The Awakening

IF YOU HAVE TO DEFINE FREEDOM, YOU probably do not have it. Freedom lives in the air. It is a spirit, not a script. Freedom is what we breathe, what we feel, an elixir not a palliative; a fundamental pillar of modernity in the 21st century. It is a human right with just one corrosive enemy: human nature when it degenerates into excess, and there­fore like any precious asset must be constantly and con­sistently protected by common sense. Freedom is the guardian of the mind. It holds the head high. Our national poet Rabindranath Tagore wanted the British colonial masters to see that head held high, the better to read the Indian mind. Dictators prefer their subjects to live with downcast eyes.

Few societies take more joy in freedom than contemporary India, but we did not get here by accident. If Rabindranath Tagore was the prophet, then Mohandas K Gandhi was the architect and designer of freedom. His first national mass movement, Non-Cooperation between 1920 and February 1922, was per­haps his finest achievement for it liberated Indians from fear, a necessary prelude to liberating India from British colonialism. Without 1920 there could be no 1947. In 1931 Gandhi drafted the charter of freedom for the Karachi Congress which evolved into the fundamental principles of free India’s Constitution, adopted in 1950.

Adult franchise is the heartbeat of freedom. Countries which describe themselves as older democracies gave universal franchise to their people in stages, because they did not believe that every citizen was equal. Britain till the third decade of the 20th century was a flatulent oligarchy with democratic characteristics rather than a democracy since women were allowed to vote only in 1928. French women possessed the right from the revolution­ary era of 1791, but had to wait for a mere 157 years before they were proffered a ballot box. There were no ifs and buts, no alibis, in free India. Every Indian had equal rights from the first election of 1952, despite unwanted sermons by colonial supremacists like the all-weather Winston Churchill who thought that illiteracy and poverty made the Indian masses incapable of free choice. That did not make Indians unintelligent. Churchill predicted chaos. The Indian people ensured stability.

Democracy is elections. But elections alone are not democracy. Elections are an illusion when they cannot change a government if that is what the people want. Many authoritarians use mecha­nisms to steal the result, creating a political vacuum. Political nature, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

Bangladesh had general elections in January this year. Passions would not have turned volcanic if the active opposition had con­tested and won whatever seats it could, perhaps even a majority. The legitimacy of any democratic government is directly propor­tional to the credibility of the election.

Both Bangladesh and India had general elections this year. There was no tension in Dhaka when the January results reached the newsrooms because they were seen as a foregone conclusion. In Delhi, the voter chas­tised the government to the pre­cise extent it wanted, bolstered the Opposition, destroyed the pretensions of opinion polls and nourished once again the roots of Indian democracy. Both Government and Opposition accepted new facts and got on with the arduous business of governance through legislature and executive.

Democracy is a shield against the hiccups of history, ensuring peaceful transition and continued coexistence of different ideas within a framework designed by free will. In Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina became the queen of spades, using a bludgeon where a scal­pel would have served. The combina­tion of fatigue, familiarity and the ines­capable aspirations of a generation that was not born when she first be­came prime minister, and five years old at the start of her current spell in office, coalesced into a tornado that eventually whipped up as much poison into the air as it sought to clear. As I write, stories of death, arson and com­munal terror continue to pour in; but hopefully the new authori­ties will soon restore the secular spirit of the Bangladeshi people. Neither the army nor any interim administration can be democrat­ic. They are crisis managers, a palliative, not an answer. The only way forward is another election.

Wars commandeer headlines. Peaceful change is more subtle, less dramatic, and gets the more boring chapters of history books. The most important conflict of the 21st century is not going to be contested geography, although that will continue to fester as long as the earth exists; it will be about ideology, between freedom as the governing culture of a nation, and despotism, often camou­flaged by rationalisations of higher good. The 20th century saw the onset of independence as the formative concept of the nation, and freedom for the people. It is often forgotten that conquest was legal till World War II. The British Empire was immoral, but not illegal. India’s triumph over the British Raj ended the era of European colonialism. But once states acquired independence, they could not deny freedom to their people. India did not break the chains of empire in order to chain its own people. Many, if not most, post-colonial states were usurped by elites who turned freedom into a mockery, but that was not sustainable.

This year, at least a third of the world’s population of eight billion has either exercised its franchise or will do so soon: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Taiwan, Comoros and Finland in January; El Salvador, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Indonesia and Belarus in Feb­ruary; Russia, Ireland, Portugal, Senegal and Slovakia in March; India, South Korea, Croatia, Ecuador and Togo in April; Iran, South Africa, Chad, Lithuania and Panama in May; Mexico, France, Bulgaria, Mongolia and Iceland in June; Britain, Rwanda and Venezuela in July. Just to ensure that there is no gap month, Kiribati will poll in August. Elections are scheduled for Sri Lanka, Algeria and Austria in September; Lithuania (again), Tunisia, Mozambique, Moldova, Georgia and Uruguay in October. There will be the much-watched American contest in November, along with the less-watched Palau, Somaliland, Romania, Namibia, Mauritius; Ghana and South Sudan in December.

I did not mention Switzerland be­cause the Swiss have some election ev­ery fortnight (almost true). The rumble of multi-level elections is a continuous fact in the political life of Europe. The true triumph of change is in a country like Somaliland, which has reinvented itself in an African region plagued by virtually every negative ism, topped by terrorism and fundamentalism.

There are grey zones. Pakistan has part-time democracy which must adjust to the unelected power of its army. Its former Prime Minister Imran Khan admitted ruefully after a year in prison that he could not survive without a deal with the barracks. Venezu­ela’s polls have become a sub-plot of superpower tensions. But a minute difference in the vote can make a massive difference in Brazil, which a divided nation accepts as change because it has been through process.

DEMOCRACY IS SINEWY STRONG BECAUSE it has matured over a long journey through the stress of sabotage. Americans won freedom in 1776 but denied it to indigenous Indians and enslaved Blacks for another two centuries because they were not human enough for the conquerors. The British believed in freedom as a core virtue of their nationalism, not idealism. Their democrats happily enslaved people and exploited economies across the globe with rare ruthlessness. They controlled narratives in the English language, so reality was artfully disguised in self-serving explana­tions that still whitewash discussions.

The British Raj exploited an election held in 1945 as justifica­tion for inflicting the grievous wound of Partition. (If united India had been a federal democracy, Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be in periodic throes of instability.) The British kept very quiet about the fact that this fraudulent franchise was restricted to only 10 per cent or so at the wealthy end of the populace. Its results were never the will of the people. They were the will of the partisan and the easily manipulated.

The strength of Indian democracy was best seen at its worst hour. When democracy was aborted in 1975, Indians won their freedom back in 1977 through democracy. There was no need for violence, or extremism; the Constitution protected the people, and the people protected their Constitution.

Our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was justifiably proud of his credentials as a democrat and yet presided over the passage of the First Amendment which restricted the freedom to encourage violence and violent revolution. There was no de­bate, for freedom will crumble if it is irresponsible. If there was controversy it was about misjudgement, as when a luminary of Indian cinema, Balraj Sahni, was apprehended for his support to the Communist Party of India.

In 1951, the brilliant poet and cinema lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri was arrested for libel. He had described Nehru as a slave of the British Commonwealth and wondered if the Indian leader had become another Hitler. Majrooh refused to apologise and was sentenced to two years in prison. He emerged with head held high. He was the cynosure of a mushaira with memorable lines like ‘Raqs karna hai to paon ki zanjir na dekh’ (If you want to dance, don’t look at the chains on your feet).

Indians understand the nuances of freedom. They give respect to the elected and expect reciprocal respect. They are not confused. They do not want poetry from Nehru, and they would not elect Sahni or Majrooh as their prime minister. They know the circles of freedom and their correct intersections. Indians know the difference between loyalty and obedience; they bow before their flag and their political holy book, the Constitution. Centuries of repressive feudalism and colonialism have exhausted obedience to authority.

It is entirely Indian that India is the only country where Marx­ism has come to power as peacefully as it has departed from power. Across the last century, Marxists, Trotskyists, Stalinists and Mao­ists have concluded that radical economic emancipation required the rather depressing weapon called a throttled voice. The state would do your thinking for you. Marxism could not change India. India changed its Marxists.

In sharp contrast, Marx, Mao Zedong and the utilitarian Deng Xiaoping changed the Chinese. China was absent from the election list, but the question that no one asks is, for how long? China is the only relevant power still immune to elections. The state is subservient to the Chinese Communist Party. The People’s Liberation Army belongs to the party, not the country. Others who believed that freedom could be denied to the people forever soon discovered their mistake. There is no forever in despotism. Dicta­tors are tense. They know the corrosive strength of conversation, and invest in fear and censorship, unwilling to accept that it is the slow road to bankruptcy.

The engine of freedom is chatter. Chatter about the famous and infamous. Chatter which wanders through lived and shared experience. The famous fifth pillar of freedom, the media, is a long way behind from the teashop, bus station and railway platform where the anonymous meet the anonymous and build up that tsunami called public opinion. Free societies had social media long before technology. In­dians love to talk. That is freedom; talk without fear.

Into that heaven of freedom, wrote Tagore, let my country awake. The awakening continues.

Constituent AssemblyFreedom Issue 2024freedom struggleJawaharlal NehruMahatma GandhiRabindranath Tagore