He is everywhere; most of us do not pass a day without seeing him. He peered at us as President Pranab Mukherjee addressed us on the eve of the Republic Day. Lately he has begun appearing on walls which used to be paan spit-stained, surrounded by strewn garbage. And he has been gone 68 years. He is Mahatma Gandhi, India's foremost political totem.
The last week of January should be declared a symbols week, in keeping with the fashion of naming days after events. It begins with the celebration of the birthday of another leader, by all accounts dead in an air crash 70 years ago, but fervently believed by legions to have survived and resurfaced in India in many disguises on numerous occasions. He lives in their memories, much like the chiranjeevi (immortal) Hanuman and others. It is quickly followed by the grand spectacle of the Republic Day parade, full of pomp and circumstance, and replete with honours bestowed on many citizens (some even posthumously, to complete the symbolic analogy). And it is rounded out by the ritualistic observance of two minutes' silence on the day of Gandhi's assassination. We have to remind ourselves to do so by sounding sirens, but the irony inherent in this fails to register on our collective conscience.
Anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists have traced the evolution of societies from their primitive beliefs in symbols and totemic beliefs to modernity, with logic and scientific temper as the anchors to behaviour. India, in its effort to leap-frog into a laic, secular, rational world has not quite shed its inherited religious orientation of thought. In the 21st century, we see the newly elected prime minister calling Parliament a temple of democracy, and prostrating himself as he entered it. He described the constitution as his holy book.
An individual can impose his religious iconology on temporal institutions and conventions, but a society must consider what they truly are: creations of people in keeping with their ethos and times. They do not have the power to transcend what we collectively are. If we want change, we must work for it and not expect that constitutional pronouncements or Parliamentary acts will by themselves do the trick.
The Indian caste system has governed society for over two millennia. The evil of untouchability has been around just as long. Legal measures alone cannot change the mindsets of a large population. The Americans abolished slavery 150 years ago, but it took another 100 years before all Americans could legally enjoy equal civil rights. Another 50 years on, a sitting president, arguably the most powerful individual in the world, has to battle opposition stemming in no small measure from the colour of his skin. Hollywood is astir because its establishment is still not sufficiently reflective of the populace.
It may be a truism to say that all of us Indians are guilty of caste consciousness and not free of prejudice against the scheduled castes. But that should not blind us to how deep these beliefs run. I have heard IAS probationers, who would soon have the responsibility to implement whatever inclusive laws we have or will enact, use "sched" (a more derogatory term cannot be imagined) to refer to their colleagues entering the premier civil service through reservations.
We perform rituals of passing laws to achieve whatever social justice we wish to achieve. When that does not happen, we pass yet more laws, with more stringent clauses at least on paper. We do not introspect, or else we would realise that much more needs to be done by way of social awakening and discourse before they could even begin to be taken seriously. Symbolic indignation at injustice gets prime-time news coverage, but leaves little impact thereafter.
We could wholly accept reservations in education and certain occupations as first steps towards positive discrimination to rectify centuries-old wrongs, but we do not realise that those not tutored in the rudiments of swimming would drown even in a reserved pool. And what could be a greater travesty of the noble aim, when virtually every group demands reservations?
Take the case of women's participation in democratic institutions. Laws now exist to set apart for women a third or more seats in local bodies, as well as certain positions by rotation. The most notable achievement of this legal entitlement has been the emergence of new political creature, the sarpanch pati, the husband of the titular office-holder who unabashedly exercises all her powers.
Ending class or gender discrimination effectively would require preparing all of society, to free it of shackles. Some years ago, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode decided to run a preparatory programme of a year for all those who suffered from handicaps due to previous education or absence of opportunities. It was believed to have worked. An all-women panchayat in Bhiwani Rohilla in Haryana was recently featured in the news. The head is a qualified college graduate, as are some of her colleagues. She spoke of the need for more schools at all levels to cater to the educational needs of young women. They have not encountered resistance from men. The village has 1,060 females for every thousand men. Numerous village milk co-operatives have highly active women members and elected officials. They have been empowered not because of any law, but because they care for the cattle and claim the income from dairying.
Social upliftment schemes of the government are increasingly named after whatever past icon the government has inducted into its pantheon. The likes of Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, B R Ambedkar (and earlier, the entire Gandhi-Nehru clan) are now reduced to being brand ambassadors of whatever strikes our rulers' fancy. Didn't Lord Rama's vanarsena scribble his name on rocks to build a floating bridge across the Palk Strait for rescuing Sita?
The short point is change occurs when we understand reality and take it upon ourselves to mend our ways. That change is lasting, unlike what the coercive power of law achieves. Recent television commercials about toilets, cleanliness, and education of the girl child will be far more effective in changing our behaviour and beliefs than weak laws or leaky programmes. Could those who have designed these campaigns also exercise their fertile imagination to right other fundamental wrongs that appear too stubborn to fade away?
We hear daily catchy, alliterative slogans and tag lines, much like the incantation of mantras at religious rituals. Ritual invocations of hollow symbols do not deliver results; actions do.
The writer taught at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand
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