Committed to lethargy, a nation "celebrates"

And what chaos there was for an hour, with the hundreds of cars that were parked that night outside Parliament House, with the announcer screaming for the vehicles to be brought and the cars still unable to make it! With 1800 people jammed in the Central Hall of Parliament and virtually all of them having been transported by car, the situation should have been anticipated. However, no thought had been given as to how they would get out.

Surely the situation which prevailed at the Wagah border — where young women, who had gone as part of a group to hold a torchlight procession to celebrate the memory of that memorable midnight fifty years ago, were roughed up by local people — could also have been anticipated and guarded against.

The much talked about `lack of enthusiasm’ did in no way apply to the average individual. You could sense it in the way the `mod’ Delhi college student forced her parents to walk down the length of Raj Path. In the solemn demeanour of another who stood still in front of India Gate for the first time in her life just to think about those unknown soldiers. You could perceive it in the zeal of schoolboys holding aloft the tricolour, or, in the night-long celebrations in the villages in far-off Goa. It is the government that has been apathetic.

The preparations for the golden jubilee celebrations should have started at least two years ago. Britain is already nearing the end of the millennium preparations. In fact, the Indian Independence day celebrations in the UK and the USA were much more organised.

Neither the Government of P V Narasimha Rao, nor that of H D Deve Gowda, nor for that matter the one headed by Inder Kumar Gujral showed the kind of forward planning that was required. A prestigious University actually received `instructions’ from the HRD Ministry just a few days before Independence Day that some kind of programme should be planned for the night of Aug 14! And this was proof, if proof was needed, of how late the government woke up.

Though there is a jumbo committee chaired by the Prime Minister on the golden jubilee celebrations, comprising ministers and chief ministers, their approach has been characteristically bureaucratic. All it takes to realise this is a glance at the brochure brought out by the HRD Ministry on the year-long programmes it has planned. It is produced on the glossiest of papers but seems to be the work of a Lower Division clerk and lists nothing more than activities such as inaugurals of sanitation programmes and blood donation camps. No imagination, no vision, only ritualistic mumbo-jumbo.

The Government could have called sarpanches from all over the country for the occasion. It is they who represent our grassroot democracy. Our overwhelming problems notwithstanding, if there is something we can celebrate at the end of fifty years, it is the fact that we remain a nation with a democratic form of government, however imperfect it may be. The panches and sarpanches might have had an idea or two about how to celebrate — and strengthen — this democracy. The feedback from them could have been a valuable input.

If nothing else, the Government could take steps to preserve places of pilgrimage of the freedom movement. What has happened to the hut in which Gandhiji lived in the Harijan Colony in Delhi and where the Congress Working Committee took the historic decision of Partition? Some attempt was made to clean up the place in Narasimha Rao’s time, but there has been no further progress.

Surely something should be done to maintain the various ashrams of Gandhi, Sabarmati, Wardha or Noakhali, which are run down and badly in need of funds. Let the job of planning be done by people other than politicians or bureaucrats. Let a fresh approach be evolved by, say, colleges.

There was also an attempt some years ago to look after the mazar of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the country’s first freedom fighter. Talks were held with the government of Myanmar — where the Emperor’s remains lie buried — but somehow they, too, petered out. No effort has been made to retrieve the diary of Bhagat Singh written in Lahore jail where he was imprisoned before being hanged. These are mere gestures but perhaps, they will help recreate the spirit of the freedom movement for a new generation, more than exhortations or homilies.

This week, Parliament is planning a special four-day session to commemorate the fifty years, and it is to be Purno Agitok Sangma’s show. The idea is to introspect on the country’s democratic experience, unencumbered by Parliamentary routine. It could become a worthwhile exercise if a decision was taken by all political groups jointly to allow members to speak without the constraint of following the party line.

According to the circular, the Lok Sabha Speaker hopes the MPs will try and set the agenda for the next millennium. As we try and preserve that `something’ which binds us as a nation, so eloquently put in Iqbals’ words, “Kuch baat hai ki hasti mitathi nahin humari, Yunan, Mishra, Roma mit gaye jehan se, ab tak magar hai baaki namon nishan hamara”, it is a shame that half our child population under five suffers from malnourishment.

But the country is now looking for prescriptions that go beyond trivia and hype. And we thus come a full circle — back to our lack of attention to detail, which betrays a disgraceful absence of commitment.