MJ Akbar
THE British Raj exploited an election held in 1945 as justification for inflicting the grievous wound of Partition. (If united India had been a federal democracy, Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be in periodic throes of instability.) The British kept very quiet about the fact that this fraudulent franchise was restricted to only 10 per cent or so at the wealthy end of the populace. Its results were never the will of the people. They were the will of the partisan and the easily manipulated.
The strength of Indian democracy was best seen at its worst hour. When democracy was aborted in 1975, Indians won their freedom back in 1977 through democracy. There was no need for violence, or extremism; the Constitution protected the people, and the people protected their Constitution.
Our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was justifiably proud of his credentials as a democrat and yet presided over the passage of the First Amendment which restricted the freedom to encourage violence and violent revolution. There was no debate, for freedom will crumble if it is irresponsible. If there was controversy it was about misjudgment, as when a luminary of Indian cinema Balraj Sahni was apprehended for his support to the Communist Party of India.
Ensuring stability
In 1951, the brilliant poet and cinema lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri was arrested for libel. He had described Nehru as a slave of the British Commonwealth and wondered if the Indian leader had become another Hitler. Majrooh refused to apologise and was sentenced to two years in prison. He emerged with head held high. He was the cynosure of a mushaira with memorable lines like ‘Raqs karna hai to paon ki zanjir na dekh’ (If you want to dance, don’t look at the chains on your feet).
Every Indian had equal rights from the first election of 1952, despite unwanted sermons by colonial supremacists like the all-weather Winston Churchill who thought that illiteracy and poverty made the Indian masses incapable of free choice. That did not make Indians unintelligent. Churchill predicted chaos. Indians ensured stability Indians understand the nuances of freedom. They give respect to the elected and expect reciprocal respect. They are not confused. They do not want poetry from Nehru, and they would not elect Sahni or Majrooh as their prime minister. They know the circles of freedom and their correct intersections. Indians know the difference between loyalty and obedience; they bow before their flag and their political holy book, the Constitution. Centuries of repressive feudalism and colonialism have exhausted obedience to authority.
India changed Marxists
It is entirely Indian that India is the only country where Marxism has come to power as peacefully as it has departed from power. Across the last century, Marxists, Trotskyists, Stalinists and Maoists have concluded that radical economic emancipation required the rather depressing weapon called a throttled voice. The state would do your thinking for you. Marxism could not change India. India changed its Marxists.
In sharp contrast, Marx, Mao Zedong and the utilitarian Deng Xiaoping changed the Chinese. China was absent from the election list, but the question that no one asks is, for how long? China is the only relevant power still immune to elections. The state is subservient to the Chinese Communist Party. The People’s Liberation Army belongs to the party, not the country.
Talk without fear
Others who believed that freedom could be denied to the people forever soon discovered their mistake. There is no forever in despotism. Dictators are tense. They know the corrosive strength of conversation, and invest in fear and censorship, unwilling to accept that it is the slow road to bankruptcy. The engine of freedom is chatter.
Chatter about the famous and infamous. Chatter which wanders through lived and shared experience. The famous fifth pillar of freedom, the media, is a long way behind from the teashop, bus station and railway platform where the anonymous meet the anonymous and build up that tsunami called public opinion. Free societies had social media long before technology. Indians love to talk. That is freedom: talk without fear. Into that heaven of freedom, wrote Tagore, let my country awake. The awakening continues.
