.
With India having declared her “tryst with destiny” they
disappeared into their homes and got busy with the India developing story. You
would see them in private photos and spaces but barely ever on the democratic
canvas. While they labored over raising decent families, the political
evolution of the country was left to a strange breed of Indians. These either
rose to become leaders through labour union conflicts and college youth
politics or came to inherit dynastic crowns.
Whatever their mode of entry, this power hungry brand of
Indians were one in sullying the word “leadership”. From a fight for freedom
from the Imperial crown, politics came to mean the fight to usurp power and
money for self and the next seven generations to come. Bloated with a sense of
self-importance, our MPs and MLAs cultivated the convenient delusion that the
only India that mattered wore the tag “disadvantaged”. They dismissed,
ridiculed, and even mocked the middle classes. The political growth of the
country thus came to read as the story of educated India’s marginalization. By
declaring politics dirty, the ruling class effectively put it out of reach of
the regular God-fearing, family values driven, sanitized Indian citizenry.
This bulk of polite people grew increasingly disconnected
with the drivers steering their destinies. Escaping to foreign lands was the most
they did to deal with the mess their country was becoming. One profession they
tabooed their children from considering was politics. While the good India
stuck their head into the sand, the leaders grew fatter with the lucre of
misappropriation. It was tolerable when limited to an inefficient, rude and
corrupt government but all that changed on the 16 Dec night when a young,
paramedical intern was beaten and raped in a private bus, only to breathe her
last thirteen days later.
The inhuman brutality of that attack ending in the brazen
throwing out of her mutilated body onto a busy road made India’s somnolent bhadra lok sit up. This was too close
home. Cries of “it could be me” rang across the subcontinent. India’s sleeping
giant was raising the head. The Lilliputians began to scramble off in rage and
fright, dusting off years of apathy and resignation to step out, in twos and
threes, in groups and clusters.
I joined them at Jantar Mantar, walking up on leaden feet,
alone. There were grim faces, not a few teary eyes. I stood around, breathing
the air of pained incredulity. The only two faces I recognized were those of
Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury, both senior CPM leaders. Some NSD persons and
TV channel bosses rang familiar. But it was the faceless crowd that I was most at home
with. It felt strangely like family. It felt like a complete emotional and
mental and moral spa. At long last we were thinking community.
My countrymen, who are ordinarily gluttons for TV cameras,
celebrating even if it is their elbow caught on the screen, were pushing the
gadgets away. I stood by, watching with
pride as some young Indians took the mike to speak with quiet but impassioned
dignity. There was no shade of awkwardness. They communicated with confident
clarity, quiet pain…no scramble for glory, I did not see any posing for the
cameras, and for once the gadgets were inconsequential.
This was a gathering different from the usual raucous, grimy
and unthinking milieu. I was caught off guard to receive a couple of apologetic
"sorrys" in the crowd on accidentally brushing against strangers!
People shifted and made space so you had a better view. When a voice rang out,
requesting people to sit down, they promptly obeyed. I saw complete strangers
using their grey hair to advantage,
delivering motivating speeches to young groups. The crowd kept the odd
misbehaviour in check. There were people pouring thoughts and emotions on paper
lining the road. Twenty year olds spelled inconvenient truths into public address
systems and people applauded affirmatively. I heard astonishing words and
sensed a simmering anger born of frustration and fear.
There was a master mind in the throes of a public catharsis out
at Jantar Mantar that day.
These ordinary citizens are the rightful owners of
India’s airwaves, I thought to myself. Their education and self-sufficient
means gives them both the onus and the ability to reclaim the Indian story. Let
them come out in greater numbers, I prayed. Dear God, for far too long, they
have sanctioned the moth eating of their country with their silence.
Pledge, pledge, and pledge...I screamed in my head. Pledge to
raise our sons and daughters equally. Pledge to protest gender crimes. Pledge
to speak, write, and communicate anguish at injustice. Pledge to reach out and
connect. Pledge to demand a safe, equitable and clean India. Pledge not to let
this assertion die.
I came away with a mental shot of the sign a protester
carried, “I have not felt this hopeful in a long, long time.”
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