75th Independence Day: The unhealing wounds within

As we approach the 75th Independence Day, we may turn our attention to the fractures within Indian society that Vikram Seth chronicled to ask if at all these have healed

Set against the backdrop of a newly independent India, Vikram Seth’s epic novel, A Suitable Boy, is a narrative of many things: familial pulls and tensions, conventional and subversive love, joy and heartbreak. Binding the different strands and running through them are the fault lines of a post-colonial society. Together they delineate the unresolved conflicts around religion, class, caste and patriarchy that defined India in the period leading up to the country’s first post-independent national elections in 1952.

A Suitable Boy is as much a story of India’s past as it is of the present. The novel lays bare the dynamic of the country, which, even as it aspired to the trappings of modernity, staunchly defended conservative and feudal norms and practices. Here patriarchy thrived, and violence by the state, communities, and individuals was accepted—even endorsed—as a way of life.

Nearly three decades since its publication and over seven after the period in which the novel was set, these fundamentals of Indian reality have not changed. As we approach the 75th Independence Day, we may turn our attention to the fractures within Indian society that Seth chronicled in his magnum opus to ask how far, if at all, these fractures have healed? How far have we as a people progressed in recognising each others’ humanity? The answers throw up disquieting questions about the state of our democracy, drawing attention to rapid erosion in our basic collective values.

We can now, more than before, sense a precarious vulnerability in Indian democracy that can no longer be hidden, ignored, or dressed up. Now more than ever, personal and political freedoms teeter on the brink of extinction. Shrill calls of nationalism sent out by the mighty and powerful, rather than reinforce Constitutional commitments, dismiss them with airy regard for its makers. Their names are dutifully taken, their philosophies ritualistically summoned without any real comprehension of the responsibility the words place on the country’s powerful political leaders and institutional custodians.

This is, then, a moment whether the concerns of the period A Suitable Boy is set in (the 1950s) or the time of its publication (the 1990s) have changed? And if so, whether they have changed for the better or for worse?

Less than a fortnight prior to the 15th August celebrations, we learnt that a middle-class neighbourhood in Western Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district was up in arms against sharing the locality with Muslims. According to media reports, the neighbourhood’s Hindu residents, protesting the sale of the property to Muslims, threatened mass exodus from the area. There was no reason, the recalcitrant residents told the media, to disrupt the decades-old practice of segregated living. In that same week, media reported that Tara, a nine-year-old Dalit girl, was allegedly gang-raped, murdered and hastily cremated at Delhi’s Cantt crematorium. One of the four men arrested by the police was a priest at the crematorium.

Since then, the disarray in the Republic has travelled to Parliament and its Monsoon session. Day after day, the Opposition demands a discussion on the massive revelations surrounding the Pegasus spyware while the government shuts them down. The list of people from all spheres of life who were potential targets for snooping or whose phones were tracked continues to lengthen. But the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refuses to even accept the truth of the allegations, much less entertain a mere discussion in Parliament.

Such incidents have become a part of everyday life in India. Violence against and ostracisation of marginal groups and minority communities is embedded in the life of post-independent India. Yet, the sense of foreboding is now tinged with new urgency. The fear of loss is more palpable. One may wonder whether such anxiety is fuelled by the suffering and deaths wrought by Covid. Or could it be because of an indifferent ruling class who have done little to assuage the hurt and helplessness of the people?

Medical emergencies are not the only emergency staring India in the face. There is an existential crisis in the country. The very idea and practice of freedom are in jeopardy. This independence day conjures disturbing images before us. That of the frail, bespectacled, ailing Father Stan Swamy will haunt us for months and years to come. The 84-year-old Adivasi rights activist and Jesuit priest died in police custody last month after being charged by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to stir caste violence in Bhima Koregaon. At the time he was arrested, Father Stan Swamy was suffering from Parkinson’s disease as well as cancer.

His tragedy is just one of the many unfolding all around. Over a dozen people—university professors, cultural and tribal rights activists, human rights lawyers—continue to languish in prison. Implicated in the Bhima Koregaon case, they, like the Jesuit priest, face outlandish, implausible charges.

Another cluster of images floats into vision from the lethal second wave of Covid that has only recently subsided. Images of distraught people imploring for Oxygen cylinders, inert bodies floating in the waters in Ganga, blazing funeral pyres, many of them set up on pavements outside designated crematoriums.

The dread generated by these images and experiences deepens as one mulls that even after 75 years of freedom from the British, countless people are thrown into prison under laws put in place by the colonisers, not least of which is the law against sedition—routinely used in independent India to shutdown democratic discussion and dissent. A legal section brought by the British to punish freedom fighters without due process of law, the law persists in a ghastly and ironic fashion, deployed to imprison Indian citizens, in the same way it once was to jail those who wanted to free India from tyrannical rule.

The rapid increase in the number of political prisoners held for sedition or under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the continued denial of bail to seriously ill prisoners, the spirit of vengeance driving such persecutions, and our continued tolerance of this state of affairs raise disturbing questions about how genuine our commitment to freedom truly is and how much injustice we are willing to tolerate.

(Monobina Gupta is the author of Left Politics in Bengal and Didi: A Political Biography)

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