To reimagine India in Authoritarian times is to first and foremost truthfully bear witness to what is happening around us, to acknowledge the rifts being created, to name the injustices and cruelty and to call out the powers that divide.

We are here today to honour the memory of Gauri Lankesh who so bravely spoke truth to power and who even in death reminds us to bear truthful witness however painful that may be, and I am grateful and would like to say a thank you for being given this opportunity to be part of today’s very special and important gathering.

As I stand here in India, as we in the Northeast are fond of calling the country that lies beyond the chicken neck, I want to begin with a few introductions and disclaimers.

My name is Angela Rangad, I belong to the Matrilineal Khasi tribe of Meghalaya. I am also a beef eating, pork savouring Christian who also dips into the indigenous Khasi faith system for sustenance. I do not like to wear my religious and ethnic affiliations on my sleeve, but in today’s India, I feel it imperative to display my multi-layered identity of being a Christian and, a scheduled tribe minority woman, as a way of challenging those who wish us away.

When India got its independence in 1947, the self-governing, Khasi states that make up the major part of today’s Meghalaya, were unsure of joining the larger nation-state called India. And that was OK. There were attempts then, even at such a crucial juncture, of leaders both

Indian and Khasi considering this hesitation of the Khasi States and its people as something legitimate – to be acknowledged, debated and taken seriously.

Today, when representatives from our region are being silenced in the parliament, it is hard to imagine that Rev. JJM Nichols Roy confronted the majoritarian minded leaders of the

Constituent Assembly who openly wanted to assimilate the Tribals of India into their notion of a dominant Indian culture and society. He said

“It is said by one honourable gentleman that the hill tribes have to be brought to the culture which he said “Our culture” meaning the culture of the plains men. But what is culture? Does it mean dress or eating and drinking: if it means eating and drinking or ways of living, the hill tribes can claim that they have a better system than some of the people of the plains? I think the latter must rise up to their standard. Among the tribesmen there is no difference between class and class. Is that practised in the plains?”

Actively supported in the Constituent Assembly by visionary leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. Ambedkar, our leaders like Rev. J.J.M. Nichols Roy, Jaipal Singh Munda and others spoke fearlessly of the visions and aspirations of the small tribes and fought to ensure constitutional provisions of autonomy that became enshrined in the 5th and 6th schedule of the constitution.

The democracy that India envisaged for itself at its founding moment was not going to be just a brutality of numbers, but an everyday aspiration of many sovereignties and freedoms. I grew up listening to the stories about people from our hill, such as Mavis Dunn – one of the first women cabinet ministers in India who articulated both the desire for Khasi freedom and freedom of khasi women in front of the Bardoloi Committee. Stories of Wilson Reade, who gate crashed a meeting of Prime Minister Nehru, demanding provincial autonomy from Assam for the hill tribes. They did this without fear of reprisal or arrest. All of it seems like a dream now. Every day a new ideological horror is being perpetrated against all of us.

Seven decades on, that promise of the Constitution of India of ensuring open dialogues, of tentative relationships being OK, of the possibility of questioning being the edifice upon which our multi-cultural multi ethnic communities will determine their collective lives, is being undermined. Or in the words of Late L. G. Shullai, it is as if we have exchanged British India for Bharat India or the Hindu Rashtra being peddled today.

Today, we no longer refer to those who ought to be representing us as OUR govt. More and more we refer to those in power as The Regime. And this is telling. Regime – a word that conjures in our minds the feeling of being controlled, of having little choices and of being regimented into ONE uniform India.

For us from North East India, uniformity is an impossibility. And that is not only OK, but it has allowed us to thrive. With over 200 tribes having 300 plus languages and dialects between us, we contend with diverse cultural practices, customs and religions. A constellation of indigenous faiths and beliefs, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, heterodox Hinduism find expression across the region.

We are also a region that has, before maps got set and drawn, lived our relationships beyond the hills and rivers that defines India’s territoriality – which is why today when the military coup in Myanmar forced people to flee, the communities in states like Mizoram ensured refuge to them. Mizoram as a state, understanding the sentiment of a shared history and community relations extended a helping hand.

It is here that we find ourselves at odds with the regressive push of papering over these myriad and minute elements that define us. There can never be One Nation, One Law, One Belief to encapsulate our multi layered identities, relationships and ways of being.

Federalism as a key principle therefore, should not be emphasised merely as the sharing of powers between the union and the states but as an acknowledgement of the diversity within states and regions.

An acceptance that this experience of plural identities and relationships is best understood by those living it. If these local experiences and knowledge is what is allowed to inform policy and governance, the union of states as envisaged by the framers of our constitution would indeed become a reality.

The very idea of India where smaller communities like ours could have a political, economic and cultural voice seem distant now, under this regime. Although to be truthful, the relationship between India and its Northeast, very soon after independence, was sought to be turned into one of a patron-client relationship overseen by the security state, that process has now been further weaponised in favour of Delhi, and the Federal imagination is now being replaced by notions of double engine governments. For small states in the North East it is a reality that even when combined together we do not command legislative clout in terms of the number of representatives- and the number is set to further diminish if the proposed plans of delimitation go through. It is also a fact that for many North eastern states, our economies are crippled.

This dependency on the union has been used as a tool to put us in our place. An arm twisting that has pitted one neighbouring state against another and most crucially pushing communities and tribes to be wary and suspicious of each other. Double engine government has meant a replication of the divisive politics and hate that is on exhibition at the centre.

What is happening in Manipur today, is precisely this. A double engine government that is twice complicating the already complex histories and tenuous relationships among the people in this state. The Double Engine government has doubled the oppression, doubled the violence, and doubled the mistrust. The failure to contain the violence and hostilities for more than four months  now, clearly shows not only the total complicity of the double engine government but a glaring undermining, by design, of the federal guarantees of our constitution.

Manipur has also shown us how a regime can use communities – their sense of specialness and deprivation and the notions of majority to form blocks and cartels that can so easily be deployed for the larger sinister geo-political narratives and visions of an Akhand Bharat. I do not claim to be speaking on behalf of the people of Manipur, but after our recent visits there, many of us feel Manipur is a major experimentation in the region. A project to have a nation of majoritarian hate-filled cartels that will pave the way for easy access and exploitation of whatever resources the region may have by pitting communities against each other rather than allowing them their constant everyday messy negotiations, give and take and contradictions.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not here to glorify the region nor to romanticise its cultures, customs and practices. It has never been all love and fair play. There are fights. Claims and counterclaims. We have our fair share of looters, oppressors and patriarchs. However, if we are to reclaim our voices and spaces, we have to turn to our strength. That being our communities. The diversity and the entanglements which this diversity brings is what more than ever we will have to recognise, reclaim, embrace and work with. We cannot allow our communities to be used for a project that seeks to annihilate us. We as tribals cannot keep quiet when Dalits are targeted. We, as, Christians cannot allow our faith to be used to bring international legitimacy to a regime that persecutes our Muslim brothers and sisters. The Union of Communities needs to come together in solidarity of the MANY against ONE.

And, may I take this opportunity to also call out the so-called leaders in our north-eastern states who have played a politics of convenience for power and allowed themselves to be subsumed under majoritarian politicking. They have sold us out and sacrificed indigeneity, and even Christ at the altar of greed. It is a myth that Meghalaya or Nagaland or Mizoram is being led by regional parties. What we have is BJP-lite. Even as we rejected the BJP in the elections, we have BJP directed governments. The Prime Minister merely throws us representational crumbs in images of him with cultural symbols like headgear and tribal fabric wrapped around his neck or badly mouthing local language greetings from an auto-cue, while his government passes laws like the Forest Conservation Amendment Act that blatantly takes away our land and forests from our control.

We, as citizens, seem to be losing control over everything that makes a country ours. And At a time in our history when our institutions have been hollowed out, legislative processes hijacked and our ideals of liberty, equality and secularism are being held to ransom I hold on to some of my Khasi ideals as my personal existential weapon. For a khasi there are two important principles that are supposed to guide one’s life. Tip Briew – Tip Blei and Kamai Ia Ka Hok. Tip Briew – Tip Blei literally translates into” knowing humanity is knowing god”.

When the lens of humanity is being systematically blurred out and broken and when the decade long assertion of majoritarianism with its culture of impunity and hate filled mobs tearing us apart – we have to piece it back together with the Khasi principle of Tip Briew – Tip Blei. Knowing and embracing humanity forces us to be reflexive and there can be no Vishwa Guru greater that a self that is directed by an understanding, acceptance and compassion for another.

Kamai Ia ka Hok means to earn Righteousness. To live a life not of greed but of communitarian sufficiency. Today, when it has become difficult to distinguish Govt. from big capital and when corruption has been Adani – ised and development no longer remains a consultative process but a diktat, emphasising on the other khasi principle and praxis of Kamai la ka Hok becomes even more relevant.

So, may I end by imploring all of us present today to Tip Briew – Tip Blei, to Kamai Ia ka Hok and to constantly remind ourselves that the India of today is not our destiny. Together, we must continue to rage against the imprisonment we all feel. We need to constantly ask – Do we want to second guess ourselves all the time? To look over our shoulder and worry about the names we have? Can’t we enjoy a train ride the way we used to? Can’t we sit at a table and share our cuisines and joke about the smelly foods that some of us consume? Can’t we draw strength?

From each other – from the farmers and what they achieved at the borders of Delhi? Can’t we look south – to the peoples of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and imbibe their sense of self to stand up against bullies, Can’t we borrow courage from Kashmiris imagining a world beyond the prison bars and from a subjugated northeast that continues to draw breath?

Can’t we have a life like a river – we meander, we change course, we ebb and flow, we nurture, we even sometimes destroy but we move forward always with the promise of the expanse of an ocean awaiting…

The author, a political activist from Meghalaya wrote this for a memorial held at Town Hall, Bengaluru, September 5, 2023, 5-8 p.m.

Related:

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Remembering Gauri Lankesh, Renewing A Pledge

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The post TO BE LIKE RIVERS- Reimagining India in Authoritarian Times, a soul cry from India’s North East appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

 
People begin to think only when the fault lines occur and they think deeply when the world order breaks down. The politics of today is changing significantly; the jolts are as deep as those from earthquakes. The triumph of Donald Trump, a self-confessed sexual predator and racist, or the electorate apotheosis in India and Philippines bear witness to the trend. Ashish Nandy referred to Modi as a “textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer”. Mass murder accused Rodrigo Duterte rises in the political foray and there is mass acclaim for pitiless despots and imperialists like Putin in Russia and Erdogan in Turkey.
 
These populist authoritarian leaders and scurrilous demagogues are gaining ground in different countries of the world. Even the secessions of our time, for instance from ISIS to Brexit have several unique causes. For one, ethical constraints have weakened everywhere, often under the pressure of public opinion. The apparent ‘muslim rage’ identified with mobs of brown-skinned men with bushy beards has now taken different faces, from saffron-robed Buddhist ethnic-cleansers in Myanmar to blonde white nationalists in Germany.
 
Freud wrote the ‘primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind have not vanished’ but continue to exist in a ‘repressed state’, waiting for ‘opportunities to display their activity.’
 
The liberal world order is crumbling. Slavoj Žižek says, “the trump victory is the final blow to the Fukuyama dream and the final defeat of liberal democracy”. It would be, however, a mistake to forget that the initial signs of reactionary movements already were visible in Europe 15 years ago, when Jorg Haider’s FPO came second place in the 1999 Austrian parliamentary elections, prompting a right-wing coalition government under Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel.
 
In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the French presidential elections, where he lost to Jaques Chirac. These leaders who have risen in the new populist movements are typically xenophobic, misogynist and authoritarian in their functioning. Their followers usually share many of these tendencies but they are also fearful, angry and resentful of what their societies have done for them over the years.
 
In the Neo-liberal world order, Economic sovereignty, as a basis for national sovereignty was always a dubious principle. Today, it is increasingly irrelevant. In the absence of any national economy that modern states can claim to protect and develop, these nations in many populist movements perform their national sovereignty by turning towards cultural majoritarianism, ethnonationalism and stifling intellectual and cultural dissent. In other words, the loss of economic sovereignty everywhere produces a shift towards emphasizing cultural sovereignty.
 
Vox Populi (Thought process of the followers) has been brilliantly showcased in the book ‘The Great Regression’, by Arjun Appadurai. The author talks about various ways in which today’s widespread feeling of being fed up with democracy itself have a distinctive logic and context.
 
Firstly, the extension of the Internet and Social media to growing sectors of population led to web-based mobilisation, easy propaganda, identity building and peer seeking; and these have created the dangerous illusion that we can all find peers, allies, friends, collaborators, coverts and colleagues; whoever we are and whatever we want.
 
Secondly, the fact is that every single nation-state has lost ground in its efforts to maintain any semblance of economic sovereignty. When we add to these factors; the worldwide deepening of economic inequality, the global erosion of social welfare, and the planetary penetration of financial industries that thrive on circulating the idea that we are all at risk of financial disaster, impatience with the slow temporalities of democracy; It is compounded by a constant climate of economic panic.
 
The same populist leaders who promise prosperity for all often deliberately concoct this sort of panic, for instance, the Demonetisation exercise in India to root out black money by illegalizing 500 and 1000-rupee notes. These currency notes were a vital part of everyday life for poor and middle-class workers, consumers and petty commercial operators.
 
The leaders and their followers have bonhomie on some ground. Like the leaders hate democracy because it is an obstacle to their monomaniacal pursuit of power. The followers are victims of democracy fatigue who see electoral politics as the best way to exit democracy itself. This hatred and this exhaustion find their mutual ground in the space of cultural sovereignty, enacted in scripts of racial victory for resentful majorities, national ethnic purity and global resurgence.
 
This is precisely the fact that the Neo-liberal world is the incubator of authoritarianism in today’s time.
 
Žižek argues, “In a nice Hegelian move when capitalism won its external enemy and united the world, the division returned”. Pankaj Mishra says, “The liberal world made the human beings subordinate to the market, replacing social-bonds with market relations and sanctifying greed. It propagated an ethos of individual autonomy and personal responsibility, while the exigencies of the market made it impossible for people to save and plan for future”.
 
Where does the “Left” stand in this charade?
 
Right-wing populism thrives because the world of the working classes has been destroyed by corporate capitalism and has been further developed by cultural progressive elites, who from 1980 onwards, focused their intellectual and political energy on sexual and cultural minorities, generating fierce cultural wars.
 
The main theoretical proponent of leftist populism is Chantal Mouffe. According to Mouffe the main reason for the failure of the left is its non-combative stance of rational argumentation and lifeless universalism. Since this post-political third way is no match for the agnostic logic of right, they successfully mobilized anti-immigrant populists like Le Pen. The only way to combat for the left is by going back to a leftist populism. The left populism also moves beyond the old working class, anti-capitalists, and brought together a multiplicity of struggles from ecology to feminism. Zizek says, the rise of new right is the second phenomenon; the crucial thing is the disintegration of the state concept of centre-left.
 
The new organic corporate intellect like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates say that capitalism in its present form will not survive and that the discourse needs to be changed. The left should shift focus from the Big Bad Wolf of populism to true problems.
 
The left has no choice but to re-emerge with the moral world of lives and those which have been torn asunder brazenly by the rippling effects of capitalism. A revitalized left could lay the foundation for a powerful new coalition committed to fighting for justice for all. The left alternatives should be a program of new and different international agreements. Agreements which would establish control of banks, enforce ecological standards, secure workers’ rights, healthcare services, the protection of sexual and ethnic minorities etc.
 
The rise of the right has created a totally new political situation, leaving opportunities for a more radical political left. Now is the time for the Left to do the hard work, or to quote Mao, “there is disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.”
 
Moin Qureshi is a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
 

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