By Amitabh Ranjan
The month that just went by was heady. The spectacle from the heart of Delhi was like a waft of fresh air that all of us, as it were, were gasping for. Someday, when the zeitgeist of our times is written down, Jantar Mantar will be mentioned in glowing terms. On a midsummer sweaty afternoon on July 25, basking in media glare after the resignation of the Union education minister, the immediate demand of the protesting students, their leader Abhijeet Dipke said something that betrayed a rare wisdom if one were to go by his youthful years. He said, “Don’t make me a hero because of Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. The country has been ruined because one person has been made a hero.”
Dipke’s words have an uncanny resonance with what political scientist Neera Chandhoke says in the introduction to her latest book, Languages of Freedom. She sees in Indians a troublesome propensity to apotheosise leaders at whose feet they lay their liberties. And this has proved costly. For, when they do so, their freedom to think, act, and express themselves is suspended; these liberties are placed at the mercy of those in power, who seek to order society in one way or another. The exercise of power demands compliance, and compliance costs freedom.
Chandhoke’s book could not have come at a more opportune time. In five insightfully written essays of rare scholarship, she tackles the strands that go with the idea of freedom, what it should mean, and what abounds under the current dominant religious-political ecosystem. Subtitled The Idea of India in Political Theory, Bombay Cinema, and Progressive Urdu Poetry, the author presents and analyses how freedom was conceptualised in the languages of political, literary, and cultural stalwarts of India, how it was claimed by a disparate group, and how in recent times, rabid Hindutva nationalism is desperate to stifle it.
Starting with the concept of ‘swaraj’ that for the first time found expression in Dadabhai Naoroji’s speech in Calcutta in 1906 before it entered India’s political lexicon, the author traces its ethical-moral transformation as a tool of non-violent mass mobilisation in the hands of Gandhi. It is here that the author deals at length with what she calls the Gandhian paradox, proffering an engrossing read. She is not disenchanted with him. He was the man of the moment. He was a liberal to the core in the line of home-grown moderns like Vivekananda and Aurobindo. However, the idiom he deployed to distinguish India from the materialist West was that of upper-caste Hinduism. The use of such words from Indian classics like ahimsa, karma, Ram Rajya, sarvodaya, and swaraj itself, tried to strike homogeneity in a multi-religious society. This legacy bedevils our society till today.
At another level, Gandhi’s ideal society, a utopia, was so perfect that it foreclosed any political struggles. Therein lay a fundamental flaw. For, it is through politics that people with all their differences negotiate how they are to live together without extinguishing one another’s freedom. It was quite ironical too when one realises that Gandhi devised some of the most successful mass movements when it came to getting rid of the British yoke.
One of the essays deals with the formation of the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) in 1936. Predominantly shaped by Urdu literary figures such as Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Sajjad Zaheer, Ismat Chughtai, Sahir Ludhianvi, and Saadat Hasan Manto, among others, it gradually united a diverse spectrum of literary voices across the subcontinent. Interestingly, its inaugural landmark speech titled Sahitya ka Udeshya (The Purpose of Literature), in Lucknow, was delivered by none other than Munshi Premchand. These writers reflected the spirit of emancipation, using their works as a tool of social change, economic justice, and anti-imperialism.
In this context, what may have fell off Chandhoke’s attention was the role played by pre-independence nationalist Urdu newspapers like Pratap, Bande Mataram, Siyasat, Milap an Inqilab, whose ownership was shared both by Hindus and Muslims. When Gandhi asked the press to express their opinion freely, Urdu editors delivered with courage, the language itself emerging as a composite cultural bridge of a people diverse and oppressed. This would have sat pretty well with the scheme of this book as the popular notion, more designed than spontaneous, of Urdu being a language of the Muslims alone, has been a grandstanding fallacy of our times.
The essay, Films as Critiques of Unfreedom, looks at the influence of cultural platforms like the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and Hindi cinema. In fact, what was started by the PWA in the 1930s, was carried forward by IPTA and the films in the following decades. Directors such as V Shantaram, Guru Dutt, and Bimal Roy exposed the severe limits on political freedom in everyday life for a populace tied down by poverty, caste and economic inequality.
As the book comes to an end, it poses a difficult question: Can India think politically in its own voice after colonialism? What would it mean to write an Indian political theory grounded in our histories, yet alive to the present? The author provides a backdrop to this existential question in the second essay itself where she dissects the cultural context, which, in the case of India, is a troubled concept, inheriting over the ages plural traditions.
In her Afterword, the author says she does not wish to tell her fellow political thinkers how to write a political theory that is inherently ours. So, what does the book achieve? The answer: The author expands on the repertoire of rights for citizens, asserting that freedom is fluid, never settled. It needs to be argued over in languages that span politics, philosophy, literature, and other legacies that represent a composite culture — the sanjhi virasat.
The book is worth a read for the simple reason that it provokes us — the people — to rethink the ideas that bind us together.
The writer is a former journalist who teaches at Patna Women’s College
Languages of Freedom: The Idea of India in Political Theory, Bombay Cinema, and Progressive
Urdu Poetry
Neera Chandhoke
Speaking Tiger Books
Pp 336, Rs 699