Why we need to re-evaluate our independence

As we get ready to celebrate 73 years of independence on August 15, 2020, we need to take stock – to reflect on what has been and what is to come

“As soon as the last British soldier sailed from Bombay or Karachi, India would become the battlefield of antagonistic forces…[and] the peaceful and progressive civilisation, which Great Britain has slowly but surely brought into India, would shrivel up in a night,” wrote J E Welldon, former Bishop of Calcutta, in 1915.

If newly independent India were to be floated as a startup, few would have invested in it. From its territorial enormity to its linguistic and cultural variety to communal differences that dismembered it in two even before it could be free, the challenges India faced on August 15, 1947, were unparalleled. Simply put, India stood on the verge of the greatest socio-political experiment in modern history.

British imperialism had reduced India’s share of the world economy from close to 25 percent in the 18th Century to a little more than four percent in 1947. However, in spite of being born as an impoverished republic, India did not go in the direction of so many of her contemporaries in the so-called third world, which squandered the promise of autonomy at the altar of political dictatorship and economic stagnation. Independence was not merely obtained, but also operationalised in India.

The meaning of celebration

What does it really mean to celebrate independence?

It means, above all, to take stock. To reflect on what has been and what is to come. By no stretch of the imagination are we in a golden age of Indian history. Unemployment hit a 45-year high according to the government’s own admission last year, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the lacunae in the Indian health infrastructure, and it can be argued that sectarianism has gone from the fringes to the political mainstream.

A lot is wrong in India today, but in order to address these wrongs, it is important to recall what we have done right and re-evaluate our independence in the light of it.

Re-evaluating principles

What was it that made India independent? Yes, there were the unforgettable contributions of the freedom fighters, the coincidence of monumental events like the World War II with the freedom struggle, the ebbing of the imperialist vision; but above all, there was an unflinching commitment to principles, which, though never promulgated on pamphlets, emerged organically from the forces that shaped India.

Given where we are right now, it is these principles that need to be re-evaluated to see if we are true to them if we are to continue celebrating the Indian legacy for another seven decades and more.

The first of these principles is reconciliation, the ability to put differences aside in order to drive forward towards a common goal. Not only was reconciliation pivotal to the mass movements championed by the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, it was instrumental in persuading the numerous princely states to accede to the Indian Union shortly after independence.

The principle of reconciliation is based on the ancient Indian value of acceptance, which is much more than the normative concept of tolerance popularised by Western secularism. Speaking at Chicago’s Parliament of World Religions in 1893, Swami Vivekananda had described how tolerance can be a patronising idea, as it believes that the tolerant possess the truth while indulging the tolerated in their right to be wrong. On the other hand, acceptance regards the accepted to be as much the possessors of the truth as the accepting, and it is out of this reciprocity between two different truths that reconciliation can emerge.

India needs such a reconciliation more than ever in Kashmir, which has been engulfed in a web of lockdowns. Kashmiris have been given reason to feel that the current government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not interested in Kashmir’s idea of truth and Kashmir’s idea of identity.

If India is to seriously address the Kashmir problem, it has to reconcile its ambitions with those of the locals, engage in sympathetic communication and not brazen political manoeuvres like the sudden abrogation of Article 370. In the absence of reconciliation, there will simply remain two antagonistic truths that serve neither of its believers.

The second principle behind independence that requires re-evaluation is that of dissent, the touchstone of any well-functioning democracy. The echo-chambers we inhabit today have made it difficult to debate and discuss without descending into derision. Name-calling, toxic labels such as “bhakt” and “sickular”, and a mainstream media more interested in noise than news have compounded the Indian mindscape where free thought, speech, and expression is increasingly becoming anathema for those in the corridors of power.

Had the freedom movement not allowed scope for dissent, Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Bose could never have taken such divergent paths to swaraj and self-reliance. It was the principle of dissent that allowed Gandhian non-violence and Netaji’s belligerence to create two fronts of opposition to imperialism, a principle India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was well aware of. It is impossible to imagine our current prime minister emulating Nehru in writing an anonymous critique of his own actions in order to fuel discourse, but it is imperative to expect India’s political parties and its common men and women to realise that they need to listen to contrasting opinions without opprobrium and encourage varying views.

Finally, the third principle in this axis of re-evaluation is one which is the hardest to define or articulate. In some ways, it is less a principle and more a philosophy, a way of looking at life. It is the peculiar power of hope.

Starting from the build-up to India’s first general elections in 1951-52, premature obituaries have been written for independent India time and again. It was the same before 1947, when, successively, the failure of the First War of Independence, the suppression of assertive nationalists like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the calling off of the Non-Cooperation Movement, among others, had been pinpointed as the nadir of the freedom movement, the final nail in the coffin.

Post-independence, the humiliation at the hands of the Chinese in 1962, the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Emergency of 1975, the communal riots of the 1990s, had all been designated (by the rest of the world, particularly the Western commentariat) as the tipping points beyond which India would begin to disintegrate. And yet, on every single occasion, India did not crumble under the weight of these grim predictions. Forging a way through collective hope, it managed to not only survive, but thrive.

If one were to read the forecasts currently made by much of the world, it would be easy to believe that India, at the mercy of a Hindu nationalist government, is beyond recovery – its flagging economy, its corrupt conversation, and its undermined pluralism being hallmarks of this great decay.

But all this should make Indians cautious, not cynical. For whatever our ideology, whatever our faith, whatever our culture, we belong to a land whose fabric has been woven through realising the inconceivable, conquering the unscalable, and dreaming the impossible.

Back in 1947, few would have given India a chance. Now, in 2020, with circumstances perilously poised, all of us must give India a chance; the India where a lot is wrong, but where a lot can still go right. The India where hope truly springs eternal.

(Priyam Marik is a freelance journalist writing on politics, culture, and sport)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.