prasad1
Active member
They have withstood the government’s sticks and stones, threats of “revenge vows” and daily attempts to delegitimise and label them as “tukde tukde”, anti-national, groups with vested interests, creating a “fear psychosis”. For over a month now, India’s students, India’s women, and most prominently, India’s Muslims, have remained resilient in the face of brutal repression, armed with the Constitution, determined to reclaim their democratic rights.
One month on, what do these protests, now spread across many parts of the country, tell us about this current moment in India’s democracy? Are these protests no more than an inchoate and a leaderless response to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) that, in the absence of formal political organisation, will dissipate in the face of State repression? Or, do they hold out the possibility of shaping a new politics for India that restores meaning to constitutional values of secularism, equality and justice?
Writing in these pages days after Parliament passed the CAA and the protests began, I had argued that the greatest challenge for the movement against the CAA and its sinister twin, the National Register of Citizens (NRC), is that of reclaiming secularism and finding a new vocabulary through which to defend its cause. This is not an easy task. Competitive party politics has hollowed out the true value of secularism, leaving in its place an opportunistic politics of religion. Being “secular” has been reduced to a politics of religious appeasement and chasing vote banks, rather than affirming values of tolerance, equality and peaceful coexistence. Party politics has stripped secularism of its true meaning, and as a result, even committed “secularists” have shied away from the term, preferring the language of tolerance and pluralism.
But in this last month, secularism has slowly found its way back into the public discourse as a constitutional value worth fighting for. The word itself has made regular appearances on posters, and is now integral to the grammar of the current wave of protests. It has also made its presence felt loud and clear, in the repeated chanting of the Preamble of the Constitution, which is the rallying point of the protests. But it is at the now iconic Shaheen Bagh that secularism, and the idea of what it means for Indians to practice being “secular” in everyday life, has truly emerged with renewed vigour and meaning.
But does this spontaneous, protest-led reclamation of secularism hold the possibility of translating into a new politics, in the long term? Despite opposing the CAA and taking a strong stance at the state government-level , Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, have failed to seize the opportunity to generate a new discourse on secularism and democracy in to mainstream politics. This doesn’t leave much hope. But as sociologist Patrick Heller reminded me in a conversation recently, we should be careful not to reduce democracy to mere party politics. Democracy begins and its practice is strengthened in the interstices of associational life. What we are witnessing today is democracy in its truest sense. It may not disrupt the status quo immediately, but it holds the promise of a better future.
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One month on, what do these protests, now spread across many parts of the country, tell us about this current moment in India’s democracy? Are these protests no more than an inchoate and a leaderless response to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) that, in the absence of formal political organisation, will dissipate in the face of State repression? Or, do they hold out the possibility of shaping a new politics for India that restores meaning to constitutional values of secularism, equality and justice?
Writing in these pages days after Parliament passed the CAA and the protests began, I had argued that the greatest challenge for the movement against the CAA and its sinister twin, the National Register of Citizens (NRC), is that of reclaiming secularism and finding a new vocabulary through which to defend its cause. This is not an easy task. Competitive party politics has hollowed out the true value of secularism, leaving in its place an opportunistic politics of religion. Being “secular” has been reduced to a politics of religious appeasement and chasing vote banks, rather than affirming values of tolerance, equality and peaceful coexistence. Party politics has stripped secularism of its true meaning, and as a result, even committed “secularists” have shied away from the term, preferring the language of tolerance and pluralism.
But in this last month, secularism has slowly found its way back into the public discourse as a constitutional value worth fighting for. The word itself has made regular appearances on posters, and is now integral to the grammar of the current wave of protests. It has also made its presence felt loud and clear, in the repeated chanting of the Preamble of the Constitution, which is the rallying point of the protests. But it is at the now iconic Shaheen Bagh that secularism, and the idea of what it means for Indians to practice being “secular” in everyday life, has truly emerged with renewed vigour and meaning.
But does this spontaneous, protest-led reclamation of secularism hold the possibility of translating into a new politics, in the long term? Despite opposing the CAA and taking a strong stance at the state government-level , Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, have failed to seize the opportunity to generate a new discourse on secularism and democracy in to mainstream politics. This doesn’t leave much hope. But as sociologist Patrick Heller reminded me in a conversation recently, we should be careful not to reduce democracy to mere party politics. Democracy begins and its practice is strengthened in the interstices of associational life. What we are witnessing today is democracy in its truest sense. It may not disrupt the status quo immediately, but it holds the promise of a better future.
Indians are reclaiming, and redefining, the idea of secularism | Opinion
What it means for Indians to be secular in everyday life has emerged with renewed vigour
