On Thursday the 17th of April, Rajpath, the primary avenue in the Capital of India, connecting the official residence of the Supreme Commander of the Indian forces, the President of India, with India Gate, an arch that commemorates the dead soldiers who gave their lives fighting international wars, was transformed into a symbol of police and para-military State power as 20,000 uniformed personnel protected a ?flame? that the Chinese government wanted ?safe? from resident Tibetan protesters whose fellow men, women and children have been brutalised by China over decades.
For many, this Indian display of sheer bland ?might?, rather than a deft intellectual and diplomatic solution, made gigantic strides in reiterating the flabby reality of the Indian state.
We all know that any peaceful agitation can be barred by the brute might of the State machinery. In fact, we experienced arbitrary indignities till Gandhiji persuaded Indians across caste, creed and religion to make civil disobedience their mantra if they wanted to preserve their dignity as human beings. It is saddening to see modern India indulge in this kind of lathi power to appease a China that ceased to respect us as a nation aeons ago, that insults us with regularity and much more, but equally, a power that compels us to cringe and bow to its diplomatic blackmail.
Suppressing peaceful agitations with an arrogant show of state force needlessly pushes honest citizens asking for their human due towards militancy. It aggravates issues and prolongs them, transforming them into a problem that states, despite wielding huge economic and military power, find nearly impossible to deal with. The angst that prevailed with the unravelling of dictatorships of the last century, of Mao and Stalin, of Hitler and Mussolini; the brutal massacres and torture of innocent citizens who did not fall in line or were of another race; and more recently, the military failure of the US in Vietnam as it tried to kill ?communism?, and now in Afghanistan and Iraq because it cannot either comprehend or deal with Islam, should have taught India some lessons on how not to do it, and become an international leader of ?real? human causes.
It was this unthinking attitude towards peace in Kashmir that severely damaged our position in that state of the Indian Union, allowing for ruthless militancy to fight ?the forces?, till it became impossible to retreat. We are doing the same with oppressed and other marginal communities we like to brand as ?Naxals?, a movement that is fast enveloping India with armed revolt because no one was willing to listen to their concerns and needs when they agitated peacefully.
A government in denial calls this movement a ?law and order problem?! This lack of comprehension in government is frightening.
India and her citizens will never allow themselves to be ruled by policemen or generals. Gandhi taught us to revolt peacefully, and we will. Only an insecure and flabby state resorts to the use of brute force.
Those elected to power who permit this unintelligent option to prevail are traitors to Indian civilisation and its intrinsic strengths as well as staunch opponents of Mahatma Gandhi. They should say so.
Indians will rebel in fury. If our political class is to rule effectively to pull India out of the sickening mire and poverty, both economic and intellectual, it will have to make sure that the democratic process does not abdicate to brutal solutions in a desperate attempt to solve the glaring failures of bankrupt governance.
The Central leadership should have got the CPM chief to receive the torch at Writers Building, taken it in a procession to China Town in Kolkata, with red flags flying, and made China happy. Instead, India exposed an inability to honour the demand for human rights, a demand made by the Tibetan government and its people in exile in India. We had a kneejerk reaction. We took the easy option of using State power.
We failed.
