Enough! said the People

[Dr. John Dayal]

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.
[end]