The general election results confirm how individual and collective dissent help keep the spirit of democracy alive
BJP workers watch the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha election at the party office in New Delhi on June 4. Pic/PTI
Having held back any sensation of hope over the last few weeks for fear of catastrophic disappointment, yesterday, as the Indian election results sunk in, I allowed myself to feel joy and elation. As it became clearer that the spirit of democracy in our country had been saved by those who experience the most precarity, from people who suffer caste discrimination to women in rural areas, I felt overwhelmed and couldn’t stop myself from welling up. I was home alone for a few hours and kept wishing I was back in Delhi with friends with whom I could celebrate this triumph. For it does feel like a triumph, even if the larger outcome is not necessarily what I may have desired. For the first time in a decade, I felt a sense of relief, like a gag had been removed from my mouth and I could speak again. I messaged my best friend. I told her we haven’t even begun to process how oppressive the last ten years have been, particularly given we both work in the media.
Then I made the mistake of turning to Indian news channels to ‘feel the vibe’ and felt assaulted by the tone of sycophancy that continued to pervade, as if none of the journalists had got the brief. The propaganda machine was continuing to churn, with no sign of pausing for reflection or contemplation. It drove home the point that one of the biggest casualties of the political reality we have all lived over the last ten years has been the cauterising of the media and how it was instrumentalised to perform lip service to the ruling party, to be its bitch, to use cruder language. It has been so hard to find ‘real news’, news that isn’t tainted by propaganda, that isn’t coloured by a certain ideological questioning, news that treats readers and viewers like intelligent people with brains rather than puppets.
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A day later I feel a bit more sober. The triumphant feeling is still there, because of the excitement of entering a new period of politics where coalition is once again the norm and where power doesn’t feel absolute or concentrated and where there will have to be room for negotiation. The people, indeed, have spoken against the narrative of development and growth at the expense of their dignity. The people have managed to ‘see through’ hate-mongering rhetoric in the absence of an enlightened media, and against the backdrop of propaganda and favouritism. For the first time in a decade, we have what appears to a united Opposition.
I am unsure how all of this will translate into reality. I want things to change. I do not want to see images of our leader plastered over every surface inch of available space. I want to see work being done, change in action, because there is so much to do. I want to see more Dalit voices being centred and less Hindu fanaticism. I want to see less divisive rhetoric and hear more talk about our coming together while recognising our differences. At such a moment when world politics reveals a crisis of democracy, I would love for India and for Indians to actually embody that the system still works.
A lot of my prayers, intentions and visions stem from the heart of someone who is making peace with being an immigrant, after having lived all my life in India. I feel a powerlessness at the level of citizenry I have never felt before. Distance made it impossible for me to vote back home and my residential status as a non-citizen means I have no say in undoing Italian right-wing politics. This doesn’t mean I am not part of the resistance in both spaces. These recent results, if nothing, confirm how it takes so many different forms of individual and collective resistance to keep the spirit of democracy alive, to allow it to function and thrive. I am thinking of all the people who have exercised their rights as citizens and helped bring to light crucial information about electoral bonds, for example. I am thinking of citizens who are performing resistance from their jail cells, who are continuing to be held as political prisoners on trumped-up charges. I am thinking about all of those who have been living with the fear of being interrogated on the basis of what books their private libraries hold. I am thinking about the fact that a John Oliver episode critiquing the ruling government is not allowed to even be streamed in India. I dream of a government that is not afraid of criticism, that seeks it out, that nourishes the spirit of dissent and disagreement. That is what we deserve, a government that cares about its people and not about appearances or rhetoric, and most significantly, a government that regards our constitution with the reverence it deserves.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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