INVISIBLE INDIA
Stuck At The Midnight Hour
Independence-as an idea, a state of being, lived reality-means
nothing to the majority in India. The majority that does not ask for
or get anything in return.
S. ANAND
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Special Issue: Independence Day Special
In India Unseen, a railway line serves as a road; society refuses to
let a safai karamchari change his profession; a trans-generational
blind family gets no help from the state; everyone wants the urban
homeless out, but no one tells them how to get a shelter. Did we
become independent for this? Fifty-eight years after Independence,
Invisible India's tryst with Inequality is played out right before
our eyes-they unfold on these pages. Yet, we have trained our eyes to
look the other away.
Independence-as an idea, a state of being, lived reality-means
nothing to the majority in India. The majority that votes, the
majority that sustains the structure of political democracy, yet the
majority that does not ask for or get anything in return. In a Tamil
Nadu village, a Dalit woman walks with her footwear in hand and casts
her vote in the panchayat election, imposing faith in a system that
will not even guarantee her the right to let the chappals remain on
her feet. In rural North India, women who mildly resist inhuman
treatment are routinely paraded naked and branded witches. Pedki Devi
of Dhanbad in Bihar was accused of using black magic, branded a
witch, stripped and tortured. Her crime: as a widow she would not let
her husband's relatives gobble up the little piece of land she had
tilled.
It is one thing for a humongous, unwieldy entity like a nation to be
'independent' and quite another for an individual to experience
independence. In much of India, society in various manifestations-the
family, community, caste, the village, biradiri-lays siege to the
individual self. Life-defining decisions are mostly beyond the scope
of the individual. These larger entities overpower the individual
even in everyday acts-whether you walk on a certain street, and if
you do, what is the appropriate dress to wear; if it is okay for a
woman to cut her hair; if it is okay to bathe in a certain village
pond; if it is okay to address somebody in first person; if it is
okay to eat certain foods. Larger decisions are even more difficult
to make-choosing one's partner, giving up a profession ordained by
tradition, marriage, not marrying at all, being gay.
Sometimes, society even tries to alter the choices nature makes,
nipping them in the bud-for instance, the efforts to not allow the
girl child from being born. While the world debates the pros and cons
of stem cell research, in India 11.2 million illegal abortions are
performed each year. In 1981, the ratio among children up to the age
of 6 was 962 girls per 1,000 boys; 20 years later it is 927 girls per
1,000 boys. Technological modernity in India subserves society's
ruthless, 'traditional' demands. While the abortion debate in the
West is about individual choice and freedom, in India amniocentesis
leads to socially sanctioned genocide.
In most of India, for most citizens, real choices hardly exist. The
independence struggle against the British was about fashioning a
nation and seeking the right for some Indians to control the destiny
of that nation. That struggle was about political independence, which
was achieved relatively with less difficulty. However, the other,
more important project-the liberation of society from antiquated
values, on which hinges the emergence and the subsequent emancipation
of the individual-has not even taken off yet. We have been
indoctrinated into blaming the state for all the ills of society.
However, our state has been one of the most politically correct:
banning untouchability, banning sex selection, banning dry latrines
that engender manual scavenging, enacting several laws that protect
an individual's various rights, we will soon have even elementary
education as a fundamental right.
If we today have more than 200 million chronically hungry Indians
and yet surplus foodgrains rotting in godowns, 53 per cent children
dropping out of school and yet a Rs 1,000-crore Edusat in space, it
is because of our society's inherent inability to allow change. The
beast of society stands in the way of the implementation of any of
the state's initiatives. And society is most cruel in its rural form
where 72.2 percent of our population lives. Ambedkar had told the
Constituent Assembly: "I hold that these village republics have been
the ruination of India. What is the village but a sink of localism, a
den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?" India has the
largest number of police stations in any nation in the world. (For
instance, Tamil Nadu has 1,413 police stations whereas only 276
hospitals). Yet society's crimes are condoned since the police
protects society's interests rather than the state's.
As long as the political legacy of independence does not devolve
socially, freedom shall have little meaning. What we have in India
today is not civil but uncivil society that forecloses the
possibility of choice, freedom and independence. In this uncivil
society, an indiscretion-like an Ezhava falling in love with a
Nair-could turn into a social challenge. In this uncivil society, to
be human is to lead an insurrection. To experience independence can
be epiphanic.
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