The season of elections is upon us. The Opposition’s search for a winning electoral strategy to challenge the dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party must contend with the inherent contradictions of a fractured polity that has birthed the disarrayed political parties but which must now come together in a unity of larger purpose. The state of the nation, riven by endless schisms, dehumanising insensitivity to the human condition, and an accentuated assault on constitutional fundamentals presents an exceptional situation meriting an extraordinary response. An objective scrutiny of the state of ‘Naya Bharat and Shreshta Bharat’ lays bare as never before, the nation’s depressing social and political realities.
The real India
The heart-rending destitution, exploitation and unfreedom of the multitude mirrors the reality of a not-so-shining India, despite a rising economy that has only widened the economic and social disparities in the absence of distributive equities. The agonising reality of a nation in distress is visible in the fate of 35.5% of the country’s undernourished and stunted children, in the stony eyes of forsaken widows, mothers grieving for the loss of their children to addiction and hopelessness, unable to bear the grief of their innocent daughters having lost their smile forever to the ravages of lust and violence, and the unbearable grief of a father compelled to see his children starve to death.
The numbing incidents of a Dalit who had his thumb chopped off because his nephew dared to lift a ball while watching a game of cricket, of a husband and a teenager on having to carry the body of a wife and mother, respectively, for want of affordable transport are a damning indictment of a ‘rising India’.... The loss of millions of lives on account of preventable diseases, crores of elderly citizens robbed of their dignity in the twilight of their lives, innocent love denied fulfilment because of hate and prejudice, cold blooded murders and endless acts of torture in custody, the coercive incarceration of dissenters and dissidents, and the flaunted arrogance of power, present a painful truth of a morally impoverished politics denuded of its essential purpose of brightening ‘crumbled lives’ and addressing the ‘deep caverns of injustice’.
A moving extract from the English poet and essayist Anna Lætitia Barbauld’s poem, ‘To the Poor’, is a window into the common burden of injustice and deprivation that points to a deep wound in the soul of the nation. “Child of distress, who meet’st the bitter scorn,... who feel’st oppression’s iron in thy soul, whose bread is anguish, and whose water tears” .
Redemption from the ‘purgatory of suffering’ in which millions of fellow citizens continue to suffer, demands politics helmed by leadership sensitive to the moral injunctions of a dignitarian order founded in justice and freedom. The challenge for those who seek to lead is to “not just find a fork on the historical road, but help to create it”, such as would enable national bonding in shared empathy, transcending all divides. Since leadership does not come to the meek nor to the servile who confuse surrender of conscience for loyalty to a higher purpose, the compelling imperative of our times is leadership that articulates the collective moral conscience of the nation and is sustained by it. And political choices driven by personal loyalties must contend with Thomas Mowbray’s powerful censure of those who demand the loyalty of citizens above the dictates of their conscience. “... My life thou shalt command, but not my shame: The one my duty owes; but my fair name, Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,....”
Comment | India, democracy and the promised republic
The outcomes of the ensuing State Assembly polls and the Lok Sabha election in 2024 will test our collective resolve to energise the nation’s political order and refashion a pluralist democracy around an exalting constitutional imagination. We are indeed collectively charged with a duty to reconstruct our democratic universe around ‘the meaning of first things’ and to remind ourselves that inaction in the face of wrong leaves the soul divided against itself. Clearly, resistance against the muscular propensities of an emerging leviathan state warrants a passionate participation of citizens, particularly of the intelligentsia, who must remind themselves of the limitations of interpreting the world without changing it. Nor can we forget an abiding truth of history that a pervasive sense of injustice carries within itself the seeds of disruptive retribution and that the progressive advance of human civilisation is embellished by the triumph of right over wrong.
Unfulfilled vision
In a political season pregnant with possibilities, our aspirations for the country are felicitously articulated in the book, The Line of Mercy, as a place “where laughter rings, where lush creepers of stories decorate lives, where the caverns of justice run true and deep, where the fire of illumination and wisdom burns warm, where love is not a fatal poison, where redemption and mercy do not hide their wings”. Realising this vision requires an act of will, fortitude and judgment. The choice we make at the hustings, deservedly in favour of dignity, justice, inclusion, fraternity, sensitivity to popular perceptions and accountability of power will determine whether or not India’s electoral democracy can vindicate its liberal promise.
Ashwani Kumar is Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India and a former Union Minister for Law and Justice. The views expressed are personal
Published - July 03, 2023 12:08 am IST
