"Let us continue to complain, demand and rebel" - Apoorvanand on the Presidents Republic day speech
In an atmosphere
where criticism is seen as a seditious act, President Pranab Mukherjee's
exhortation couldn't have come at a better time.
"Let us continue to complain, demand and rebel."
It was these eight words that stood out in President Pranab
Mukherjee’s 1,487-word long address to the nation on the eve of India’s 67th
Republic Day. In his speech, the president listed the country’s
achievements and asked people to applaud them. But his exhortation to his
compatriots to treat complaining, demanding and rebelling as virtues of
democracy is what makes this speech stand out from the usual celebratory
sermons that people do not even bother to listen or read.
The significance of the president’s words cannot be missed
when read in the backdrop of what senior functionaries of the incumbent
government have been saying in recent months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing graduating
students of the Ambedkar University in Lucknow last week, invoked the Dalit
icon. He talked about Ambedkar’s struggles and travails, and said his refusal
to complain was what made him great. His tough experiences did not make him
bitter, and instead of complaining and criticising, Ambedkar dedicated himself
to the task of nation building.
Modi’s speech echoed the remarks of Union home Rajnath Singh
at a debate during the winter session of Parliament on rising intolerance in
the country. Singh cited Ambedkar to run down actor Aamir Khan, who had sparked
controversy after saying that his wife had discussed leaving India because she
felt unsafe in the country. Singh said that Ambedkar had faced insults and humiliation
but had never contemplated leaving the country; he endured and chose to remain
in India. It is a different matter that Aamir Khan did not actually
say that he or his wife wanted to leave India. He had only expressed disquiet
that religious and cultural minorities were increasingly under attack for their
food habits, lifestyles or increasing numbers.
Safeguarding democracy
Babasaheb Ambedkar, an icon of Dalit protest all over India,
is now being moulded into a nationalist, as someone who drafted our
constitution and framed laws. Our duty as citizens remains to follow those laws
and serve the nation. It is only in this way can we be his true followers,
according to prevailing narrative. The act of criticism is central to democracy, which begins
and ends with the people. Sovereignty ultimately lies with the people. The
people are above the government, the state, and even the nation. There are no
holy cows in a democracy.
In the recent past, since this government came to power,
criticism has been seen as a seditious act and efforts have been made to
criminalise and outlaw it. We have heard the spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata
Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Union government attack late
Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula and his colleagues for criticising
the hanging of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon. We were asked not
to sympathise with Vemula, who committed suicide last week, as he was espousing
an anti-national cause.
It is this context, in which the people – especially those
from the most oppressed sections – are being told to be good, non-complaining
citizens. that the president’s words shine as a beacon of hope. The president also makes other interesting points in his
speech.
Reverence for the past is one of the essential ingredients
of nationalism. Our finest inheritance, the institutions of democracy, ensure
to all citizens justice, equality, and gender and economic equity. When grim
instances of violence hit at these established values which are at the core of
our nationhood, it is time to take note. We must guard ourselves against the
forces of violence, intolerance and unreason.
In discussing the importance of showing reverence for the
past, the president does not hark back to ancient times. He does not refer to
some mythological past. According to him, it is the institutions of democracy
that are our most valuable inheritance. The values we need to cherish and
defend are the values of justice, equality, and gender and economic equality.
These are very modern and democratic values. It is the institutional processes
which ensure that these values are realised for the well-being of the people.
The president wants us to guard ourselves against the forces
of violence, intolerance and unreason that undermine and destroy our
institutional life. Intolerance is the one word this government would not have
wanted to figure in the president’s speech. It does not take extraordinary
intelligence to know which forces of violence were being alluded to by the
President.
Fountain of knowledge
President Pranab Mukherjee frequently visits central
universities. Teachers have been aggrieved by his silence on the recent
developments at Hyderabad Central University. The last portion of his speech
seeks to make amends. His convocation speeches often lament the failure of
Indian universities to feature in the top 200 institutions of higher learning.
On this occasion, he felt it necessary to say that to become world class,
universities need approach knowledge differently:
An ecosystem that fosters critical thinking and makes
teaching intellectually stimulating is necessary. It must inspire scholarship
and encourage unfettered respect for knowledge and teachers. …. It must breed a
culture of deep thought and create an environment of contemplation and inner
peace. Through an open-minded approach to the wider spectrum of ideas emanating
from within, our academic institutions must become world-class.
These statements are refreshing because the words
“knowledge” and “critical thinking” feature in an official discourse after a
very long time. We do not hear these words even on platforms such as the Indian
Science Congress. The president argues for an open -minded approach to the
wider spectrum of ideas. But this cannot be done if you are fettered by
nationalism or culturalism. The speech lifts itself to a higher plane by calling upon
the people in general and scholars in particular to develop and inculcate a
culture of deep thought and contemplation.
Theodore Adorno, in his essay Education After
Auschwitz ponders the means to prevent the recurrence of atrocities
against minorities:
I do not believe it would help much to appeal to eternal
values, at which the very people who prone to commit such atrocities would
merely shrug their shoulders. I also do not believe that enlightenment about
the positive qualities possessed by persecuted minorities would be of much use.
The roots must be sought in the persecutors, not in the victims, who are
murdered under the paltriest of pretences.
Adorno further says:
It is not the victims who are guilty… .Only those who
unreflectingly vented their hate and aggression upon them are guilty. One must
labour against this lack of reflection, must dissuade people from striking
outward without reflecting upon themselves. The only education that has any
sense at all is an education toward critical self-reflection.
The President expresses an Adornian concern when he says:
Peace is the primary objective of a rational consciousness
as well as our moral universe. It is the foundation of civilisation and a
necessity for economic progress. And yet, we have never been able to answer a
simple question: why does peace remain so elusive? Why has peace been so much
more difficult to attain than degenerate conflict?
How do we educate for peace or against violence? What should
be the aim of education? It should not be the production of nationalist,
conforming subjects. It is, as the President says by quoting Sarvapalli
Radhakrishnan, to create a free and creative man.
The President is not a free man. He is aware that he is a
creature of the state, that he has to speak on behalf of a government which is
most conservative and illiberal in its outlook. Should the weakest and
oppressed lose hope in the nation? The President, in his own way, has chosen to
speak for an imagination of India, the yarns woven by the values of secularism,
equality, justice, and asks us to fearlessly defend this imagination.
