes he wore. Had he looked in the mirror he would have noted the robes as markers of dharma and peace; had he reflected on his position he would have reached out like a representative of the people who had put him in power seeking peace and calm and dialogue. Instead the Yogi revealed himself to be a Commissar.

 

For the CM and PM clothes, hijabs, and face hair are markers of an enemy soiling our purity, signifiers of a pestilence to be weeded out. These tropes help justify the manufactured lie that even if all Muslims are not terrorists all terrorists are Muslim; and now, all violent protestors are Muslim and we know that by the clothes they wear, the names they live by.

This is Humpty Dumpty’s world with guns. Instead of names meaning little more than identifying gender, at best some historical reference, in the world of the framers of the CAA and much else that polarizes, names and clothes can be made to mean just what the ‘master’ wishes them to mean. Abdul can mean traitor, (should Shah mean the destroyer of temples?) the beard and hijab could hide guns and evil intent while a saffron robe means peace and purity.

Words can manufacture and falsify history in brazen ways; narratives can get cross-eyed, trip over themselves and their resounding hollowness, be forgotten by a society enraptured by them. While the arms of the law were cracking down on young and old heads alike in university libraries and streets, the PM could, without the least show of irony, sing this inane and clueless praise of Mahatma Gandhi: “the world today is eager to know Gandhi and is ready to accept him. Hence, it becomes India’s responsibility to keep reminding the world of the abiding relevance of Mahatma and his vision.”

Even though, for those who care to remember, the Amit Shah not too long ago called Gandhi a “chatur bania”

Humpty Dumpty-talk comes in various shapes each belittling the other with its undercurrents of scary hegemony. Here’s Moan Bhagwat, RSS chief, twisting words and reality into an oxymoronic fantasy of majoritarianism that echoes his forbears.  The true son of India, he said recently,irrespective of region, religion is a Hindu. Then he got real and ungloved his frail fist: Any Indian who respects Bharat culture, is nationalistic is a Hindu and by that token is Indian. What was tragically farcical was that he invoked Tagore to buttress his identifying Hindus with nationalism and Endianness, surely the biggest distortion of Tagore’s world view.

So behind Looking-Glass language, you have the boot, ready to stamp on the human face. Days after the Opposition slammed the UP government over police brutality, the PM hectored violent protestors on “rights vs responsibilities,”on the need to respect the police,leaving enough room for confusion among some as to why the arms of State power had not applied the same yardstick to restrain their penchant for violence on defenseless citizens who they were supposed to protect. Cracks appear in the edifice of distorted language, the light shines in on a police force as intoxicated with power as with muscular Hindutva feelings as they beat down on the students of Aligarh Muslim University shouting “Jai Sri Ram!” according to a fact finding report by Harsh Mander and others. What should one think of the police using protest photos to issue ‘wanted’ posters and ‘reward’ points for information on the ‘wanted’? Of their action in attaching property of unproven ‘miscreants’; of notices to ordinary citizens, street vendors, embroidery workers, claiming compensation for damaging ‘public’ property?

Of the Army chief, who hopped on to the narrative that the masses were being ‘mislead’ into arson and violence? What we have here is a frightening presage of the way democratically elected government could use the armed forces to flex their muscle to legitimize unconstitutional measures, riding on the narrative of the soldier as the paragon of obedience and discipline. At first glance, P. Chidambaram’s rebuke to General Bipin Rawat to mind his business, which is to fight wars when told to do so by his political masters was timely, but not many would miss the interstitial possibility that he was nudged into making that statement, as he has been into uttering other ‘hawkish’ and out-of-turn observations on tensions with our western neighbor.

But the light gets in. Harsh Mander led a team days after reports of violent attacks on students by police and RAF personnel on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University, of concerned civil society members including lawyers, human rights workers, journalists and academics visited AMU on 17 December 2019.

Their report reveals the enormity of the power of evil that bore down on the students.

“…testimonies revealed that the University administration, district authorities and the State Government, not only failed in their duty to protect the campus and its residents against brutality by the Uttar Pradesh police, but also that they in fact invited the police forces and their weapons into the campus. Apart from the breach of the discursive and educational space of the university, there were also unbridled human rights violations committed in AMU.”

Read full report here :
https://www.thebeacon.in/2020/01/01/university-under-siege-dispatch-from-hell/

If the events of the year gone by tell us anything it is that time is not linear it is circular. The dictum that those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it assumes an idea of a march towards utopia, a movement away from the darkness of our past that could creep in on us because we did not its lessons well. But perhaps we never learn from the past because we are living it. As William Faulkner, put it in Absalom, Absalom! “The past isn’t dead yet; it isn’t even the past.”

The past is the present; the world thought fascism and totalitarian discourses within democratic systems, thought control,the boot-on-the-human face discourse had faded into time past.  George Orwell and Aldous Huxley reminded us that they hadn’t; they lurked midst our liberal democracies and have now surfaced in one country after another, kind courtesy personas that remind us of the circularity of time: United States, Hungary, Turkey, Philippines and India.Totalitarianism, variants of Fascism never died, they just waited for the right moment to surface like fetid bubbles. That moment was the collapse of the liberal order, when the destruction of collective bargaining, community and social welfare gave way to unbridled individualism, unregulated greed unholy wars of terror by hegemonic powers that resulted in their own dialectic of catastrophic outcomes of dislocation, displacement, feeding in turn anomie, fears of emasculation, of being swamped by dark forces and alien peoples crossing porous borders.

The past has always been with us. Totalitarianism pervades our daily existence through its falsifications of reality, of history and by snuffing out the light of critical inquiry. It seeks and finds sustenance in audiences composed of the insecure, unsure frightened middle classes seeking solace in certitudes, unambiguous answers providedwith blinding clarity by “strong” leaders pointing them in the direction of the ‘enemy’, the Other, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, North Africans or Palestinians. The past lives on as Ur-fascism, to use Umberto Eco’s phrasing of seemingly diverse trends in fascist ideology across nations,  Electoral democracy becomes parody as the vox is stifled, the vast populi of the underprivileged are demonized, minorities lynched, women and under-age girls raped in the grotesque carnival of macho-nationalism.

If that sounds familiar, it should: the past isn’t dead. It’s the present.

But if ur-fascism is pervasive, so is the disobedient citizen. The Winter Spring has shown us that the past does not present itself in a homogenous package; that if the abuse of power to divide people and sow seeds of hatred among people who have lived and tolerated and at times learnt from each other for centuries can presage an apocalypse so can the dissidence and disobedience provide an antidote, an alternative, harkening the past for a wisdom of the future.

As we gingerly open the doors to the New Year, we will hear the sounds of jackboots trampling over the fragile earth; but we shall also hear the baby steps of the dissident Indian pursuing truth and justice crying out: “To question is my birth right/And I shall have it”

And it is Tagore’s prayer that we shall recall as the wisdom of all possible futures:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

—————————– ———————–

Notes

--Lal Singh DIl couplet is from:

India Dissents. 1000 years of Difference, Doubt and Argument. Edited and with an Introduction by Ashok Vajpeyi. p 213.Speaking Tiger. 2017
--Video of Fact finding report courtesy:
https://www.newsclick.in/Siege-Aligarh-Muslim-University-Fact-Finding-Report

About author
Sakuntala is the nom de plume of Roshni Satyavarta a retired housewife whose life mission is to decipher the language of the looking glass world. She is also working on a collected anthology of poems by anonymous women writers in languages on the verge of extinction. She loves to travel and talk to plants.

Also read in The Beacon:

GANDHI @ 150: LAST MAN STANDING

THE LURE OF FUNDAMENTALISM