Well for starters, a belated Happy Republic Day to all my fellow Indians. I’m sure we’re all pretty happy and pleased with ourselves on the completion of the 63rd year of incorporating the Constitution of India replacing the Government of India Act, 1935. It is a highly symbolical gesture to have finally broken off the British chains of bonding and attaching the tag of ‘Republic’ to ourselves. Quite an achievement in itself isn’t it? After gaining independence the amount of painstaking work that the framers had to go through, of course borrowing liberally from the Irish Constitution , American Bill of Rights, the British unwritten constitution , the Weimar Constitution of Germany (the fact that the suspension of fundamental rights during emergency was taken from this Constitution had somehow subconsciously lodged into my head after a particularly tiresome Constitutional Law lecture)… you get my drift. No, I’m not damning the Constitution (we need those godforsaken rights more then ever now…in this day and age of a hopefully major political upheaval!) but I’m just going back to basics.
A Republic. The kind of amazement I feel doesn’t change one bit. A part of a scheme. A cog in the wheel. An intrinsic part of a well oiled machinery. And here is when most of you would curse me. The usual barrage I would face is “look what the country’s got to”, “the entire power is concentrated in a small coterie of people”, “there is no way an honest man can live honestly”… to which I completely agree. But isn’t it completely easy to just shift the blame and sit in our prim living rooms with the newly polished wooden figurines (oh, the ones we got from our vacation in Thailand), the newly bought Persian rug (the ones we especially ordered from Iran, not those cheap market rip-offs mind you!) and those porcelain dishes tastefully arranged in the antique oak cabinet. If I look around myself, all I see (barring a minuscule few) is people sitting in their moral high horses and pronouncing judgement which I have already elaborated on. The same people who force their precious sons and daughters to study hard and get a good job in Amreeka because oh, of course the country’s gone to the dogs. Well, if we’re all moving out, we don’t really have a say in whom should the country go to right? I have nothing against the States and I am even acquainted of a young gentleman who wants to go there not for the big American Dream but, plainly put, capital. Capital to jumpstart his own business in his birthplace which would probably take him a lifetime otherwise. Which, if you ask me, is a pretty good idea. Its not like I’m suddenly patriotic after Republic day has come along but it just got me thinking… how much of a republic are we?
Without going into the intricacies of the political matrix, do we really care? What I wish to hear is an astounding yes. What I hear is an astounding yes. But do we care in a way that matters? NO. Are we really kidding ourselves by believing that passing of a Lokpal bill is the solution to all problems known to the entire population of India??? Where is the demand for an independent judiciary? Where is the demand for equality? Are we still in the dream reverie of the 50’s? Isn’t it constitutionally immoral to perpetuate inequality in the guise of protecting the rights of the minority who can no longer be called or classified as downtrodden? Why, in the first place, are these questions missing? I grew up learning to question the wrongs and even the rights, to understand my place in the big scheme of things. Now I know why. So that when I finally face this day, I don’t have to look upto my parents or call my friends or just blindly following the news, decide the use of my suffrage. The desire is to be the perfect cog. The ball is finally in our court, ladies and gentlemen.
