The Politics Of Death

More and more people continue to succumb to the cold wave. Living human beings are freezing into lifeless statistics. The count till yesterday was 370.

It is anybody’s guess what the toll will be by the time the season ends. But who cares? Given the victims — the poor who survive precariously at the best of times — why should anyone care? If not by cold today, they will die tomorrow by heat or hunger. Barring a few exceptions, the victims of communal riots, too, belong to the same socio-economic bracket. It is citizens from the same segment, more or less, who lay down their lives to defend the country.

It is time we reckoned the politics of death. For us today, only deaths due to cross-border terrorism matter. We are callously apathetic to deaths resulting from State apathy that outnumber by far the victims of terrorism. Surely, not a single Indian life should be lost to terrorists; and terrorism must be not only ‘crushed’ but also rooted out.

At the root of the culture of terrorism is the tacit assumption that human life is a commodity to be played with in a political game. Such an assumption is bad enough in politics. It is utterly repugnant in religion.

There can be absolutely no religious justification for terrorism of any kind. The concept of jehad is irreligious nonsense. The basic spiritual insight is that human life — not some ideology or religious establishment — is the ultimate value. It must not only be defended but also cherished, enriched and celebrated at all costs. Terrorism is, hence, an outright insult to the essence of religion; and it needs to be eradicated.

But, does right to life entitle citizens to protection only from terrorists? Is death by terrorism worse than slow and prolonged death due to starvation or cold? The moral high ground to fight terrorism must be derived from an uncompromising commitment to protect life from every threat that imperils it. A culture of mindless and murderous aggression, that sacrifices citizens for political ends, does not mix well with postures of indignation against terrorism.

That is not all. Deaths due to cold or starvation should be deemed a darker blot on the State than the toll of terrorism. They are predictable and preventable. We know who are the enemies and where the victims are. We have the resources required to avert these tragedies. But nothing is done and the toll continues to rise.

That leaves us with only one inference: we have no intrinsic value for human life unless it is embellished by caste or class labels. That is why five Dalits in Jhajjar can be brutally ill treated and lynched, allegedly for refusing to bribe policemen, and this barbarity can be dressed up in communal costumes.

The same message is writ large over the fate of Bapi Sen, the 37-year-old Kolkata policeman beaten to death by his own colleagues for doing his duty on New Year’s eve. For the same reason, locks remain intact on godowns even as people starve and die, and experts busy themselves debating whether they died of famine or malnutrition.

We have just had a housewife convicted under POTA for not reporting on her husband’s involvement in the conspiracy that presumably led to the December 13 attack on Parliament. She has been sent to jail for omission, not for commission. She did not do, in other words, what she should have done. Shall we, then, extrapolate to the State the self-same principle? Surely, it is a sound moral principle that you are judged and condemned by your own norms? Shall we say, then, that deaths due to exposure and starvation amount to economic terrorism, State terrorism by default?

The devaluation of the life of the poor is the single most blatant blot on Indian democracy. The equal worth of all citizens — ‘one-person-one-vote’ — is the basic creed of democracy. It is not only during election times that this principle should be remembered. It needs to be activated as the main principle of our democratic life. If not, Indian democracy could degenerate into de facto oligarchy sooner than we imagine.

As a nation, we are losing our capacity for righteous indignation which is a clear pointer to the erosion of our sense of justice and compassion. At the same time, every trick in the trade is being employed to whip up jingoistic sentiments. Deshbhakti is being defined narrowly as intolerance towards dissent and differences. Why doesn’t love for India include intolerance, we wonder, towards corruption, poverty, illiteracy, organised barbarity and other signs of backwardness? Why should hate, and not compassion or harmony, be a more authentic expression of religiosity today?

This may seem to go well for a while; but it is sure to corrode the very foundation of our collective life. By patronising communal politics and overlooking callous governance, we encourage and reward misrule. That way we wield a double-edged sword, the other edge of which is reserved for those who flourish it today.

The poisoned chalice, as Shakespeare says, will return to plague its inventor. Enunciating and propagating a culture of compassion and fellow feeling that transcends all barriers and religious labels is a democratic and spiritual duty. With every Indian citizen who succumbs to cold and hunger, light fades out on the soul of India; and no amount of communal bombast can hide this national bankruptcy.

(The authors are president of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front and faculty member of St. Stephen'sCollege,  Delhi,  respectively.)