India-
The Burning Train
By Satya Sagar
15 August, 2006
Zmag
15th
August 2006 will mark yet another Independence Day for the modern Indian
nation.
Fifty nine years ago this
day Pandit Nehru, the country's first Prime Minister, famously declared
the new born nation's 'tryst with destiny' and promised to make Independence
a vehicle of future peace, prosperity and democratic rule for his country
men and women.
But as we stand today at
the threshold of India's sixtieth year of free existence for millions
of people living in this vast and diverse land it is as if Independence
never arrived and our colonial rulers never left. There are two simple
questions they pose that nobody seems to have an answer for- WHOSE freedom
is it that 15th of August represents? And WHO does this country really
belong to?
For in the harsh daily reality
of their lives what they experience is the same old pillage, plunder
and injustice from successive Indian governments. Indian Independence
instead of being a vehicle to the promised peace, prosperity and democracy
appears to them more like a brakeless burning train headed for complete
disaster.
A burning train that is commandeered
by a paid bureaucracy willing to obey any orders their political and
corporate masters give no matter what principles of basic humanity are
broken in the process. Anybody here with a conscience is soon hauled
over the coals - more fodder to feed the ever starving, ever speeding
train.
The politicians smugly sit
in their first class AC carriages insulated from the electorate in whose
name they rule and cozy up to the captains of domestic and foreign capital
who are their real constituency. Once in several years they lean out
of their windows to beam their plastic smiles and wave their stodgy
hands at those behind them- an exercise the current Indian government
proudly calls 'free market democracy'.
In a small corner next to
the politicians and the corporate bosses sit members of the Indian media
intoxicated by their proximity to power. They are there to entertain
the elites with trivia, the 'heroes' playing Nero while the nation burns.
The coaches that follow are
full of the Indian middle classes, also mostly upper caste, who occupy
reserved seats, which they mistakenly think, are also deserved. As they
coast along their comfortable journey they chatter on about how corrupt
everyone is (except them of course!) and curse the politicians ahead.
But all the while aspiring, competing, conspiring to privately grab
a share of the same loot they publicly denounce.
At the very end of the train
is that single unreserved compartment, meant for the unshaven, unkempt
masses who- according to some ancient Indian logic- get so little precisely
because they are so large in number. Here they go pushing, shoving,
cutting, murdering and slaughtering each other over every inch of space
which represents their very survival. Innocence here is a bird that
dies well before it is even born, for to be alive would mean only ending
up in the diet of some hungry soul or the other.
But there is yet another
category of people, the Dalit, Adivasi, indigenous folk of the Indian
North-East and the Kashmiris, who don't figure anywhere inside the burning
Indian train - because the train itself runs not on railway tracks but
on their bloodied backs. They are the colonial subjects of the colonized,
the slaves of the slaves, the shadow of shadows with no human rights
because they are supposed to be mere living ghosts.
And why exactly is this train
called India headed for disaster?
Political disaster because
our politicians, despite the façade of periodic elections, do
not represent the Indian people any more and have transformed into middlemen
bargaining away national interests to the highest bidder. Most of our
leading (or misleading) political parties, instead of helping defend
democracy and national sovereignty, are busy trying to make India a
junior partner in the global crimes of US Imperialism- even if the process
leads to the recolonisation of the country.
Administrative disaster because
the government 'public servant', in a perversion of the original concept,
treats the public like his servant and instead serves his real masters
in the world of wealthy corporations. Despite living off the Indian
State all these decades today many of them are the ones most enthusiastic
about selling it off to private owners.
Economic disaster because
what used to be a national economy has turned into one more game of
roulette in the global casino whose spinning wheel spells fortunes for
a select few and pauperizes the already poor majority. The evil mantras
of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation are taking India
back to the days of princely kingdoms, with the only difference that
today the monarchs are the large corporations that dominate the national
landscape.
Social disaster because injustice
breeds more injustice, greed breeds more greed and the frenzied search
for security of the few makes the multitudes insecure. While we have
successive governments splurging billions of dollars on militarization
in the name of 'national security' the real problem remains at home
with simmering conflicts of caste, religion and nationality ready to
explode at short notice On a burning train survival is possible only
over the corpses of fellow travellers.
Ecological disaster because
what successive governments in Independent India have done so far is
destroy the country's irreplaceable land, water, forest, air in the
name of national development. A development that worships dead, inanimate
monuments of the graveyard while displacing, humiliating and destroying
the lives of breathing, sentient creatures that eat, sleep, laugh and
make love.
Is there a solution to the
national mess we are in today?
We have no definite answers
but one thing for sure is that the only ones who can ultimately save
the passengers on the great burning Indian train are the very people
whose flesh and bones they travel upon. It is only through a powerful
collective shrug of these invisible people- the original people of India-
that the burning train can be pushed off its tracks- liberating both
those beneath and inside the train headed for disaster.
It may well be time for all
of us to jump off this burning train and help derail it. It is an act
of resistance that may launch yet another battle for Indian Independence-
this time from our own home grown Colonial State.
Satya Sagar is
a journalist, writer and video maker based in New Delhi. He can be reached
at [email protected]