The Indian Revolution

For nearly a hundred years Marxists have been plotting and prophesying the Indian Revolution and the Maoists have been ritualistically offering adivasi blood to recycle the Chinese Revolution. But all this while, without much ado, the Indian Revolution has been happening at a Hindu rate of growth — at a painfully slow pace. The latest golden glimmer of it is Neeraj Chopra from Khandra village in Haryana’s Panipat. His father is from a poor joint family of many brothers with about 10 acres of land and no means for first-world facilities or even an athlete’s diet — Neeraj was a vegetarian to begin with, like most others of his Ror community.

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This is the Indian uprising, whose vanguard is the lower middle class, semi-literate, sometimes desperately poor, deeply rooted in traditions and WhatsApp universities, tied to the village, believers and amazingly aspirational. They are the engines of the nation’s imagination; totally antithetical to the value systems of the elite. They too might become the elite in a couple of generations, but till then they create the dreams for a new India. What else explains the strange desi phenomenon of the elite schools producing kurta-clad rulers while the government ones in remote tribal hamlets churn out Deep Grace Ekkas?

There are tribals, Dalits, minorities, OBCs and upper castes amongst the Indian sporting heroes, and just about every part of the country is represented. But the common feature for these athletes is that not a single person has a privileged upbringing (apart from those participating in patently rich man’s events like shooting). Unseeingly, unknowingly, the society has been throwing up fired-up youngsters from down below, beating all odds and conquering the world for themselves and the nation. It is time for us to map the pattern emerging in the villages from Panipat in Haryana to Sundargarh in Odisha. Is this how radical change happens in India without Maoist butchery or Talibanesque beheading, despite deadly caste oppression and the Ranvir Senas?

Nisha Warsi, the daughter of a poor Muslim tailor from Sonepat, not only avenged the humiliation of her family for having daughters but also changed the dress code of the mohalla by being the winner in shorts. No sermons, no political theories, no pamphlets and no guns fired; but an ordinary girl’s extraordinary commitment brings about societal validation for change. The Dalit part of Uttarakhand’s Roshnabad village has been suffering immense discrimination after the dominant castes had come into money, selling off their land and thus alienating themselves from Dalit labourers. But the casteist slurs against hat-trick scorer Vandana Katariya have landed her neighbours in police custody. No mean achievement in a terribly caste-ridden locality, where the police refuse to book the perpetrators of caste atrocities.

Of course, our oppressive society does not change overnight, but the very fact that it has to acknowledge and even worship heroes from the dusty villages, Dalit shanties and tribal colonies is proof of opportunity and possibility for change. Socially, these simple, deeply religious people may come across as illiberal to the city-slickers. After all, these very same villages and communities can also cast murderers in the shape of cow vigilantes and bigots. It is this class’s aspiration that marks them out as different. If they are offered land and water, they will produce bumper crops; if they are assured of jobs, they will run and wrestle. Incidentally, the recruitment into the armed forces is a similar saga of grit to progress and prosper. Much of the social elite of north India owes its status to the recruitment to the British forces during the World Wars.

Every recent effort in political mobilisation is aimed at this class, be it the Mandal drive to seek OBC votes, the temple agitation promoting non-dominant OBC leadership, the giant rural employment guarantee scheme of Sonia Gandhi’s Congress and, of course, the anti-elite attack of the Kejri-Hazare team, which was hijacked by the BJP. The Aam Aadmi, derisively termed the mango man, is this lower middle class rural aspirant, eternally hopeful of change. It is his optimism that is getting tapped and turned into political energy. He can get excited and incited to commit violence if he is convinced of the ‘other’ robbing him of his opportunity. Unfortunately, the ‘other’ keeps shifting: while the Mandalites shape the upper castes as the ‘other’, the Hindutvavadis caricature Muslims as the ‘other’, denying the aspirational class their destiny.

The latest faultlines are getting drawn over the caste census. Those who refused to publish the caste census when it was first conducted and while they were in power now want to do that to prove that the upper castes are in a terrible minority and yet they are occupying positions of importance vastly disproportional to their numerical strength. The Mandalites believe that this attack on Brahmins, Baniyas and Thakurs — Hindutva’s core constituency — will trigger a social divide that can bring in political dividends. That is a possibility, but it can get neutralised by the Sangh Parivar creating a stronger OBC leadership than that of Modi’s.

Ideally, the fight over the political spoils of the caste census should end up with another instance of national upheaval. While there is a possibility of a large section of upper castes like the Marathas and Jats getting co-opted as OBCs, the remaining ones should be confined to the Economically Weaker Section quota, thereby dividing government jobs only in terms of quotas. Right now, the Dalits and upper castes have a privilege: the rich compete and take a disproportionate advantage against the poor among them. Once the caste census is published and the quota division of the job cookie is done, all government jobs should be reserved for those below the creamy layer, for those who studied in government schools.

Reconciliation, assimilation and renunciation are the beautiful aspects of the Gandhian Revolution that won us our freedom. In the seventy-fifth year of our Independence, the empowered lot should willingly give way to the lesser privileged. After having been a beneficiary for god knows how many generations, I have no qualms in declaring my children ineligible for government jobs.

If with nobody’s help a Dalit dhaba cleaner can be part of the world’s third-best hockey team, a bureaucracy of the aspirational class might turn us into world leaders. Long live the Indian Revolution! Happy Independence Day.