Martyrs' Day 2020

Today is Martyr's Day. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated exactly 72 years ago, today. This post is dedicated to all those millions, known and unknown, who built India.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
From "Friends of Voltaire"- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

A common refrain I hear these days is "Liberals are really illiberal. They won't get into a discussion with people with whom they disagree. Is this liberal?"

Now, I can't speak for everyone who identifies as a liberal, but here is where I stand on this allegation.

1. You have the right to believe in, and say, whatever you want. If you believe that India belongs, primarily, to people of a certain religion; adherents of all other religions, and atheists, are required to know their (subordinate) status, feel free to say it. If you believe that women are the inferior gender and the world really belongs to men, say it. If you believe that the 'Aryan' race is the superior to all others, say that. If you believe that people born to poverty are only paying for the sins of their previous lives, and deserve the privations, indignities, squalor and disease which comes with it, say that too.
   
   DO NOT, HOWEVER, EXPECT THAT I WILL BE PREPARED TO ENGAGE YOU IN A REASONED CONVERSATION ABOUT ANY OF THESE, OR SIMILAR, PROPOSITIONS. YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE WORLD, AND I HAVE NOTHING TO DISCUSS WITH YOU.
   If, in contrast to such brain-dead bigotry, you ask questions about any of these issues, are uncertain or unclear, I am always willing to talk to you at length.
    
2. When I was rather young, my politics was described, variously, as Marxist, Communist or Leftist. With time, I moved away from the notion of violent overthrow of the established order, and was appalled by the tyrannies which the real-world manifestations of Marxist societies had produced. My positions began to shift away from every form of totalitarianism, whether it emerged from the Left or the Right. Individual rights, particularly those of equality before the law and an independent judiciary, free thought and expression, fair representation in legislative/executive arms of government, practice of religion, ownership of property (subject to reasonable restriction), conduct of business or profession (with caveats) became the keystones of my view of the world.
   
3.  The great George Orwell showed the way, to me and goodness knows how many others. I identified, by my late 20s as a Social Democrat, with a tilt toward a more statist political economy, particularly in sectors like infrastructure, education, healthcare and social security. This position has broadly defined my sociopolitical identity ever since.
   
4. The world, goaded on by the victory of free-market capitalism over communism with the collapse of the USSR in December 1991, moved decisively towards unfettered primacy of corporate, and increasingly, global capital flows.
   India had begun her own march towards economic liberalisation, earlier that fateful year, in the face of looming fiscal collapse. My cohort, of people who came into the work force starting the early 1980s, were the biggest beneficiaries of the tailwinds created by India's liberalisation, which propelled us to almost unimaginable prosperity, as compared to our parents' generation, even as it also lifted millions out of poverty at the bottom of the economic pyramid. I will readily admit that the next two decades were hardly about politics. Accumulation (of all sorts) and the responsibilities of building the household defined my life. Politics, at best, was only instrumental, sometimes as a catalyst, at others as a dampener.
    
5. I am older now, and the self-centeredness which defined my last thirty years, has made way for restoring at least some part of the idealism which informed the awakening of my political consciousness in my teens and early twenties. In the meantime, the go-go 90s and noughties turn out to have been drivers of unprecedented polarisation along every axis. More wealth now lies in fewer hands than ever in recorded history. Politics has ceded all middle ground and shifted, sans challenge, further and further right. Wealth, particularly in its most egregious form, and political power concentrated with a handful, have colluded and coalesced into a creature which now brandishes the State itself as its proprietary instrument. Demagoguery, fear-mongering, bullying and the often-brutal silencing of dissent have become commonplace, from the Philippines to Brazil and all points in between. We know it too, right?

Still with me?

I cannot be silent any more.

I cannot be indifferent any more.

I am NOT A LIBERAL ANY MORE.

Let me step away and end with lines written by the great poet, Ramdhari Singh "Dinkar".

तिमिर पुत्र ये दस्यु कहीं कोई दुष्काण्ड रचें ना
सावधान हो खडी देश भर में गांधी की सेना
बलि देकर भी बलि! स्नेह का यह मृदु व्रत साधो रे
मंदिर औ’ मस्जिद दोनों पर एक तार बांधो रे

समर शेष है, नहीं पाप का भागी केवल व्याध
जो तटस्थ हैं, समय लिखेगा उनके भी अपराध.