The Power of Hope

Within an hour of arriving in Kolkata (Calcutta for some of you), India on 18^th December my best friend rang me and after asking how I was, announced that the next day there was a protest march against the Citizenship Amendment Act that was passed in Parliament this month and we were going on it. That’s how it began.

I have started this blog several times trying to capture the mood of despair and despondency that has gripped me ever since the Indian elections earlier this year, the in and out of the Brexit dealings and final victory of the charlatans in the UK, and not to forget the rise and rise of the AFD in Germany and similar right wing, racist outfits in and outside the European parliaments, but was never able to complete it. And now I know why. Because the rightist forces seemed to be unrelentingly on the rise, so much so, that those of us who believed otherwise appeared as an anachronism. My self-doubt was so complete that I refused to read the signs from Chile, from Iraq and most of all from Lebanon where against all odds and despite the power of the regimes people, especially young people, were on the street against corrupt anti-people regimes.

But back to the present! On the 19th of December as we drove towards the meeting place where the march was to start my friend, a veteran of many left political rallies and causes, warned the four of us in the car that perhaps there would only be us four. As we messaged all our friends to ask where they were, back came some replies that they were also joining the march. Well we were able to count at least on ten of us being there! The turn out in the last few demonstrations by ordinary citizens and not as part of a political party have been disappointing which was why the cautious counting up to ten. As we drove nearer the venue the traffic was at a stand still and we saw thousands of people swarming towards the venue, which we still could not see. We got out and unable to believe that so many were going to the same place, we asked some young people who were alighting from the back of a crammed looking (in my eyes) minivan whether this indeed was the march. We followed them to the venue, which was half a kilometre further. It was a park, a medium sized park in one of the busiest areas of the city and it was full of people, chanting, holding up banners and waving countless Indian flags. The march had been called by sixty organisations and later we heard that it was an all-India phenomenon. 

We marched shoulder-to-shoulder, lots of very different kinds of people, cross class, many languages, cross religion; across age divides (my friends and I were in the old category) and we made common cause in that we rejected the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the spectre of a National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was in the offing according to the Home Minister. And why? Because the people of India had seen through the Hindu nationalist plot of the government to divide us according to religion and have different kinds of citizens. The hand written posters were humorous, the mood was earnest but happy. One said ‘It’s so serious that even the cynics are here’ and another ‘India needs jobs, education and health care, not the nationwide NRC’. And as I walked shoulder to shoulder with a Muslim girl in burkha (hijab with face covered) a journalist taking shots of her came up to me, this sedate dressed in a white sari elderly woman, and asked whether she was a student of mine meaning that these young, burkha clad girls were only there because I had led them there. I said no, we are all citizens and we are here voluntarily to register our protest.

A little bit of background is called for, for my non-Indian readers who are the majority. India was divided according to religion, on the east (now Bangladesh) and on the west (Pakistan). Muslims and Hindus crossed over from both sides leaving their heritage, homes and hearts behind. The death and destruction that accompanied this transfer is written into the psyche of that generation of Indians (and I guess Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) and persists today in India as prejudice about and hatred of the ‘other’ i.e. Muslims. Before independence there were clearly three shades of opinion as to the future identity of the state and citizens. The architect of Pakistan had argued that Muslims would forever remain a minority in a Hindu majority state and therefore they needed a separate state. Another group clearly espoused a Hindu state with Muslims as tolerated minorities. Luckily for Indians today Nehru (the first Prime Minister) and Ambedkar (the architect of the Constitution) gave us a constitution which starts with ‘We the people of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic (emphasis mine) and to secure to all its citizens justice, liberty and equality and to promote among them all fraternity…..’.

Another very important fact to remember about India is that Muslim and Hindu identities has not since colonial times been about religion. Rather these are political identities. The putative Hindu and Muslim identities in relation to the state emerged through long years of colonial rule and was shaped by administrative technologies. Hinduism is not a religion of the book, the British created our so-called holy book the shastras or religious rules as a counterpoint to the Muslims who did have a book. By creating a sociology and cosmology of India the British secured colonial rule. In 1947 when India was born and the greater India was partitioned this divide and rule came to fruition and left all of us in the three countries at each other’s throats. 

The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 parliamentary elections and then in 2019, when they did better but with about the same percentage of votes as before, saw the ascendancy of the tradition that had lost out at independence but had not fully disappeared, the so-called Hindu rashtra (state) tradition. Emboldened by their majority in Parliament they brought in measures that shook the basis of India and Indianness. First there was the political assault on Kashmir, which continues to this day. Democratically elected leaders are in jail, civilians are in jail, children have boycotted schools and curfews prevail in many parts. And then there was this, the shocking Citizenship Amendment Act.

And just as we were about to accept that the secular Indian was a thing of the past dear to the first generation of Indians like me, the students of India stepped out. The first peaceful protests in the two national universities with Muslim names were quelled with brute force. The police tore through them beating and injuring students. The fact is that one of these universities is in Delhi and very visible. In the next days the students of the premier universities of technology and management started their demonstrations till they were forbidden to. But by this time it had spread like fire across this huge country with students demonstrating everywhere. Others joined them. The message was clear ‘we will not be divided’. It took the ruling party by surprise and they took time to react. They could no longer blame the ‘secularists’ and the opposition because the political parties did not call out the demonstrations.  And while they have after a week of demonstrations started their own, the fact is they no longer control the narrative. The students have shown what India looks like and wants to be – secular, modern and open to the world. The ruling regime is not going to give up and there is going to be more brutality and inhumanity. People’s lives are in danger because this is a fascist regime. Many people have already died mostly because of the police firing at civilians.

But what we witnessed and are witnessing is hope that the future generation is better than us; that there is a future Indian that dreams about equality, secularism and fraternity. That’s not enough but it’s the only thing that will live on and outlast even this regime.

Today I read in the paper that Iraq is still in flames and the rulers just as murderous. In Lebanon people refuse to leave the streets and are continuing on in their struggle for a better future for citizens. There have been movements by ordinary citizens in Colombia and other places. I write for them and in solidarity with those struggling for a better more just world. And those of you in the UK cowered by the electoral victory of the charlatans and the imminent withdrawal of the country from the EU, do remember that politics in other parts of the world is literally about life and death. So don’t give up the struggle.

How apt that I should be writing this on December 25^th, a day that commemorates the birth of Christ who 2019 years ago was a harbinger of hope.

25^th December, 2019