World needs an India where the ‘mind is without fear’

While recalling M. Chalapathi Rau (1910-83), the remarkable journalist from Andhra who edited the National Herald for many a year and whom I had the privilege of knowing, let me also express the hope that a wonderful slim book on Gandhi and Nehru that ‘M. C.’ wrote half a century ago would be published again. For the book speaks directly to our times.

How should we understand these troubling times? Democratic and human rights (including the right to life) are under threat and in many instances violated. Autonomy is being eroded in our media, schools, colleges and universities. As Indians, we should be deeply concerned.

Vulnerable minorities and conscientious dissenters in Pakistan and Bangladesh face a similar or worse climate, which makes it imperative for India not to abandon her foundational principles.

Many like me, now in their eighties, are aware of Jawaharlal Nehru’s solemn words uttered 70 years ago at that mid-August midnight:

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell…. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest... All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations.

Two years later, in 1949, that sacred pledge was enshrined in our Constitution. For the sake of the people of India, and of Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Indian state should again pore over that pledge, and Indian society likewise.

Another reality, unpleasant to many, is this. At present, the Narendra Modi-led government in New Delhi not only seems to be popular with significant sections, the party behind it enjoys unheard-of levels of financial backing. Parties in opposition seem in disarray. In this situation, a strategy of mainly attacking Modi and the BJP may only result in strengthening them.

Condemn every assault

Every assault on an innocent individual in India should invite instant and unqualified condemnation and demands for redress. However, the focus of opposition politics should be on rebuilding a house of democracy and tolerance, not on demolishing the house of intolerance and intimidation. Unwieldy and inherently weak, the latter house will one day fall of its own weight.

Also, we must frankly acknowledge the decay of the imperfect yet precious house of democracy that was created following independence. That house will not reconstruct itself. It must be built anew with toil and patience.

All parties and individuals believing in democracy and human rights – in liberty, equality and fraternity – have to contribute to the exercise. The most important contribution will be of egos set aside and of ears that listen to the people of India.

Those who patiently listen to what stirs in the minds and hearts of the Indian people will learn how to build the people’s house. Since, like all others, Indians have conflicting wishes, citizens too will need to listen to neighbours. Today we have opinions, not knowledge, about our neighbours. Citizens and political leaders will therefore need reconciling skills.

Let us also reflect on Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s challenging words: ‘Political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies government.’

In these times of intolerance, we must not despair of partnership across divides. Here is what Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, said in the 1930s when pro-Empire Pashtuns attacked him for associating with Hindus for India’s freedom:

How are [the Hindus] any the less devotees of God when I know that they believe in one God? And why do you despair of Hindu-Muslim unity? Look at the fields over there. The grain sowed there has to remain in the earth for a certain time, then it sprouts and in due time yields hundreds of its kind. The same is the case about every effort in a good cause.

Indians thrive today all over the world. Wherever they live, they also contribute to a better life for everyone. But let us not pretend that India possesses a shining global image. A bullet train in India emerging sixty years after the Japanese put one on the tracks will not impress a world aware of unpunished attacks on vulnerable innocents on India’s fields and streets.

Despite weaknesses in state and society, India is needed by the world. Seventy-five years ago, when Gandhi launched Quit India (August 1942), he said he wanted India’s ‘vast mass of humanity to be aflame in the cause of world-deliverance’. In January 1948, 18 days before his assassination, Gandhi said: ‘The loss of her soul by India will mean the loss of the hope of the aching, storm-tossed and hungry world.’

What is India’s soul and how might we lose or regain it? A clue may lie in Tagore’s longing for a land ‘where the mind is without fear and the head is held high’. India’s soul may also lie in the vision of a nation where every Indian cares for fellow-Indian, where no one is high and none low, where opinions are not forced down people’s throats.

Honest striving for such an India will speak to the world. We don’t have to wait for miracle-producing leaders. Simple lovers of democracy and human rights, whether they belong to a political party or not, can take steps.

We can project principles and policies rather than persons. We can encourage men and women who promote not their egos but their teammates. We can foster unity among diverse political parties provided they cherish liberty, equality and fraternity.

And we can raise our voice every time anyone’s life or fundamental right is crushed. If we do these things, a hope-giving platform of democracy may, God willing, become visible before long, helping the Indian people and assisting what is still ‘an aching, storm-tossed and hungry world’.

(The author is a a historian and biographer, is a research professor at the Centre for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).