The nature of a democracy consists to an important degree in the right of the people to criticize problems and mistakes.
Walter Ulbricht
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The memory of the first Independence Day on 15 august, 1947 vividly comes to my mind. I was a mere child on that day. Yet I clearly remember how enthusiastically our elders including my father hailed the dawn of the day congratulating each other and proudly moving about shouting the national anthem with radiant joy on their faces. Hardly did I know the meaning of Independence except being told that we would not be ruled any more by the whites and for me, the whites meant the red-complexioned T.E managers who visited the town in their Chevrolets and Fords with the Indian nannies of their kids miserably sitting inside the open boots of their cars like lowly luggage.
Our elders’ shouts of joy infected me and my siblings and we too ran around holding aloft the three-coloured national flag and these colours remained stamped in my mind. Everybody seemed to be a little more proud than before with the familiar Gandhi cap adorning every head and the tricolor fluttering freely from the roof of every house. We had also a tricolor and kept it as a revered possession to be unfurled the next Independence day. We observed Independence Day with much enthusiasm throughout our childhood and our youth. The colour of the flag began to fade as the years passed, yet remained a symbol of our nation as one unity.
Before the ordinary people could make the habit of wearing the Gandhi cap as a symbolic gesture of national unity, the political elites conveniently appropriated it for display on political occasions. Then came the rude shock of Mahatma’s assassination within a few months shaking the moral foundation of the new Independent nation and exposing dangerous fault lines. Skeletons started tumbling out from the closet of the Government, and corruption, nepotism and political intrigue crept into the body politic spreading like cancer. The nation still lurched forward and Democracy, whatever it became, managed to become the principle of nationhood, though seemed flawed. The Parliament is its most sacred symbol but has it not been profaned by elements with criminal backgrounds entering its hallowed precincts as peoples’ representatives from time to time, more increasingly of late?
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The socialist pattern of society soon entered into a marital relationship with the liberal economy having to undergo an uneasy conjugal adjustment, but during the process of that adjustment created two different kinds of people in one NATION. One of these two peoples enjoyed the fruits of the liberal economy and the other resignedly suffered ache in their belly. Now, on every Independence Day, my shoulder droops a little more than before.
A few questions have suddenly assailed my mind. Do Independence and Freedom have the same meaning? Are they two politically equivalent concepts? Has Independence given each citizen the freedom from fear, freedom from hunger, freedom of dissent from the ruling political discourse and freedom to give expression to one’s moral conviction; and freedom of justice, freedom of knowledge, freedom to demonstrate against a political action felt to be socially harmful? Why on many occasions, political order and human rights do not seem to be working on the same plane? In a representative democracy, whom do the political representatives represent: An elite or the people?
If people, what colour represents these people that are zealously protected; who are the others and are they rootless because of their colour of faith despite having their pre-colonial ancestral roots in this land? When we say sovereignty belongs to the people, do we conceive of a people separated on basis of religion, class or caste?
My answer to the above question is emphatically no, since India is one with all its citizens and they are the people of a nation under one flag. My views may be in conflict with the agenda of a political majority, but it remains my unwavering conviction. If majoritarianism is the guiding principle of statecraft, then the country’s twenty percent population (may be more if Dalits are included) will remain ‘others’ for all time to come, not equal citizens of a nation conceived of as a nation on the premises of democracy.