In this article, I’ll seek to question the readers and answer a few questions baffling me and those around us for quite some days now. In the face of constant upheaval of the politicians telling us through their forced propaganda what the public seeks, there is created a space of fake unanimity where every person believes the ‘other’ to desire what they are telling us. These questions of imposed desires have to be rethought.
Do we really have to believe millions of people in India living in shackles and possessing Ujjwala gas stoves without kerosene, that 31 million unemployed pining for work can relate to the ‘airstrikes’ and revenge on our so called ‘enemies’? All of this is a matter of misplaced priorities wherein real concerns of the people have been overlooked to seek out the ‘greater good’ of the country. This greatness of and pride for a country, that is a territorially bounded geographical space governed by a single political structure, seeks to unify those living in here by conveniently creating an ‘other’ both internally and externally.
A recent field research of The Wire, found the people living in Kutch, Gujarat near the borders to be suffering from one of the worst droughts in years. Those people noted how the recent standoff and insecurity created due to the Pulwama incident did not scare them but the threat due to unavailability of relief for the drought did. This should be an eye opener for those who think people in the country prioritize war on an unknown and created ‘other’ over their daily survival. The hype for war is thus, created, and imposed on us, making us believe something so much beyond our comprehensibility and relatability that we suppose it is the truth.
Children, in schools, who are the softest targets, are taught how the state’s need of obliterating another country is far greater than their own education and meals. The subservience of the self to the state is a propagandist behaviour of every authoritarian and totalitarian government. We have to be bold enough to analyse that India is heading towards that direction under the current regime and further years of this continuous brainwashing will only strengthen such authoritarian tendencies.
In March this year, 450 candidates of School Service Commission Examination in Bengal, engaged in a hunger strike protesting against the withholding of their recruitment even after clearing the examinations. The state government took 28 days to promise better conditions and posts ending the hunger strike which caused over 80 protestors to fall sick and two women to suffer miscarriages. Such incidents make us question wherein do the priorities of the state and government lie and if there is anywhere a meeting ground of the citizens and the state.
Each day we see among people and the media craving for Kashmir while ignoring their basic needs. The issue of Kashmir creates much debate, discussions and tensions. However, it is to be noticed that the Kashmiris themselves cannot exercise or assert their agency over the issues that directly concern them. The state always manages to intervene and speak on their behalf without bothering to inquire about what they want. Kashmir has been, since long, used as a ploy by two countries as a battleground to create diversions and distractions from real issues.
Furthermore, the state abstracts the discourse on Kashmir by disallowing free press to circulate in that region. The death of about 400 people in Kashmir in 2018 due to violence, according to Reuters, is quite an abnormal number compared to deaths due to violence in the rest of India. However, this ‘abnormality’ has been normalised to further perpetuate violence. The governments use this created sense of distance between ‘Indians’ and ‘Kashmiris’ to perpetuate with their own agenda. The real question of Kashmiris’ desires gets lost somewhere amidst the state’s hunger for power.
At this juncture, asking rational questions and speaking truth to those in power is of utmost importance. Issues at the grass-root level have to be worked with. Prioritizing the people, workers, labourers, students and intellectuals over a community imagined through the prism of exclusion is the need of the hour. Let us not be afraid of asking questions and seeking answers to what we deem important, for us and for India at the margins.
Lokayata 