A new India that is not inclusive is not what the founding fathers imagined

The school shall remain unnamed. But an incident in that school in New Delhi about two weeks ago is a reflection of the politically polarising and socially fraught times India has been living in for the last few years. Note that the incident took place in a school in the heart of India’s capital city and not in any remote rural corner of the country. 

Four students in their early teens were rounded up by their teacher for drawing a flag in one of their classes on August 14. They had drawn the national flag of Pakistan and that day happened to be the Independence Day of India’s western neighbour. So, the class teacher brought this incident to the notice of the headmistress. A few questions were asked and it was revealed that one of the students was a Muslim. This revelation gave a new twist to the incident and the headmistress issued a warning to the students.

The purpose of narrating this incident here is twofold. One, it underlines the pathetic condition of teaching standards in India’s schools and, two, it is perhaps an indication of how deeply polarised India’s middle classes have become. It is reasonable to argue that such deterioration in social mores has been encouraged by an inadequate response from the state to other similar but more egregious instances. In fact, this could be even construed as a tacit endorsement of a brand of raw nationalism that is exclusionary to the core and intolerant of those, who may not subscribe to such majoritarian worldviews. 

What could have provoked the teachers to conclude that the drawings by those teenagers in their classroom were objectionable and that they deserved to be brought to the attention of the headmistress? What was wrong in the students drawing the flag of Pakistan on its Independence Day? Have the teachers too become victims of a flawed notion of nationalism? Finally, could the teacher and the headmistress have used the occasion to teach the students a little more about India’s neighbour? And by not doing that, did they miss an opportunity to fulfil the broader goals of education? 

Indeed, the response of the school authorities showed how easy it was to fall into the dangerous trap of jingoistic nationalism and shrink the space for encouraging curiosity and thirst for knowledge. It was also a pointer to the Indian society’s gradual descent into polarisation of the worst order. Whatever be the reason that prompted those students to draw Pakistan’s national flag, the reaction it provoked has scarred them forever. Their worldview will not be the same again. All of them have been the victim of a false sense of nationalism that has no place in a society that claims inclusiveness as its creed, freedom as its right and tolerance as its core value.  

Why blame only the teachers? A colleague’s recent experience with a police officer visiting his residence in connection with a police clearance certificate is once again reflective of the times India is living in. The police officer made no bones about the fact that his job had become more onerous because of the large influx of illegal immigrants from different countries, including Bangladesh. But the police officer also made it clear to the colleague that the names and the way people lived were a pointer to whether they were illegal immigrants or not.  

Unquestionably, it is a crude way of ascertaining if a resident is an illegal immigrant. There is little doubt that such an approach can lead to harassment of many economically underprivileged citizens of this country just because their religion may not be Hindu or their names could be similar to those who live in Bangladesh. Aren’t there better ways of ascertaining the status of a resident in the country? But then in a country where an exercise to prepare a national register of citizens in a state like Assam can become a trigger for political gamesmanship and lead to a demand from a few other states to conduct similar citizenship surveys, the approach of the law enforcement agencies should hardly cause any surprise. 

What this does to the Indian society is just opposite of what the founders of India in 1947 had hoped it to be -- a country where each citizen could live as freely and responsibly as any other irrespective of his or her caste, creed or religion. That was the dream to build an inclusive India. But such incidents and the nature of the conversation that continues among large sections of Indians today make you wonder if the country’s march towards building an inclusive India has hit a serious roadblock. 

You could blame it on the majoritarian and polarising politics being practised by the ruling party at the Centre. But what is equally worrying is that such politics is gaining traction among large sections of Indian people, particularly among the growing middle class. Beneficiaries of the economic right and economic growth are no less responsible for fuelling the rise of the political right and majoritarian politics. The tenor of the conversation in drawing rooms of most middle-class Indian households betrays an alarming degree of acquiescence to the idea of the majority’s domineering role at the expense of the minority. 

It is deeply ironic that a country that boasts of having rolled out the goods and services tax with a catchy slogan of “one country, one tax” has begun to witness the rise and dominance of a new socio-political narrative of majoritarianism to the exclusion of the minorities. There is now a clamour for a new India. But a new India that is not truly inclusive of all its people irrespective of their caste, creed and religion will fail to become a country that its founders would have been proud of. There is an urgent need for a course correction before India can celebrate 75 years of its Independence in 2022, with pride and satisfaction.