GANDHI BELIEVED IN an intricate connection between body politic and the corporeal body. His idea of swaraj was not simply about political freedom and rights but producing truly sovereign selves that claimed autonomy and dignity through the principle of co-responsibility. As individuals and collective, we need to take responsibility for injustice and uncivility, even if we are not directly responsible for the acts of exclusion and discrimination. It is not in directly intervening, blaming and criticizing that one fulfills one’s responsibility but in becoming an exemplar that sets an example for others to follow. One inspires others in praxis and not in making propositional claims. It is in one’s preparedness for suffering and facing and owning the responsibility for the consequences that one generates a moral experience. If you break the law, you should also court arrest. A satyagrahi has to feel and experience, not in merely changing one’s consciousness and ideology but in changing one’s relation with the body politic.
Gandhi was deeply involved in trying to stall the growing communal violence in Noah Khali in Bengal. It was also the same time that he was carrying out his experiments in Bramhacharya. Bramhacharya here is not merely about celibacy but about supreme self-restraint that generates soul force, which travels and creates a moral force on others. It is an intangible psychic energy that can be felt but cannot be seen. Similar is Gandhi’s invocation of fasting. Fasting is an ability to convey the purity of one’s intention. It is in creating the vulnerability that one gains power and control. Power is in regulating one’s own self and not in dominating others. Fasting is a way of externalizing one’s conscience. Gandhi said conscience is the only tyrant he is willing to submit himself to. It is through the diktats of conscience one strikes an ethical relation with others, which is what historian Ajay Skaria refers to as an act of ‘surrendering without subordination’. We surrender our ‘self’ in the interests and wellbeing of others but that is not subordination. The best instance to watch this is in friendships. Intimacy demands surrender but not subordination.
It is such deep understanding of Gandhi that is central to his understanding of democracy, sovereignty, personal autonomy and dignity. Democracy survives not just in making good laws and Constitutions but carefully nurturing personal ethics and new forms of sociality. This is not too far from Ambedkar’s understanding that even the best of Constitutions can be ruined if people pursuing the constitutional vision are found wanting. It is in bringing laws and personal conduct in close consonance that democratic spirit thrives.
Who would have thought that the Gandhian spirit in unsaid ways would revisit and come alive at the Jantar Mantar when the Gen Z walked the streets? Gandhian spirit is part of the collective subconscious of the Indian way of living. In the last decade or so, we had assumed that old India and Gandhi were dead. India had become uncivil with a naked display of prejudice, exclusion and discrimination as a means to mobility, and violence against and humiliation of the weak as a legitimate way to assert one’s self. Family Whatsapp groups had become toxic and socially indifferent, neighbourhoods had become battlefields of conflict and aggression, and workplaces had become places of institutionalized uncivility with little scruples. India was sinking into an abyss of self-destruction moving to a point of no return. It was in such a bleak and gloomy context that Gen Z decided to walk the streets of Jantar Mantar reclaiming swaraj as dignity, and swaraj as the innate ability to speak truth to power.
Gen Z protests generated an intimate experience. It was political because it was intimate. Intimacy was the true Gandhian way of living politics.
Gen Z that was reticent and lost in its virtual world began to inhabit the real world. Jantar Mantar exemplified the best of that voluntary spirit. Students were distributing food, water, cleaning up the streets and making reels – all in one. There were no assigned roles and so no hierarchical distribution of labour. They did not wait for leaders to descend to save them; they faced, in true Gandhian way, violence without bitterness. They instead celebrated humour as resistance. They responded to state violence with mockery, memes and meetings. The abusive language was not vitriolic but it was a way of claiming autonomy. One can interrogate the political correctness of the language but again Jantar Mantar is a space of learning as much as one of protest.
There was uncanny role reversal in the protest site. Women and girls were leading the slogans, and holding up their sanitary pads saying they are more leak proof than NEET examination papers. Boys and men were mostly serving food and water. Muslims stood as a solid support system, and you had a young Dalit to lead the protests but he was only incidentally Dalit. Identities were acknowledged but not essentialised. Parents were stating that they learn to see the reality because of their children. What can be a better display of non-hierarchical modes of interaction? It was the best of example in co-responsibility. Unknown people were defending and taking lathis for others, without asking what they will gain in return. Nobody was clamoring to speak to the media to get the limelight; in fact they were enjoying each other’s contribution. It was the silent working of the soul-force. The injured were nursed back to life, just the way Gandhi would, perhaps, do.
Gandhi jumped out of school textbooks to show Gandhigiri still works. It was for the first time the autocratic regime was rattled.
Just the way Gandhi had imagined, Gen Z looked fearless – the true spirit of swaraj. They even managed to make Indian police look human. We even had policemen taking selfies and on a rare occasion smiling. Repression looked not so scary. Gen Z protests generated an intimate experience. It was political because it was intimate. Intimacy was the true Gandhian way of living politics. Gandhi jumped out of school textbooks to show Gandhigiri still works. It was for the first time the autocratic regime was rattled. It blew the lid of legitimacy, and caused irreparable damage.
These protests can only be seen as the beginning of a new era of Indian democracy. Those of us worried that we had lost our way can now be assured that in fact a new pathway is being laid. We will witness the ripple effect of these protests where people will not take to streets to make demands. They will not wait for leaders to descend. We already saw school children sitting on dharna for water and infrastructure. People have claimed their swaraj. India is moving to a social democracy that is beyond elections and campaigns. Democracy, truly, is becoming a way of life, and very much in an Indian way!