I am truly stunned that Egypt happened. I am stunned that so many people, including those who were apparently not even getting directly brutalised by Mubarak, came together in a sustained campaign over weeks over an idea-the idea of democracy.
How did this happen? More importantly, what will Egypt do to other fermenting revolutions across the world? What will Egypt mean for India?
We have a democracy. But it is a democracy that works like a dictatorship across a sharply fragmented population of the empowered and the disempowered. It is a division of those who are a part of the 9% growth story and the massive majority that isn’t. It is a division that is hardening like cement, a population on shores that are being pushed further apart. By people like us.
Our Mubarak is our largest party in power, the Congress Party and our single largest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. We have our Manmohan-Chidambaram-Montek trio, we have a dictatorship of the middle-class and the rich. The post-liberalisation aspirations of some of our people have created the Indian Mubarak.
Ramachandra Guha can sing paeans about the miracle of India. So can people who get outraged on television because human rights activists dare say that they do not trust the judiciary to deliver justice to the poor in the country. But what is so celebratory about an impossible nation coming together? Doesn’t it imply in equal parts the forced nature of nation building and the fragility of the Indian union?
Egypt is just beginning, ofcourse. Who knows what will happen post-Mubarak. But the miracle of this revolution remains in the massive mobilisation of a people which I imagine will be of interest from a strategic point of view for various people's movements within India.
I admit: I'm excitedly waiting to see Tahrir Square travel in waves across the world.
Long live idealism!
Long live idealism! Indeed! But a vital factors that strengthened and sustained the Tahrir square revolution was the support that came from the blogging, tweeting, facebooking youngsters who cannot be termed as poor, i guess. can we expect this section in India to form the bulwark of support for the disempowered if they rise insurrect against the oppressive, opaque oligarchy that the Indian state is showing signs of turning into?
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly what fascinates me about the Egyptian revolution- how people across classes came together in a common show of solidarity. They were all out on the streets, including the elite, who would have presumably been less affected by the dictatorship than others.
ReplyDeleteI can't see how that kind of a show of solidarity can happen in India because really, large chunks of our middle classes and the elite are happy to be a part of the dictatorship of the neo-liberal regime. They don't see it as a problem that needs to be addressed, and I think our 'democracy' legitimises our dictatorship in their minds.
Which is why Egypt and Tahrir Square are so exciting- who knows how the Indian struggles will draw from it. The campaign for Binayak Sen is slowly seeing a shift-civil society is increasingly joining it, and the internet is being used quite a bit for it. But our problem is also that there are so many issues that people are struggling over! Kashmir, the North Eastern insurgencies, the tribal and Naxal movements in the mineral rich areas, Dalit oppression...
I personally think India is approaching several tipping points. They'll be a lot bloodier and messier than Tahrir too, what do you think?
I am not so sure if India is approaching any tipping point, as of yet. Sporadic protests against certain corporations are happening across the country, true but look at the kind of images that are brought out in the public domain. Pictures of smiling children and frowning parents standing out side a gate was carried along with news item on protests in Orissa against Posco-the predominant middle-class view is still that backward people are misguidedly opposing development and 'activists' are fanning their subversive tendencies. The Binayak Sen story has been an exception, fortunately. these people are not indifferent because they think that are not affected; many actually think that the development paradigm that our illustrious administration has adopted with its focus on rampant industrialisation, is desirable for the country and for them, the voices of dissent are of fringe actors who cannot sustain it for long.
ReplyDeletethey just have to enter an air-conditioned mall with all foreign brands but no stair cases, to insulate themselves from the reality. and that is as scary as tragic. but continue writing posts such as this one; we need to engage after all.
and yes, as you said, democracy legitimises dictatorship. it manufactures our consent!
ReplyDeleteWhen I say I wait to see Tahrir travel in waves across the world, I do not mean as an exact replica of Tahrir. I feel it is inevitable that movements across the world will draw from Tahrir, including those in India. The lessons will be different, but the hugely inspirational thing about Tahrir was the incredible mobilisation: everybody will be asking how did that happen and what can we learn from it. I don't think many of us seriously imagined that in todays world it would be possible to initiate and sustain a movement of so many people, not in a far away forest, but bang in the cemtre of a city like Cairo, in the glare of the international media. Tahrir was like a sound bomb, metaphorically speaking.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the point you make about the middle class and the elite in our country. But why I think we are approaching several possible tipping points is because of the rising anger. The sporadic protests are becoming more regular. The intensity and frequency of labour protest, for instance, in increasing. There is a rising working class militancy that is visible. Protests movements and public anger against the system seems to be growing, much as shrill representatives of the comfortable people might like to believe otherwise on TV.
Actually, even the fact that they are getting shriller, and the State is cracking down harder on all opposition, is now bringing in the Defence forces against the Maoists (both Maoists and 'Maoists') seems to indicate that they are beginning to feel more threatened.
Inflation, going up up and up, is fuelling more and more anger. Egypt was/ is seeing 18 point something percent inflation.
Not to talk about the huge corruption issues that is tearing at even comfortable India.
Frankly, I think we are a bomb waiting to blow. How and when we blow, or even if we do blow at all, is going to be impossible to predict.
I'm going to link Gautam Bhan's article which you might have seen, in today's post, I think he thinks it out (because it is a self-confessed'ramble')so brilliantly. Tell me what you think.