On Independence Day all will agree, from every political, professional and social dispensation, that the teachings, thoughts and works of Mahatma Gandhi have been one of the principal guiding lights of those who care for the core values of democracy.
And one of democracy’s core essentials is freedom from fear. And this is what India must pray for. Not today, not tomorrow but for the future of India. This isn’t about parties but about our motherland.
And this absence of fear, as the soul of democracy, was expressed by the most universally accepted leader of this nation- Mahatma Gandhi. It was his thought that “the greatest gift for an individual or a nation,… was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but the absence of fear from the mind.”
The duty of the leader of people is to make
them fearless
Mahatma Gandhi further drew upon the sayings of the Hindu Vedic sage Yajnavalkya who figured in the Upanishads, and the Hindu King of Mithila, Janaka, who both said, “At the dawn of our history, it was the function of the leaders of people, to make them (the people) fearless.”
Gandhiji elaborated on this and said that it was necessary that ordinary people fortify their minds and learn to deal with the fear of speaking out.
This Independence Day, India needs to pray for its real freedom – FREEDOM FROM FEAR
a) India needs to be free of the fear of the non-majoritarian communities living in an atmosphere of dread and nervousness, of attacks and violence, and of the wheels of the State machinery crushing them.
b) India needs to be free of the fear of having another Manipur ever, where a State will be split along so many fault lines that were not there earlier – ethnic, tribal, religious and geographical, where friends’ neighbours and colleagues turn against each other baying for each other’s blood, where respect turns to revenge and harmony turns to hatred. Let India indeed be free from this fear of another Manipur happening to them in the lives of their children and grandchildren, both born and not yet born.
c) To achieve this freedom from fear, India, needs to be free of another fear- the fear of the voter selling his vote to the highest bidder at the time of elections.
d) With this fear is a related fear. If voters sell their votes, then the people they chose need not be loyal to them since this is no longer a relationship of trust but of transaction. India needs to be free of the fear of defections and disloyalty, of mandates getting betrayed and overturned, of parties getting a little share of the votes stealing power.
e) Importantly India needs to be free of the fear of incomplete data and untrue information used to present a confident picture of the country. For instance, for India to truly become a superpower, India cannot have a rich government with poor people. It is about rich government and rich people, where taxes are not squeezed from people but wealth created.
f) India needs to be free of the fear of politics becoming a laundry service where leaders involved in corruption and criminal charges get “cleansed” after joining parties in control.
g) India needs to be free of the fear of all four pillars of democracy – the legislature, executive, judiciary and the press getting compromised and weak, unable to withstand the designs and plans of those who have the power to destroy them.
h) Connected to this is another freedom from fear India seeks, the fear of the basic nature of our Constitution changing, a Constitution that gives us rights and liberties, of India being a sovereign secular socialist democratic republic.
i) India needs to be free from the fear of our natural resources getting permanently destroyed, our diversity, our hills, rivers and forests, and falling on the platform of greed, our animal species becoming homeless and extinct and India becoming a giant wasteland.
j) Our country has always had great institutions, especially of faith that guided, protected and advised members to do no wrong. India needs to be free of fear of a lot of hurt when professors of faith- holy people, do wrong and become participants in the wrongdoing that undermines democracy.
When India gets freedom from such fears, India will get real Swaraj or good governance. Let us go back to Gandhi, who our government, (as they and everyone should) respects. In 1925, Gandhi wrote that “real Swaraj will come, not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity by all, to resist authority when it is abused.
Let India be genuinely free of fear. That is the India we want for our children, Let us wish India this complete freedom as she embarks on her 77th year of Independence, our glorious tryst with destiny.
