The vote has become a liberator, but caste has subsumed the equality of the vote Aruna Roy

The elite talk about the value of democracy, but it is the poor who have more than any other group fought to protect it. The India they see, and the future they dream of, may seemingly contradict mine at many places. Their dreams of a polyester-swathed beauty may hurt my sense of aesthetics, and I might want to hear the music of Bismillah Khan and they, the latest film hits. But these are superficial factors that do not reflect what we stand for together. By osmosis, and by having been so much a part of a collective journey, we share a dream, and a vision of a more equitable and just India.

I have been called a grass-root fundamentalist by some of my urban friends. But life and living in rural India has also saved me from the cynicism that has overtaken the urban middle class. Mainstream politics in post-Independence India has certainly been a cause for despair. Time was when the privileged were concerned about their social responsibilities and when the country’s future was built through open debate, inviting criticism and contradiction. Can we conceive of a debate between the likes of Ambedkar and Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, between M N Roy and Aruna Asaf Ali, Annie Besant and Sarojini Naidu, Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose, watched over indulgently by Tagore, in the India of 2007? Where are the personalities who are going to determine our future? Not only are they absent from our political arena, but they seem to be missing from the panel of architects of our collective future.

We err in trying to look for replicas in their mould from the middle class, which gave them the context to frame a new India. The future now rests with a completely different group, and leadership will come from ongoing processes of change that need to be nurtured. If we have the perceptivity, we will recognise the heroism that has compelled simple ordinary women and men to challenge injustice, and fight to protect ethical and political values which the older generation took as given.

Projecting our dreams and vision is also hampered by the colonisation of language. Governance cannot be explained by words which hide more than they define. An economic ideology that deprives people the political right to decide for themselves, uses constant doublespeak about a ‘free and open market’. It is in fact manipulated in every way. Everything has a price, and money is used to purchase everything, including decisions. Legal regimes are used to sanctify any form of systemic injustice, displacing not just people, but even their vision of a future. Is it democracy when tools of control are used to snuff out protest, and “protecting freedom” is used as an excuse to wipe out the right to a different world view?

Large numbers of citizens of independent India have to struggle for food, fight for the right to sleep on a pavement, thicken their skins to deal with the cold, and we celebrate growth rates ! What does 60 years of Independence mean to these communities?

It is a national shame that we still have such large numbers of people who go to sleep hungry every day. A few days of real hunger would teach us more about economics than any economics or management course. Just spend one winter night on the pavements outside Red Fort and it will change your life. Spend 24 hours as a member of a minority community during communal tension, and you will redefine fear. The experience of deprivation and insecurity would probably unsettle our sense of well-being, and shock us into some kind of action. But are we willing to be open to the suffering of others?

Despite our many failings, people have successfully struggled for transformation. The empowerment and liberation of millions of Dalits from a stranglehold of permanent oppression and inequality has been an extraordinary story of fundamental change. The tragedy is that they were forced into finding solutions from within the paradigm of caste equations. No one is more responsible than the privileged elite for the very strong foundations of new caste equations that have given space to casteist leadership in India. For the Dalits of independent India, it became clear soon enough that equality would never come as it should have, from a free and equal education. They have used voting blocs and the power of numbers to ensure the security and liberation of their caste and sub-caste. The vote has become a liberator, but caste has subsumed the equality of the vote.

The elite who lament the power of these new caste equations need to ask themselves what they did, to genuinely provide equality of opportunity. They need to understand that even in free-market, urbanised India, untouchability might disappear but the prejudice of caste can and will subsume market forces. The riddle of caste is still far from being solved.

Democracy is an untidy complex form of governance, and our experience has borne that out. While we have many abject failures, its acceptability remains our greatest area of consensus. Our prospect as a nation is inextricably interlinked with our democratic future. In democracy lie our greatest challenges and areas of hope. Will we have the wisdom to understand that Indian majorities are a collage of minorities; the sensitivity to listen to the voices of despair; the courage to accept the voices of truth; the maturity to contain voices of dissent; the intelligence to choose our own path; the foresight to look beyond immediate gains; and the humility to understand that human beings are a very small subset of nature?

In the midst of so much talk of becoming a superpower, it is in how we answer these uncomfortable questions, that we will create our collective future.

“The light has gone out of our lives.” Just over a year before a nation celebrated its birth, the man about whom these words were spoken had gone out in the dark, to keep some hope and light alive. That effort finally led to his premature death, but the legacy he left us was a challenge that we would be able to assure every Indian citizen security, and a sense of belonging. Sixty years after that walk into the long night, the flicker remains a crucial link with humanity.

More important than the dazzling lights is the lonely light in the dark. More important than the number of billionaires must be our concern for the last person. For any future we build, an inclusive, pluralistic, compassionate India is a lowest common denominator.

The writer is a social activist who initiated the RTI movement and winner of the Magsaysay Award