A resilient democracy must look beyond binaries

Ashwani Kumar

Former Union Minister for Law & Justice

THE nation has witnessed an unprecedented agitation by farmers over the past several weeks against what are widely perceived as unjust farm laws rushed through by the Central Government. The sight of farmers — peacefully voicing their conscientious opposition to these laws — being subjected to tear gas shells and water cannons has shamed the nation. The use of the State’s brute power against distraught farmers exercising their fundamental right of peaceful protest represents the ugly face of a dysfunctional democracy. It is a painful reminder of the Pagri Sambhal Jatta and the Champaran satyagraha movements led by Sardar Ajit Singh, the uncle of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, and Mahatma Gandhi, respectively, against the unjust agrarian laws imposed on a subject nation by the British colonialists. In reminding us that might without justice is tyrannical, these movements provided the foundational basis of free India’s republican charter. Tragically, it has fallen upon the heroic and venerated farming community of our country to remind the ruling dispensation of the lessons learnt under colonial rule.

Widespread opposition to the new laws across the nation, with several political parties announcing their support to the farmers, speaks for itself. Law, we are told, is the perfection of reason and as French philosopher Montesquieu reminded us, “it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision, and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effect of reasoning…”

Thus, laws untested in a free exchange of ideas and robbed of their moral and democratic legitimacy can have no claim to obedience by the people. The alienation of the dominant community in the country, including in the border state of Punjab that has for long borne the brunt of terrorism and insurgency sponsored from across the border, could destabilise peace in the state and adversely impact national security. However, instead of a meaningful and receptive conversation with a community in distress, an obdurate government is persisting in fallacy by resisting a demand for the repeal of laws premised on the basis that their enactment as Central laws is an impermissible encroachment on the states’ exclusive legislative domain. There is also a legitimate apprehension that incorporation of necessary changes within the existing legislative framework would lead to legal ambiguities, which will be counterproductive. The Supreme Court’s insipid intervention, in the meantime, limited thus far only to a declaration of pious intent, has brought neither hope nor succour to the bravehearts. The recent Congress-led protest march to Rashtrapati Bhawan in support of the protesting farmers resulted in the detention of political leaders — a painful betrayal of the founding fathers’ vision of freedom in a responsive democracy.

The agitation reaffirms that only through an assertion of people’s power through mass mobilisation can we secure the promise of an egalitarian democracy, when confronted with the State’s brazen disdain for popular sensitivities. Empathy for the agitating farmers shows that freedom and justice survive in the consciousness of the people and a democratic nation’s political narrative is located in the people’s assertion against injustice. It tells us that every Indian matters and matters equally; that human conscience cannot be suppressed forever and that the first step towards healing is in the sharing of pain. The lasting message of the movement is that a humiliated people fighting for their dignity carry a far greater emotional weight than the temptations offered by those hung on power and hanging around the ‘skirts of majesty’. It tells us that the uncoerced allegiance of a proud people can be ensured only through just laws. As to the government’s claim that contested laws are in farmers’ interest, we know from Pascal that “people are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”

Hopefully, the ruling dispensation will remind itself that those who do not learn from history are condemned by it. The agitation by the farmers is a watershed in the history of our democratic evolution and reminds us that a resilient democracy needs to look beyond the binaries and recognise shades of grey. We can ill afford divisive politics that limits our capacity as a nation. Neither can we condone a fading sense of compassion that defines our humanity. A nation yearning to play its rightful role in the shaping of a new world order based on inalienable human rights must locate its future in an elevating politics committed to inclusion, justice and dignity for all.

Lest the protesters’ anger, anguish and a sense of hopelessness result in their irreversible alienation, the government must answer their call in a spirit of paternal acceptance of their just demands. Our farmers, after all, represent the soul of India, as the Father of the Nation never tired of reminding us. The alternative is an unthinkable foray into a spiral of extreme disaffection and unrest. Consider the loud echo of this verse of Majaz Lakhnawi in the context of the agitating farmers:

Dil mein ek shola bhadak utha hai aakhir kya karun

Mera paimaana chhalak utha hai aakhir kya karun

Zakhm seene ka mahak utha hai aakhir kya karun

Ai gham-e-dil kya karun ai vahshat-e-dil kya karun

(Within my heart an ember has burst into flames, what, after all, can I do?

My goblet is full, it spills over, what, after all, can I do?

The wound in my chest emits an overpowering smell, what, after all, can I do?

O, sorrowful heart, O, desolate heart, what, after all, can I do?)

As we enter the New Year, can we hope for a happier and caring India in which the helplessness expressed by the poet will become history?

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