By Swapan Dasgupta
The protests that gripped Delhi over the past 10
days may have begun as a spontaneous expression of outrage against a
particularly brutal gang-rape. But somewhere along the way, they escalated into
something more far-reaching and yet ill-defined.
What makes citizens of India’s showcase Capital take
to the streets periodically— remember the similar response to Anna Hazare’s movement
last year—to vent their dissatisfaction against the ‘system’ is prone to
divergent interpretations. Can the unrest be attributed to the arrogance of the
rulers and the wide gulf that separates them from the ruled? Is it a problem
linked to breakneck urbanisation that nurtures aspiration but leads to the
simultaneous breakdown of established values? Alternatively, is ‘civil society’
a made-in-media tamasha?
Whatever the trigger, one thing is absolutely clear:
India’s political class has been left bewildered by the street protests
involving large numbers of mostly apolitical
and leaderless individuals. President Pranab Mukherjee’s son has quite rightly
been pilloried for his “denting and painting” remark but it is easy to
understand the incomprehension of a middle-aged inheritor whose own experiences
of student movements didn’t involve rubbing shoulders with “pretty women” in
western apparel.
In pre-liberalisation India, the angry young men and
women who burnt buses and threw crude bombs in Calcutta were invariably scruffy
and fitted a jholawala stereotype. Certainly, what was derisively called the
‘South Calcutta’ (or, for that matter, ‘South Delhi’ and ‘South Mumbai’) types
would never be seen chanting slogans on the streets. Until the anti-Mandal
protests of 1990, the creamy layer of the middle class was politically
invisible.
Yet, appearances can be remarkably deceptive. One of
the features of the media interviews of the protestors at India Gate was the
glaring mismatch between outward appearance and social status. A few of those
interviewed were extremely articulate in English, suggesting a privileged
schooling, but most of the women in jeans and fleece jackets were naturally at
ease in Hindi. There was little in their outward appearance to distinguish one
social set from another. Casual wear has become the great leveller.
For these lower middle class individuals, many of
whom come from India’s dynamic small towns, life in the metros is both
liberating and deeply oppressive. Their fierce desire for self-improvement in a
city that offers opportunities is coupled with an aspirational lifestyle which,
in the context of economic globalisation, also involves adopting the trappings
of westernisation. They have consciously broken away from the ‘behenji’ mould
that defined their mothers’ generation. At the same time, they are confronted by
the regressive patriarchal assumptions of neighbourhoods and workplaces where women
in trousers are typecast as ‘fast’ and ‘loose’, not least by a police force that
has internalised the khap panchayat ethos.
An earlier discourse suggested that this social
transformation would be met by Gen Next politicians who didn’t share the
fuddy-duddy assumptions of earlier leaders. However, as the Delhi protests vividly
revealed, labelling someone as the “youth icon” or proclaiming a young MP’s
familiarity with the social media didn’t qualify them to respond to the anger
with purposeful politics.
Why, it was often asked, didn’t Rahul Gandhi arrive
at India Gate to meet the aggrieved?
The answer is curiously simple. An overwhelming
majority of India’s young MPs are inheritors who have long been accustomed to
the aam aadmi looking up to the netas
with forlorn eyes and the leaders in turn responding with a show of noblesse oblige. For them, good politics
always meant doling out favours to a supplicant India.
The protestors who gathered to demand better
policing and exemplary punishment of molesters and rapists weren’t pleading
before dynastic icons with folded hands. They were self-confident, angry and
exasperated. They represented a new, assertive and even insolent India. Their expectations
couldn’t be met by discretionary hand-outs and even cash transfers. Their
demands are a key element of modern politics: the expectation that the state will
be responsive and efficient. The chalta
hai fatalism of an earlier age has been replaced by a voluble rejection of
a meek theek hai.
Sunday Times of India, December 30, 2012
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