The Constitution of India came into effect more than 70 years ago, on January 26, 1950. What should have been a joyous occasion was darkened this year, by the long shadows that the dilution of Article 370 in Kashmir and the adoption of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) by Parliament have cast over the sanctity of the Constitution. That apart, January 30, the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, was sullied by the ways in which the ruling dispensation has sought to dilute or deny the historical facts around the Mahatma’s murder, and glorify both his assassin, Nathuram Godse, and Godse’s guru, V.D. Savarkar, the original proponent of Hindutva.
People’s power
While both official anniversaries of January 26 and 30 seem to ring hollow, given the conflict between their secular spirit and the sectarian narrative being pushed by the incumbent government, India is bubbling over with Gandhian forms of resistance to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah regime’s majoritarianism.
Since mid-December, when the authorities attacked first the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi and then the Aligarh Muslim University, Indian citizens — especially students, minorities and secularists — have come out on the streets to protest the imposition of the new citizenship laws, as well as the attempt to dismantle publicly-funded higher education as a matter of state policy. Places like Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, Park Circus in Kolkata, Gateway of India in Mumbai and the Town Hall in Bengaluru have become iconic sites of the new non-violent civil disobedience. Most striking has been the emergence of Muslim women, twice disenfranchised by minority religious status as well as by gender, as the strongest voices against a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
With India’s Opposition parties at an all-time low in terms of electoral strength and moral appeal, popular protests seem to be completely lacking in political leadership or ideological coherence. And yet, they are not abating, with thousands, and sometimes lakhs, of people showing up, even in small towns, at short notice.
Demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, strikes and boycott or occupy actions by citizens have been peaceful, even in the face of Section 144 restrictions, egregious police violence (including beatings, arson, tear-gassing and shooting), large-scale arrests and detentions, Internet shutdowns and extreme surveillance by security agencies.
It might have been somewhat easier to come out in large numbers in non-BJP ruled states like Maharashtra, Kerala and West Bengal, but there have been vigorous protests across the board, in Delhi, Assam, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as well, despite severe curbs to the right of citizens to gather, march and express their dissent.
In Uttar Pradesh, under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who tries to model himself on Mr. Modi when the latter was Chief Minister of Gujarat, close to 30 unarmed civilians, including children, were killed in December 2019 alone. Legislatures of some States have passed resolutions against the CAA, signalling their defiance against the Act, which was passed by a majority vote in both Houses of Parliament.
The poetry of nationalism
What is most striking about the current wave of anti-CAA sentiment sweeping India is the way in which symbols and slogans of India’s secularism have been vigorously reclaimed and reasserted by ordinary citizens.
The national anthem, the national flag, the book of the Constitution (but especially its Preamble), photographs of Mahatma Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar, songs like “Saare jahaan se accha” by Mohammad Iqbal; “Hum dekhenge” by Faiz Ahmed Faiz; a longer, unedited version of the lyrics by Rabindranath Tagore that became the national anthem “Jana Gana Mana”; nationalist-era chants of “Azadi” (Freedom), “Swaraj” (Self-Rule) and “Inquilaab” (Revolution) — this dormant repertoire has suddenly made a comeback, capturing the imagination of a new generation as it finds its political feet under the shadow of Hindutva.
In posters and murals on walls and online, on the streets and on screens, India’s youth, women and minorities are embracing the very repertoire of poetry, music, art and theatre that they were told had died along with the Congress Party, the Nehruvian state and the secular-liberal elite that dominated postcolonial politics until recently. New songs are being sung, new poetry written, new slogans coined and new art is emerging every day in defiance of the Home Minister who is adamant about enforcing the new citizenship laws and the Prime Minister who feigns ignorance of this seething public unrest.
Despite frequent and long-running suspensions of the Internet in the Northeast, and massive police and paramilitary deployment in many parts of the country, public expressions of patriotic attachment to the original “idea of India” seem unstoppable.
Aesthetic appeal of artefacts
India’s struggle for independence from British rule involved generations of writers, artists, intellectuals and students, and gave the new nation a set of shared artefacts with both moral meaning and aesthetic appeal. Hindu nationalism, inherently narrow, divisive and chauvinistic, lacks the capacity to create enduring icons of identity and solidarity that can cut across religious, linguistic, gender and caste differences to make people feel involved and invested in a common political project.
Tagore’s poems, Nehru’s speeches, Gandhi’s khadi and charkha , the Sarnath Lion Capital adopted as the national emblem, and the Ashokan dhamma chakra placed at the centre of the national flag — these were not random choices nor empty gestures, but rather symbols of substance that held millions of newly-minted Indian citizens together in a shared dream of freedom, equality and justice.
The secular and inclusive character of these symbols, and their reference to a long history of coexistence between the myriad communities that constitute India, made them immediately recognisable to the world’s most diverse population merging and melding within one nation.
In their darkest hour, Indians are standing up to own what truly belongs to them. They are absolutely certain that the tricoloured flag cannot be replaced by the monochrome saffron pennant of the Hindu supremacists. They are holding on, harder than ever, to the simple yet powerful words of the Preamble, where the people of India resolved to constitute to the country into a “sovereign, secular, socialist, democratic republic”, to secure to its citizens “justice, liberty and equality” and promote among them a spirit of fraternity.
Ananya Vajpeyi, a Fellow at CSDS in New Delhi, is currently a Visiting Fellow at CRASSH University of Cambridge
