When our nation goes to polls over the next two months, Indians will be making a choice between two very different ideas of India.
On one hand, there is the idea of a “New India”. When the phrase was first articulated by our Prime Minister during his Independence Day address to the nation on August 15, 2017, he spoke of an India free from the shackles of casteism and communal tension, an India that successfully solves its endemic problems of corruption, nepotism and terrorism, an India where every woman, man and child would be given an empowered and dignified standard of living, thanks to a society that harnesses India’s entrepreneurial spirit to become an economic powerhouse.
There is little to disagree with the Prime Minister over this idea of India, since he was merely reiterating a historic commitment to the goals that were preserved and guaranteed in our Constitution. But that was the “Old India”, and it was animated by a spirit of freedom wholly absent in “New India”. The freedom to choose what government you wanted, the freedom to choose what set of convictions to resonate with, the freedom to choose who to love, and how to love, the freedom to choose what to wear, eat, drink, and speak, the freedom to move freely within the sovereign borders of the republic, and the freedom to choose whether Ram or Rahim (or Jesus or Jehovah, or none of them) was the force that guided and moved the cosmos. All of these were freedoms enshrined in our Constitution and embedded not just in the letter and spirit of the law, but into the lived experience of India and its peoples. That was key to Old India.
But is that the only difference? As usual, between the rhetoric of the current ruling dispensation and the reality on the ground there falls a great shadow. Whether it is the ‘Achhe Din’ of 2014 or the ‘New India’ of 2017 or the ‘Amrit Kaal’ of the present, under the BJP government, these phrases appear to be a mere smokescreen for the real agenda that this government has pursued since coming to power, that of remaking India into their majoritarian fantasy of a Hindu Rashtra. The slogan of “Hindi, Hindutva, Hindustan” is becoming an ominous reality. The road to New India appears littered with the wreckage of all that was good and noble about the Old India.
In its place, an ugly distortion of the Indian idea is rising, an India where an especially dangerous and perverted form of ethno-nationalism is being fostered. In this new India that is being sought to be created, a narrow-minded majoritarianism prevails, where incidents of communal violence proliferate, driven by mob-lynching zealots and gau-rakshak vigilantes who have, in Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s words, created a “republic of fear’.
Like Mr Modi, I want a New India too. It will be a New India where you won’t get lynched for the food you eat, marginalized for the faith you hold dear, criminalized for the person you love and imprisoned for making use of fundamental rights guaranteed by your own Constitution.
Instead of fear, we must look forward to a ‘New India’ that celebrates and welcomes pluralism, an idea vindicated by history itself.
To me, this new India must be fundamentally rooted in the idea of India that our founding fathers believed in. This nebulous ‘Idea of India’ (the phrase is Rabindranath Tagore’s) is, in some form or another, arguably as old as antiquity itself. Nehru saw our country as an ‘ancient palimpsest’ on which successive rulers and subjects had inscribed their visions without erasing what had been asserted previously. We not only coexist, but thrive in our diversity which is our strength. Swami Vivekananda spoke of a Hinduism that not merely tolerates other faiths but accepts them as they are. This acceptance of difference, and of mutual respect among different faiths, has been key to our country’s survival, making ‘unity in diversity’ the most hallowed of independent India’s self-defining slogans.
India’s democracy imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens. For New India to succeed and indeed thrive, it will have to embrace this inclusive vision and draw its inspiration from the key tenets of the core ‘Idea of India’. Only by maintaining a commitment towards a democratic and pluralistic ethos, can New India be able to fulfil the aspirations of all Indians. And that means keeping the government out of our bedrooms, our kitchens, our dining rooms and out of our mobile phones.
At the same time, we must also be conscious that preserving our ideological commitment to pluralism, acceptance and the freedom provided by our democratic systems is only one half of the battle. Providing a decent standard of living to the people of India, particularly those from economically vulnerable groups, is the second commitment that we must undertake in our blueprint for a ‘New India’. It is all very well to celebrate youthful aspirational New India, but the aam aadmi of Old India needs to live, eat, have shelter, find work, have access to health care and give their children a better life. That is where New India, so far, has failed.
And at the same time, youthful and aspirational India must also recognise the freedoms that New India has also failed to protect. A New India of the future must be built in an open and inclusive society, on the foundations of a rich and diverse and plural civilisation, one that is open to the contention of ideas and interests within it, unafraid of the prowess or the products of the outside world, wedded to the democratic pluralism that is India's greatest strength, and determined to liberate and fulfil the creative energies of its people.
That is what the Prime Minister’s New India needs to learn from the Old. And if the voters so decide, perhaps the current PM can sit in Opposition from June onwards, while the custodians of all that was free and precious in the spirit of our Constitution take the reins and help reshape New India in the image of the Old.
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New India versus Old India?
32
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26.03.2024
When our nation goes to polls over the next two months, Indians will be making a choice between two very different ideas of India.
On one hand, there is the idea of a “New India”. When the phrase was first articulated by our Prime Minister during his Independence Day address to the nation on August 15, 2017, he spoke of an India free from the shackles of casteism and communal tension, an India that successfully solves its endemic problems of corruption, nepotism and terrorism, an India where every woman, man and child would be given an empowered and dignified standard of living, thanks to a society that harnesses India’s entrepreneurial spirit to become an economic powerhouse.
There is little to disagree with the Prime Minister over this idea of India, since he was merely reiterating a historic commitment to the goals that were preserved and guaranteed in our Constitution. But that was the “Old India”, and it was animated by a spirit of freedom wholly absent in “New India”. The freedom to choose what government you wanted, the freedom to choose what set of convictions to resonate with, the freedom to choose who to love, and how to love, the freedom to choose what to wear, eat, drink, and speak, the freedom to move freely within the sovereign borders of the republic, and the freedom to choose whether Ram or Rahim (or Jesus or Jehovah, or none of them) was the force that guided and moved the cosmos. All of these were freedoms enshrined in our Constitution and embedded not just in the letter and spirit of the law, but into the lived experience of India and its peoples. That was key........
© Mathrubhumi English
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