The first picture is from the protests in Delhi’s Ramjas college in 2017. The second is from the ongoing JNU protests. There was another picture that I can’t find now. “Apno ki khushi aapki zimmedari hai, ” said a public service message on a board in the picture. And right in front of it was a police woman, gleefully tearing at a cowering young woman. Her smile, almost predatorial. Turns out that the one being clawed was not a JNU protestor but a journalist covering the protest. That the police woman and her colleagues thought it was okay to debase another woman is not surprising. This is India in 2019. Divided against itself seven odd decades after it became known the world over for its non-violent and yes, united independence movement against a coloniser.
Now having won our independence, we are being encouraged to colonise each other’s humanity. To devour those who are not like us.
The picture of the police woman gnawing at another woman reminded me of a comment that a writer friend settled in US made when Trump was elected to America’s highest office in 2016. She was then living in New York and posted on her wall, “America is self cannibalising.” So are we in India, I think.
We no longer need to fight an enemy beyond the borders. We must hunt and label and mock and if possible kill our own. And our brand new idea of a nation must include laughter emojis to celebrate the murder of Gauri Lankesh and the attempt on the life of Umar Khalid. If we are patriots, we must be dismissive of the suicides of the likes of Rohith Vemula (Was he a Dalit really?), the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed (Must have joined ISIS), the loss of a Payal Thadvi , a Fathima Latheef (A Muslim girl in IIT, how?).
It is not enough now , you see, to just be an Indian citizen.
We must be a certain kind of Indian citizen. and if we are not, we must fall in line to conform to a new definition of nationalism.
A nationalism that is okay with the brutalisation of students, that spies upon and cages professors and grass root activists on drummed up charges, coins phrases like ”Urban Naxals” to demonise dissenters and rationalists and independent journalists, that gives election tickets to lynchers, denudes an entire state of human rights, builds incarceration camps for those branded as non citizens, crafts limitless trolling networks to incinerate anyone who dares to question political or economic blunders, slaps a criminal case against a BHU official for taking down the RSS flag in the premises, punishes a doctor for saving lives in a hospital that ran out of oxygen, takes out processions for those who raped an eight year old girl, spreads noxious canards about nation builders and names cities after those who did nothing , fiddles with text books to erase facts and authorises failed film makers to teach history to WhatsApp drunk masses.
A nationalism that prompts legions of nationalists to post comments like, “govt must shoot this anti national elements with tanks like what China did close JNU for years clean up all radical left goons.” That sends rape threats to journalist Rana Ayub.
This is us. Talking to us.
We are now officially following the templates established by totalitarian regimes where dissenters, free thinkers are attacked, education regimented , entertainment propagandised and ideology imposed upon democracy. And this template becomes most dangerous when we lose empathy for each other.
Self-cannibalisation was and is the defining feature of oppressive regimes where divisive leaders encourage you to not just stop at hating your neighbour across the border. Go on, they say, hate those who live next door if they do not vote, eat, pray, think like you. Laugh at the farmers protesting at Jantar Mantar . Mock the students being beaten for protesting against a fee hike. The jawan protesting against bad rations. Attack the Muslim film star speaking out about intolerant mobs. Or any Muslim because now you can. Empathy is weakness. Mockery is power. Empathy must curl up and die like Pehlu Khan if we as a nation have to become powerful.
It takes very little to learn from history. It takes a lot to recover from it. Ask the Germans. And then look around you.
And then choose whether you want to learn from history or leave your children behind to recover from its aftershocks.
Reema is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US . She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.